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The 20th century fire station was built on Brick Close and some of the earliest brick making took place  either side of the Harpenden Road.

A map from 1726 shows a brick kiln and mounds suggesting areas already excavated. The ponds are undoubtedly abandoned brick pits and it is known that a 16 year old lad drowned in one in 1836.

In Victorian times George Arnold was digging chalk on or near the Heath as early as 1857and his brickworks were definitely in use in 1864. They continued to the 1880s to be followed by Lewis and Wiles's tallow works.

See George Farr Arnold

 

A most melancholy catastrophe has befallen the family of a poor brush-maker, residing in Snatchup's Alley, St. Alban's, of the name of Butcher. On the 11th inst. his son, a lad of about 16 years of age, was bathing, in company with another boy, in a pond on Barnard's Heath (formerly a gravel pit), when, getting out of his depth, he sank into a hole, and was drowned. On the following Thursday, the sister to the deceased (aged three years) went into a neighbour's house, and attempted to take some peas boiling on the fire, when by some means she upset the saucepan over her, and was so dreadfully scalded by the boiling liquor that death ensued on the following day.

Country Herald - reprinted in Hertford Mercury, 26 July 1836

A news item in the Hertford Mercury of 5th December 1857 related to the theft of a well rope, 140 feet long, from the Reformer public house in Hatfield road. A track of muddy footprints lead across a meadow to a chalk pit. Samuel Edwards, a chalk drawer for Mr Arnold, was charged. This suggests that chalk was dug in connection with the brickworks - either to incorporate in the bricks or for lime burning.