The Ruby Brick & Tile Co Ltd was a subsidiary of Hartley & Partners Ltd whose offices were in Curzon Park North, Chester. They also owned brickworks at Rhyl, Llandudno Junction and elsewhere. Think they owned or controlled Cestrian Brick Co as well.
By the 1970s, all the brickworks were closed but largely intact. Along with Mr Hartley, the owner, everybody was getting seriously old. Hartley's manager was about 78 as was Mr Darlington, the caretaker at Llandudno. Mr Perrin, the caretaker at Ruby was well into his 80s.

The big surviving building was the engine house with a fairly big Robey cross-compound engine built in 1903. Steam engines also survived at Rhyl and Llandudno. In about May 1977, I dismantled the Ruby engine, hired a crane and an artic and put it into storage in Grosvenor, Chater's paper mill at the bottom of Greenfield Valley. The local council planned to have it re-erected as part of the Greenfield Valley Heritage set-up but I don't know if they did.

I had to use a big crane as we couldn't get it very near the engine house. Luckily the driver and slinger were twins and did the whole thing perfectly on intuition!

Llandudno had a very derelict Ruston Proctor engine while Rhyl had a well-kept engine with expansion slide valves by Pollock & McNab of Hyde - think that engine might have been saved also.

The real gem was an ancient Cornish valve engine at Ruabon Brick & Tile, Gardden Works. It was kind of half-rescued but I think it ended up being scrapped.

Have a photo of the Ruby engine somewhere......