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Claypits
The great Ice Age is credited for our town’s clay deposits which were laid down on a lake floor thousands of years ago–our own Glacial Lake Sudbury.
The English who settled Sudbury Plantation in the early seventeenth century were very familiar with the useful characteristics of clay that makes excellent bricks. In England, most of the forests had been consumed for their timber and Englishmen had turned to stone and brick to build their homes, barns, and churches. But in Sudbury Plantation, there was, so to say, timber to burn. Thus, the very first crude shelters and early houses, barns, meetinghouses, bridges, and fences were made of wood. If early residents found a deposit of clay, they might have used it to chink the logs in a house wall or a crack in the chimney. That was about it.
There is a lot of clay throughout the town, usually several feet under the topsoil in a wet or boggy setting. As time went on, many deposits were unearthed: near Claypit Hill, 1/8 of a mile above Mill Pond; at Timber Neck, a high piece of land on the northern edge of the Sandy Burr Country Club near the junction of Mill and Pine brooks; on the west side of Heard’s Pond; and in several other areas west of the river. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, bricks were made at many of these same locations as well as a place called Smithfield, a swampy area on Concord Road northwest of the Mill Pond. Another clay pit lies west of Concord Road across from its junction with Lincoln Road.
The best-known clay pit in town was (surprise!) on Claypit Hill Road near the spot where Mill Brook passes under the road. There are depressions on both sides of the road, but the easiest to see is on the south side about two hundred feet in from the road at the edge of a marsh. There is still a large pile of excavated clay next to the pit. Archaeologists from the Wayland Historical Commission have discovered an area nearby underlain with many broken brick fragments where they believe a primitive brick-making oven once operated. The town built five school houses between 1799 and 1808. These early eighteenth century single room school buildings were built of brick–one still stands at 19 Pelham Island Road although all of the original brick has disappeared. (see Wayland A-Z: E is for Education)
New England had extraordinary deposits
of very good clay. In Boston, the use of bricks soared when
the city fathers decreed that no more wooden buildings would
be permitted after a series of devastating house fires had
occurred. Locally, only people of means could afford a brick
house. Abel Gleason’s handsome brick 1803 house still stands
at 74 Glezen Lane across from the old Training Field. For
those who couldn’t afford a brick house, the exposed part of
their foundation was occasionally faced with brick to
improve or upgrade the appearance.
Little has changed in the world of brick building
construction; it is still expensive to do and is often used
sparingly in architectural design.