Another brick in the wall

One brick might be a humble entity, but put many in the right hands and you have a work of art. Jack Watkins examines the history of this seemingly simple building material

- Jack Watkins

THERE are probably more buildings in England constructed of brick than any other material,' wrote Nathaniel Lloyd in his A History of English Brickwork in 1925. 'Amongst these are some of the most interesting, the most picturesque, and the most serviceable structures that we have in any material.' For many years, Lloyd's book, with its lucid text and striking black-and-white photographs, was the standard work on the subject and he emphasised the continuing value of bricks, both for durability and adaptability. "There is almost no limit to the variety of form, textures, and colours in which brick can be produced, nor to the multitude of ways in which it can be used,' he argued.

As one of the more environmentally friendly building materials, bricks still have a place in 21st-century construction, and designs utilising them feature in the annual awards of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). They draw on an inspirational national heritage. It's fair to say, however, that their story is relatively untold. Lloyd's pioneering tome stopped with the Georgians and, although R. W. Brunskill provided a fuller picture and brought bricks into the 21st century with his authoritative Brick and Clay Building in Britain, Carolyne Haynes's recent Brick: A Social History takes a wider angle and makes an arcane topic more digestible to the general reader.

An architect by profession, Dr Haynes is project manager of the Brickworks Museum at Swanwick, near Southampton, Hampshire, formerly the Bursledon Brickworks. It was comments from museum visitors that persuaded her to expand the book's scope and to include more stories about workers. The general consensus was that the social history was the interesting bit,' explains Dr. Haynes.