When coal mining began to boom, Hunwick was primed to meet the need for more housing because it was known that the local clay, a glacial deposit, was suitable for making bricks, tiles and pipes. There was already a tile works at Hunwick Station when the brickworks was opened by John Robson, the colliery owner.

Tiles for land drainage had been produced locally following the enclosure of Hunwick Moor in 1761. Then tiles and pipes for drainage purposes became exempt from the brick tax in 1826 before the tax was fully removed in 1850, encouraging the manufacture of bricks for building houses and lining kilns and furnaces.

The clay was dug from open pits at Hunwick and West Hunwick Collieries before being left to dry. Stones were removed, then sand and water were added prior to kneading into a consistency suitable for moulding into bricks, which were fired in a kiln. Fireclay and seggar were extracted from coal mines to provide other raw materials.

The quality of Durham fireclay was widely acknowledged. It is basically a muddy underclay associated with coal and has a higher aluminium content (up to 30 per cent). Seggar appears to have been a North-East term for a more shaly substance extracted from between the coal seams. Ganister, a sandstone with up to 90 per cent silica content, also occurred locally and was used to make bricks which could survive at even higher temperatures than the firebricks.

The 1861 census shows that George Watson had taken on the works and the bricks were stamped with his initials, GLW. There are other, later bricks stamped H and N, for Hunwick and Newfield. It is also recorded that John Richardson, living at the nearby Railway Hotel in 1878, was a brick and tile-maker, suggesting he had opened a second works on the site.

An 1896 map shows a substantial clay pit, a railway siding and what was known as the Newcastle Kiln, which was not demolished until 2013.The same map shows the hotel, plus its adjoining ball alley, and Station Cottages.