In 1880 the Cowper-Essex estate leased the area south of the railway and north of Southfield Road to a Mr Doubleday, for use as a brickfield.

Almost the whole of the southern half of Acton lies on brickearth, a type of clay particularly suited to brickmaking. It contains a sticky substance called aluminaas well as minerals such as iron oxide, and can be found in depths of four to nine feet. Other key elements were also close at hand - sand, chalk, water, dust and ashes (from household waste), and coal, brought by the railway, which was also used for transporting the bricks.

In 1884 John Cooper joined Doubleday as proprietor of the Bedford Brickworks. They held a fourteen-year lease on 18 acres, paying rent and royalties to the Cowper-Essex estate, and advertised their wares weekly in the Acton Gazette during 1885-86, by which time Cooper was seems to have been the sole proprietor. They produced London stock bricks, but it is impossible to know where they were used. The bricks would have been stamped on the frogs, but to see this would mean demolishing the buildings. Brick making seems to have ceased around 1894 when the lease ran out, but it is possble that the clay was worked out. It is likely that the holes left by its excavation were filled with waste, as was customary in other Acton brickworks. Most brickmaking leases specified that when the land was finished with it should be left in a state ready for cultivation or building.

Building on the site was the logical next step, and the Cowper-Essex estate let a series of leases on the land for individual plots to the builder, Joseph Hall.

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