Huntley Hollow Brickworks

Huntley Hollow Brickworks, Downsville, NY

About a mile up Huntley Hollow on property owned by Carol Morovinsky-Garilli’s family, sits the remains of a small brickwork.  Very little is known about this brickworks, it is thought that the brickworks operated in the late 1800’s until the early 1900’s.  The 1869 Beers Atlas of Delaware County shows that location being owned by a S. Mills but there is no notation about the existence of a brickworks in the business listings.

On the right-hand side of Huntley Hollow across the brook the continuous kiln is about twenty feet long and ten feet wide.  The fire tunnel is constructed with a fieldstone/mortar base and rounded brick fire tunnel with a chimney at one end.  There are iron bars where bricks were stacked for firing.  The clay was dug from the stream bed and banks behind the kiln.  The bricks that remain do not have a name or letters pressed into the bricks.  Two large concrete blocks show what may have been loading or drying docks.  A keystone bridge led from the kiln up to the rail tracks on the left hand side of Huntley Hollow. (The bridge was washed out in the 2006 flood.) These track were used to haul the finished bricks into Downsville to be used locally or to be shipped elsewhere.  Small carts or horse-drawn dinkeys were probably used to transport the bricks to market.