Chronicle Heritage’s Memphis office excavated the foundation of a brick kiln in northern Mississippi believed to be the only kiln of its kind in the region to be researched and examined.
Remnants of the kiln were first discovered in 2021 during a Phase I archaeological survey of the site. The survey was being conducted on behalf of the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) prior to the construction of a highway interchange through the site. The new road will provide an on ramp to U.S. Highway 72 for a battery cell manufacturing facility set to be constructed on the property.
As part of the Phase I survey, over 1,300 shovel pits were dug on the site, and, during shovel testing, overfired brick was found. With this discovery the site was deemed eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.
In 2024, Chronicle Heritage was hired for a Phase III of the site. Ground penetrating radar was conducted “to help us home in on where the kiln actually was,” said Erin Stinchcomb, Associate Archaeologist and Field Director for the site. “We put a grid across the GPRs’ findings and found a kiln.”
Starting in March 2025, Chronicle Heritage performed a block excavation of the site, digging in 12-inch increments. About 24 inches down, the archaeologists hit brick. For approximately six weeks from late March to early May, a team of four archaeologists led by Stinchcomb unearthed the foundation of an up-draft kiln, most likely a scove kiln.
Up-draft kilns are named as such because the heat passes through the brick in the kiln from the bottom toward the top, according to the Mississippi State Geological Survey.
The geological survey’s Clays of Mississippi publication states: “The scove kiln is the simplest type of kiln and because of its cheapness is much used in small plants. The bricks are set in a rectangular-mass and surrounded by a double wall of soft burned brick. The outer surface of the wall is coated with mud in order to prevent loss of heat and the entrance of air. The fire boxes are made by setting the brick in the kiln in such a way as to form arches, which extend through the kiln from side to side. The fuel is placed in these arches from openings in the side walls. The top of the kiln is covered with a layer of brick laid flatwise and close together. The platting, as this layer is called, is sometimes partly or wholly covered with sand or clay, and the heat is directed by moving this loose material from point to point. Scove kilns are employed mostly for burning common brick.”
The foundation of the kiln unearthed by Chronicle Heritage features flat columns of red clay bricks two bricks wide and over a dozen feet long. Between each brick column is a strip of dirt known as a “channel.” Wood was placed in these channels and burned to cook the bricks.
Stinchcomb hypothesizes that the clay used to make the bricks was collected from the deep, dry creek directly adjacent to the site of the kiln.
“They’re handmade bricks, most likely made by whomever owned the property,” said Stinchcomb. “It appears they were sourcing the clay locally and building a temporary structure. Then they probably moved the bricks somewhere nearby that we don’t know about yet.”
Drew Buchner, Memphis Office Principal, posits that the kiln was built by freed slaves after the Civil War.
Buchner has made multiple trips to the Marshall County Courthouse in Holly Springs, Mississippi in an effort to find historical documentation of the brick kiln or the building the bricks were used to build, but, so far, to no avail. No neighboring structures exist today, and the wide, flat, open expanse of property is currently used for farming.