Swillington Brickworks was constructed between at the end of the 1950’s, finished in the mid 1960’s, by George Armitage and Sons PLC, who had a history of making bricks in the area since 1824. Initially, the site was built to produce around 30,000 bricks per day, but by the 1980’s it was capable of up to 100,000 bricks per day. Up until the housing slump in 2007, the final production figures were close to 1/2 a million bricks per week; these dropped to a 1/4 million after 2007. The site manufactured a wide range of bricks including facings, pavers, engineering and acid resistant. They provided all of the bricks to build Barton Square and the second phase of the Trafford Centre, Manchester.
In 1988 the site was taken over by Marshall’s and the change from a family run business upset a lot of the work force. It was then later acquired by Hanson Aggregates. After the housing slump in 2007 and the deterioration of the building industry in general; the works closed and mothballed in October 2008 with a loss of 45 jobs.
