On 5 September 1883 the Auckland Brick & Tile Company was formed as a limited liability company.  One of the objects of the new company was:

?The purchase for One Thousand Pounds from Mr. Robert Charles Greenwood of Fifty Acres of land situated in the Parish of Waipareira and being part of Lot number Twenty . . . And all the machinery plant and utensils now owned by Mr. Robert Charles Greenwood as follows namely: One Button?s patent dry brick machine moulded spur wheel for driving cross-head duplicate one first motion pinion duplicate one second motion pinion duplicate one duplicate crank pin finished complete eighteen yards of four fly hose?.[1]

The land mentioned was on the Whau River at Te Atatu.  It was part of a Crown grant of 123 acres made to Samuel Elliot in 1854.  It was subsequently sold to Thomas Henderson and Thomas McFarlane in 1882.[2]

The land and had all the requirements for a pottery.  Clay was accessible, wares could be easily transported to the Auckland market, and by the 1880s the banks of the Whau were a well established area of pottery manufacturing.[3]  Recent completion of the Auckland-Kaipara railway meant that this area was connected to the Auckland market by rail as well as sea and road transport.[4]

While the Auckland Brick & Tile Company clearly had the intention of purchasing land at Te Atatu, this did not eventuate for some months.  It seems that events out at Hobsonville caused a change of plan for the company. 

On 15 August 1883 Hobsonville potter Thomas Cater was declared bankrupt.[5]  Cater had a well established pottery which was sold to pay his debts.

The pottery was purchased by the Auckland Brick & Tile Company for £1250 and included in this price were 40 acres of land, buildings thereon and ?machinery fittings and gear and tools . . . and all other the [sic] appliances?.[6]

Hobsonville, like Te Atatu, had good supplies of clay and access to markets over water.  Pottery had been produced at Hobsonville from the 1860s and the success of the neighbouring pottery, R.O. Clark, must have given the Auckland Brick & Tile Company cause for optimism.[7]

James Black, shareholder of the company and evidently a gentleman of some means, financed the purchase of the Hobsonville pottery.[8]

In December 1884 the company increased its assets, purchasing 50 acres of land at Te Atatu from Thomas Henderson and Thomas McFarlane.  This was part of a larger block which was subdivided and a portion sold to R. C. Greenwood, Secretary of the Auckland Brick & Tile Company.[9]  However, it seems that the company had been operating a pottery from this site prior to its purchase.[10]  The company also had a depot at the railway wharf and an office in Auckland.[11]

In 1885 the company exhibited its wares at the New Zealand Industrial Exhibition in Wellington.  On show were:

 ?bricks made by the patent double-press dry process, the clay being taken from the bank into press, then straight into kiln and burnt without any further drying.  The company also show a collection of drain-pipes both glazed and plain largely manufactured from sea-beach clay.?[12]

By 1885 serious financial troubles had set in for the company.  Not only were they unable to honour the terms of the mortgage advanced by James Black on the Hobsonville property, but they had also mortgaged the property at Te Atatu.[13] 

On 11 October 1886 an Extraordinary General Meeting of the Auckland Brick & Tile Company was held.  The shareholders resolved:

?that the company cannot by reason of its liabilities continue its business and that it is advisable to wind up the same and accordingly that the company be wound up voluntarily.?[14]

Following the demise of the Auckland Brick & Tile Company, the land, buildings and ?machinery plant engines sails tramways implements fixtures and effects now standing? were purchased by Pierce Lanigan, James Black and Daniel Fallon.[15] Lanigan, Black and Fallon were all former directors of the Auckland Brick & Tile Company who decided to continue the pottery trade under the name Auckland Brick & Pottery Company.  However, this enterprise was not a limited liability company as the Auckland Brick & Tile Company had been.[16]  It appears that the Auckland Brick & Pottery Company took over all the property of the Auckland Brick & Tile Company.  The company operated its brickworks at Te Atatu and pottery works at Hobsonville.  Like the Auckland Brick & Tile Company they had a depot at Breakwater Road and ran an office from the Victoria Arcade building in Queen Street.  The General Manager was Joseph Barber, former accountant and liquidator of the Auckland Brick & Tile Company.[17]

But the new business was no more successful than its predecessor.  By 1887 the New Zealand Herald lamented that the building trade was depressed.[18]  The market was flooded and prices for bricks were plummeting.[19]

In 1891 the financial situation had worsened.  The original mortgage of £1,200 raised by the Auckland Brick & Tile company in 1883 to purchase the pottery at Hobsonville remained unpaid.  John Black, who had purchased the mortgage from the recently bankrupted James Black, was now demanding the sale of the Hobsonville property.[20]  A public auction was held on 18 March 1891 and John Black purchased the property for £360 plus the unpaid mortgage.[21]  Later that year Black sold the property to the nearby pottery company R. O. Clark.[22]  This chain of events was repeated in Te Atatu.  Fallon was declared bankrupt in 1891.[23]  As Lanigan, Fallon and Black were unable to pay the mortgage on their property, ownership was transferred in 1893 to Walter Buller, to whom it had been mortgaged.[24] In 1895 the pottery was up for sale and in 1902 the machinery was removed with the kilns being demolished in 1906