From the middle of the 19th century a number of brickworks were operating in the area. Westlake’s Brick and Fire Clay had sites at Bealswood and Calstock (recorded in the 1856 Post Office trade directory) and their bricks were used for Government and public buildings, fortifications, and in the local towns.
The Phoenix Brickworks on Hingston Down employed 400 men in the 1870s and provided the bricks to pave St Petersburg dockyard. Out of work miners found employment at the brickyards, but they too eventually ceased production.
The site at Calstock, run by Thomas Westlake & Co in 1893 and still marked as a fire brick works on the 1907 OS map, was converted to a chip-basket and box making factory supplying the local fruit growers, before it was eventually demolished to make way for housing
A development of large terraced houses along Sand Lane was built on the former site of the Bealswood Brickworks. And later the site of the former Bealswood brickworks was developed into the George V recreation ground.