William Weston Young - The Dinas Firebrick

The Dinas Firebrick

Young's experience of firing ceramics, together with his familiarity with the region as a local surveyor and his amateur interests in geology enabled him to conceive of a heat-proof, blast-furnace brick, using silica found in large deposits at the head of the Neath Valley. The process of "vitrifying" the walls of a ceramic brick-built furnace had been patented by William Harry, of the Swansea Valley in 1817, but Young's solution was to build the whole furnace from a "silica firebrick," made with a 1% addition of lime, to bind the blue-grey "clay" of the Dinas rock. The idea being that the interior of the blast furnace would vitrify and be vastly more durable and ultimately economical, than a mere veneer of silica within a comparatively fragile ceramic shell. Young made early experiments with the recipe and fired his trial bricks at the Nantgarw Pottery kilns, while he and Pardoe finished the Billingsley porcelain for sale between 1820 and 1821 when he finalised his recipe.

In 1822, Young applied to the Marquis of Bute to lease the lands near Craig-y-Dinas, Pontneddfechan, in the upper Neath Valley for a period of twenty-one years. Young had the lease, and the patent (No. 5047) but had no funds left to set up the required brickworks. He sought financial backing from a number of sources, including his extended family once more and on 19 October 1822, the Dinas Fire Brick Co. was established in a partnership involving David Morgan, a Neath Ironmonger, John Player and Joseph Young (William Weston Young's older brother). (W.W. Young was a party but could not be a partner in the final enterprise, owing to his previous bankruptcy in 1802 at Aberdulais watermill.) A brickworks was built at Pontwalby, about a mile down river from Craig-y-Dinas.

The lucrative company, which sold bricks to industry across the world, transferred through many hands, but the Young family, held their shares throughout, finally passing via Joseph Young to his son William Weston Young Junior (1798–1866). (William Weston Young had no children). From "The Dinas Firebrick Co." to "John Player & Co." in 1825, to "Riddles, Young & Co." in 1829 and finally, becoming world famous as "Young & Allen" in 1852, the company brochure later mentions that it had supplied firebricks to Swansea's White Rock Copper Works for forty years.