Bricks, again

Bits and pieces by LoisFebruary 9, 2015October 8, 2015

I’m not sure why I’ve developed this interest in bricks… it cropped up while I was doing some research, and i came across brick makers in a census. The house I grew up in from the age of a couple of weeks (babies were kept in hospital fora fortnight when i was born) was made of bright reddy coloured bricks, no doubt produced in Cambridgeshire somewhere. we moved into a house with pale yellowy bricks, an older house. When we moved to the west country, more bricks, the cheery red ones again, and when I moved north and was in rented accommodation, almost without exception all the bedsits and flats I lived in were of brick, dark red, very hard bricks.

Bricks are blocks of clay or earth which has lots of clay in it which are bound with sand and lime or more likely concrete. They are allowed to dry then hardened in a kiln. As I’ve mentioned just through my own experience, bricks can be all sorts of different colours, and also different sizes and shapes according to their need… in the past they were other considerations which made bricks smaller. Bricks made in this way last literally thousands of years since they were first used over 5000 years ago. Bricks just made out of mud and straw and dried in the sun have an even longer history!