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Brick-work is so common that we don't give it a second thought. What could be less interesting than a brick!
But brickwork evolved to meet the needs of society, and has continually responded to changing needs, technology and fashions, over the centuries. The Romans had bricks, but they were very different. Brickwork as we know it was imported from the low countries in the middle ages.
Have you ever thought why a brick is the size it is? It has to be of a size that a brickie can pick up in one hand, and keep doing so for several hours. Were you aware that until a few decades ago, bricks in different parts of the country were of different sizes and proportions? That harks back to the days when there was a brick tax, which made it economical to use very large bricks. Also until modern times, buildings in different parts of the country mostly used bricks made from local materials, until cheap transport favoured mass production in areas where they could be made more cheaply.
The history told by brickwork is all around us, written in the buildings you can see any day, if you can understand the language in which it is written. Walk around almost any town and look at the brickwork you pass. Often it can tell you something about the building and the area where it stands, about the purpose for which it was built and how that has changed over the years, and even the status of the building's original owner. In town centres especially, look up above the shop fronts where you can see the original fabric of the buildings, before they were mauled by the makers of gaudy shop fronts.
Sadly, as with so much else, modern buildings are becoming homgenised, with the same bricks and the same styles being used in towns all over the country, but even so, after several decades of uninspired building, brickwork is once again being used imaginatively to enrich our townscapes.
I give a talk on brickwork , but there are many other sources of information. For example, you might start with:
These pictures just give a taste of the enormous diversity that can be seen.
Click to enlarge, or see all pictures at once .
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