Cowcroft Brickworks
IndustrialCommercial
Cowcroft Brickworks is a historic (closed) landfill site recorded by the Environment Agency near Chesham, Buckinghamshire. It received industrial and commercial waste from 1972, covering about 4.84 hectares. Reference EAHLD12463, October 2025 data revision.
Full record
| EA reference | EAHLD12463 |
|---|---|
| Site name | Cowcroft Brickworks |
| Address | Ley Hill, Chesham, Buckinghamshire |
| Site operator | Hales Container Limited |
| Licence holder | Not recorded |
| Licence issued | Not recorded |
| Licence surrendered | Not recorded |
| First waste input | 1 May 1972 |
| Last waste input | Not recorded |
| Area | 4.84 ha |
| Gas control | Not recorded |
| Leachate containment | Not recorded |
| Licensed site | Not recorded |
| EA area | North East TH |
| Grid reference | 498400, 201100 |
Source: Environment Agency Historic Landfill Sites dataset, October 2025 revision.
Boundary map
What these waste types mean
- Industrial:
- factory and process waste. Contents vary widely — some benign, some not; the site's operator and era are the clues.
- Commercial:
- waste from shops and offices — paper, packaging, food. Similar profile to household waste, usually less of it.
Other historic landfill sites nearby
- Dunton's BrickworksWaste types not recorded
- Cowcroft BrickworksIndustrialCommercialInert
- Spencers HoleInert
- Meadhams Farm No.1IndustrialHouseholdCommercialInert
- Cowcroft BrickworksIndustrialHouseholdCommercialInert
- Cowcroft BrickworksIndustrialCommercialInert
What this data does — and doesn't — cover
- Licensed-era records only. Waste licensing began in 1974. Older tips — especially small pre-war ones — are incompletely recorded, so absence from this data does not mean no landfill ever existed here.
- Not the contaminated-land register. Councils hold a separate register of land determined as contaminated. A historic landfill entry is not a contamination determination, and vice versa.
- Boundaries are indicative. Digitised at 1:10,000 scale; some are buffers around a point rather than surveyed edges.
- Not a substitute for a formal environmental search. If you're buying, your conveyancer's environmental search checks this and several other sources.
EA Historic Landfill dataset, October 2025 revision. More on the methodology page.