By Jarred Marlowe
In 1922, Williamson & Hedgecock moved its brickmaking operations to the outskirts of Edgewood, several miles south of Bassett, Virginia, where Bassett Furniture was rapidly expanding. There, on a 45-acre tract rich in clay and conveniently located along the Norfolk & Western Railroad, the company built a modern facility capable of producing up to 50,000 bricks per day: an impressive output for its time. While its headquarters remained in Martinsville’s Shackleford Building, the new plant was designed for year-round production, shipping bricks across the region and helping shape communities throughout the South.
As the factory grew, so did the settlement around it. Firestone emerged, not just as a brickyard, but as a company town.
Firestone was never a town in the traditional sense. It existed solely to support the brick plant. Company-owned houses lined a single dirt road leading to the yard, while a modest wooden train station served as the community’s hub. The railroad brought in supplies and carried out thousands of bricks each day. For workers and their families, however, Firestone was more than an industrial outpost; it was home.
By 1929, the village had electricity, a notable advancement for a rural industrial community. Power lines extended from a system serving the Bassett and Fieldale area, allowing residents access to electric lighting and modern conveniences. Life in Firestone extended beyond work. Families gathered for local events, and the company sponsored a softball team that competed with neighboring towns, providing a sense of pride and connection.
Demand for Firestone brick remained strong through the 1920s. The materials were used in homes, factories, and churches, including Bassett Baptist Church (which stood where the old Harder’s Drug Store is today in Bassett), which began construction the same year the plant opened. More than a century later, a discovery reinforced the brickyard’s importance. In 2023, researcher Andy Doss uncovered original Norfolk & Western shipping records dated July 22, 1922, confirming that bricks for the church had been sourced from Firestone. The documents even bore the company’s branding: “W & H Inc. Firestone, VA – Facing Brick & Specialty,” demonstrating that Firestone was not just a local nickname, but an established identity.
Despite its success, Firestone’s fortunes declined in the decades that followed. Changes in the building industry, increased competition, and shifting business priorities gradually eroded its prominence. By the 1940s, the company operated as Hedgecock Brick Company after the departure of Williamson. Following the death of J. Anderson Hedgecock in 1941, the family shifted its focus to other ventures, and activity at Firestone diminished.
Eventually, the machinery was relocated, the kilns went cold, and the trains that once sustained the community passed by without stopping. Families began to leave, and the town quickly lost its purpose. In 1949, the company was sold to Roanoke-Webster Brick, marking the end of Firestone as an active industrial site.
By 1968, when The Henry County Journal documented the area, Firestone had become a ghost town. The train station stood in ruins, and the remaining houses had fallen into decay, overtaken by weeds and time.
Today, little remains of Firestone beyond traces in the landscape. Bricks, bottles, and other artifacts still surface from the soil, quiet reminders of a once-thriving community built from the red clay beneath it. Though the town itself has vanished, its legacy endures in the structures it helped create, and in the history of the region it once helped build.
Jarred Marlowe is a local resident and historian. He is a member of the Col. George Waller Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, the Blue & Gray Education Society, and the committee chair for the Martinsville-Henry County 250 Committee. He may be reached at marloweja15@gmail.com.
