Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Lambert brickworks, located 15 rue de Dionval in Saint-Piat (Eure-et-Loir), is a former brickworks and brickworks founded in 1859 by Jean-Baptiste Lambert. Located near clay quarries and the Chartres-Paris railway, it exploited local resources (loehms, sand) to produce bricks, flat and refractory tiles. His first oven, which had now disappeared, was replaced between 1880 and 1910 by a 37-metre-long Hoffmann double oven, innovative for its continuous cooking system.

The site consists of a central workshop with fireplaces, wooden dryers (fixed shelves and mobile clayettes), a lift for raw bricks, and annexes: workers' housing (circa 1900), office, warehouse converted into a workshop, and a grinder for cracked powder. The coal-fired Hoffmann oven (5 tonnes by cooking) operated from March to October with a 15-day cycle for temperature rise and 15 days for cooking. A tunnel dryer on rails, later added, optimized the circulation of bricks.

The brick factory, which remained in the Lambert family until 1997, employed 22 people in 1937. Its 1930s Russon diesel engine, replacing a steam engine, operated treadmills and a mixer until final shutdown in 1995. Its products, sold locally and in Normandy, would have been used to build the Bichat hospital in Paris. Ranked a Historical Monument in 1999 and selected by the Bern mission in 2018, it is a rare witness to the artisanal industrialization, with its original tools preserved.

The architecture reflects a rational organization: ventilation by adjustable shutters, heat recovery for dryers, and underground galleries linking the oven to the chimney. Ceramic coal distributors, manually moved, illustrate the ingenuity of pre-industrial processes. The Lambert brick factory is distinguished by its exceptional state of preservation, offering a complete reading of brick and tile manufacturing techniques from the 19th to the 20th century.

Its economic, although local, outreach extended to neighbouring regions thanks to the quality of its refractory flamed bricks. The cessation of activity in 1997 marked the end of a family saga of nearly 140 years, linked to clay extraction and artisanal processing. Today, the site is a major industrial heritage in the Centre-Val de Loire, comparable only to the brickworks of Grossouvre and La Guerche, but unique by the integrity of its installations.

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