Judging by the style and shape of those bricks are they late 19th century, around 1880?
Victorian soft red
Not my work
just a bit of brick porn to show i'm not a total caveman
though I am a total caveman ,truth be told
Yes Dave bricks are very interesting in themselves, but I have looked at so many houses and other buildings from various periods of history. How they were used, and by whom (i.e. A builder constructing houses for the rich certainly performed differently, and used cheaper materials than when pushing up rows of working class terraces) tells a story in itself. But it is amazing how so many of the Victorian and Ewardian terraces still survive. The advent of mechanised brick making in line with the Industrial Revolution meant a steady improvement in quality from the late 1800's, with quite good bricks emerging after 1900. But again that was dependant on costs and what the bricks were for.
As I touched on before, the Victorian engineering bricks are something to admire, and the quality of those can be witnessed in the still, strong and beautiful railway structures such as bridges, viaducts, and tunnels. They were built to last. Of
When I was a child we lived close to the Highbooms Brick factory in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and my Great Auntie often took me for walks past the plant. My recollection is that the bricks were all being produced on a production line, but very much by hand. I cannot remember seeing any evidence of mechanisation apart from the tractor that took the completed stacks of bricks across the road to railway wagons sitting in a siding opposite.
Our house in Highbrooms was very much of the Victorian era, with the typical (rough) brickwork of that time. I always assumed the bricks used were from the local brickworks, and indeed even the pavements of every street was constructed using these bricks.
Bricks I consider to always be far more pleasing and friendly compared to any concrete structure. When I visited Liverpool last year that was so strikingly the case when I compared the modern concrete constructed City Museum with the total brick built old warehouses around the Albert Dock area. They were so impressive, and of course it is great that they are being used fully for modern needs. Whilst on the Mersey Ferry we were told that an old tobacco bonded warehouse we could see from the ship was being converted into a hotel. It was an amazingly large structure and apparently it was built from the largest number of bricks ever used in Britain.
But in summary it is so good to see so many Victorian and Edwardian brick built buildings being used for future needs, and must prove the worth of using that material versus the rather disgraced, blown, concrete structures of the 1960's and 70's that in so many cases have been torn down. With bricks you do not need cladding to beautify them as some idiots have decided to do with towers like Grenfell, with such disastrous results. Long live bricks I say