LOCATION How many bricks did you walk past to get here today? Newham is home to extraordinary examples of nineteenthcentury brick architecture, from Joseph Bazelgette’s Abbey Mills Pumping Station to James George Buckle’s Stratford East Theatre Royal building. And brick is still a fundamental building material found across the borough: from the 70s design of the Stratford Centre by Ravenseft Properties Limited to Peter Barber Architects radical reworking of “back of pavement terraces” on McGrath Road. How from were Each
Abbey Mills Pumping Station by Joseph Bazalgette. Photo courtesy of Velella on wikimedia commons, 2005
EXPLORING THE V&A MUSEUM COLLECTION This piece of brick fragment is significant in that it showcases the diverse usages of brickwork – in this case for funerary graves and not simply created as decorative facades for buildings – and the unique artistic identities that exist within other cultures.
much clay did you walk over? London clay deposits are the Holocene period and are found in topsoil. The brick fields places where London Clay was ‘harvested’ and bricks ‘grown’. brick tells a story of the place from where the clay was dug. Front of Theatre Royal Stratford East by Richard Davenport. Photo courtesy of Sbrooks91 on wikimedia commons, 2019
Seven large brickfields are marked on the 1863-1867 ordnance survey of the parishes that now make up our borough and its immediate neighbours today. The brickfields were located at just off Carpenter’s Road in Stratford, at Chobham Farm which is now part of the Olympic Park, Cherry Island in Canning Town and Wanstead flats. Nearby were large brickfields at Uphall in Ilford, on Lime House Cut in Bromley-by-Bow and the Greenwich marshes site. These brickfields, along with smaller temporary brickfields set up where clay and space allowed, provided the bricks that built Newham. We can get an idea of what these brickfields might have looked like from an oil sketch by John Constable in the V&A’s collection (figure 1).
Seven large brickfields are marked on the 1863-1867 ordnance survey of the parishes that now make up our borough and its immediate neighbours today. The brickfields were located at just off Carpenter’s Road in Stratford, at Chobham Farm which is now part of the Olympic Park, Cherry Island in Canning Town and Wanstead flats. Nearby were large brickfields at Uphall in Ilford, on Lime House Cut in Bromley-by-Bow and the Greenwich marshes site. These brickfields, along with smaller temporary brickfields set up where clay and space allowed, provided the bricks that built Newham.
This decorated fragment was made in Granada, Spain, around 1300-1400. The origins of it indicate that it likely came from the city’s large cemetery, outside the walls of the Gibralfaro. These bricks would have been laid into the ground as markers to indicate the perimeter of a grave. The Arabic inscription that runs along the top edge, are repetitions of the word ‘al-’afiya’ meaning ‘well-being’. This is inscribed on both sides in cobalt blue, fitting for its funerary function.
Brick ca. 1300-1400 (made) Granada (City) (made) Size: 14.2 x 12.5 x 5.7 cm Gift of Mrs Cadell in 1938
Made during the Chinese Han dynasty, Clay Brick, constitutes three large slabs of clay set to form a doorway and was used as a tomb’s passageway – it was common then for burial sites to resemble structural elements of a home. The slabs are decorated with various motifs including trees, tombs, and horses.
TOP: Map of Wanstead Slip, Edition of 1894-96, Newham Brickfield Maps photographic reproduction for education purposes LEFT: Landscape with a kiln, oil painting, John Constable, 1821 – 1822, England. Museum no. 125-1888. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
We can get an idea of what these brickfields might have looked like from an oil sketch by John Constable in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection.
BUILDING Bricks are both passing of time and timelessness; they are pieces of a period, a lived culture, or a building phase that has passed but of a physical space or object that is constantly present, motionless and anchored. Some are dated and located to a time and place, the way museums, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, understand them. Yet they are a timeless design and tool.
Clay Brick Han Dynasty 206 BC - 220 AD (made) China (made) Top length: 130 cm Given by Dr W. L. Hildburgh FSA
Although from sixteenth-century Italy (and made of gold and silver), the bricks in the back are identical to those we walk by and encounter on a daily basis. The attention here to how they are mounted suggests a recognition for the building material’s practical yet playful qualities.
Bricks have held the same function, as building material, since ancient history. The first kiln-fired (burnt, baked) and sun-dried bricks, and used to build, are dated from around 4.000 BC in Mesopotamia. With little timber and stone around, cities such as Uruk (in modern Iraq) turned to alluvial soil to construct, initiating making with brick. Because in their rawest nature bricks are essentially baked clay, historians study their association with building by looking at their various formations and appellations across time. Their history coincides with the history of burnt clay, roof tiles and floor tiles. But why has the brick always worked for us? Since its recorded existence, it has continued and continues today to take part and shape our built environment. Is it because the simplicity and playfulness of its design make it just adaptable and malleable enough to appear anew? In looking at historical sites as well as contemporary productions, architects, designers, brickmakers, builders, communities participate in the brick’s constant renaissance. It is those who touch, mold and fire clay, those who stack and assemble bricks, and those who breathe, live and converse around brick surfaces, or walls, who make them - bricks - a long lasting, eternal design.
PEOPLE Have you thought about the craftspeople who made our bricks? Who were they? What roles did they play? The makers were originally known as “wall-tylers”, a title that later termed as “Bryke Makers” in the fifteenth-century. In most areas, a brickfield site would have a hired brickmaster who was responsible for the output of brickmaking operations. He in turn would contract moulders who hired their own “gang” of subsidiary labourers to temper, mould and hack the bricks. How were bricks made? British brickmaking was first established in the early fourteenth-century. During the medieval times, the clay would be kneaded by workers with their bare feet and later shaped into bricks by pushing the clay into a wooden frame lined with sand or straw to prevent sticking then left to be air-dried in fields. During the early fifteenth-century, the quality of English bricks improved, influenced by the large number of Flemish and Dutch craftsmen settlers in England. During this period, all brickmakers were itinerant and travelled to the construction site to make bricks from the local clays. Bricks were made on site and for centuries had been made by hand. This tradition, however, underwent a significant technological change at the turn of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenthcentury when production was over taken by mechanization. Compared to the old hand-craft system, a smaller workforce was required to produce a larger quantity and more consistent batch of bricks. Today, brick manufacture work is carried out in established permanent brickwork factories.
Men and youths were not the only hires for these jobs. It was not uncommon at some brickfields to hire family members including women and children as a means to keep profit margins high. Nowadays, bricks are made at one of the sixteen established commercial brick manufacturers in the UK with industrial tunnel kilns.
With the entire unit titled as a brick, it appears different in volume than the Newham bricks you will be making today or than those that have made up London’s industrial and home facades. The brick here holds to some extent a slightly different function – as opposed to containing and defining space, it introduces and provides a gateway into another space. The object expands our interpretation of the brick, or one some of us might be most familiar with – a hand size, rectangular volume, and exemplifies the potential of brick to take on forms and functions of all sorts.
Plaque ca. 1550-1600 Italy (made) Steel, damascened with silver and gold Size: 26.8 x 15.6 x 0.9 cm
This plaque is one of a pair and would have decorated a wooden cabinet in a wealthy Italian family household. It depicts a group of musicians passing by. The patterned clothes and surfaces are a result of the damascening technique – the maker hammered and encrusted silver and gold onto steel surfaces of prepared grooves. This allowed to create texture within the scene, imitating the feel of ground tiles, architectural facades, including brick walls, and clothing wear.
WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF BRICK? How do you imagine your future brick to be? What form will it take? What materials will it be made out ot? How will it be sustainable (e.g. energy efficient to create, biodegradable)?
The two tiles are by US and Beijing based design team Recycled China, formed by Thomas Schmidt and Jeffrey Stephen Miller. They are made of discarded ceramics, construction material, and aluminium found around China’s industrial factories. Wasted aluminium is melted and cast into set moulds that contain fragments of porcelain from Jingdezhen factories, bricks and dirt from Beijing construction sites, and glass. The process results in ceramic and mosaic-like tiles that can be used in construction or as architectural features. Although these tiles’ components were initially disposed of, they were repurposed, coming full circle, and ready for a second life.
ABOVE: Brickmakers stoking the furnace to fire the brick kiln at Barney Brickyard, near Fakenham, Norfolk (1953). Photo courtesy of Historic England TOP LEFT: Henry Clayton’s Combined Three-Process Brick Machine of the 19th century. Source: Henry Clayton and Company trade catalogue c. 1862
Thank you to Mark Gorman for generously sharing your research on Wanstead Flats and other local brickfields with us
Tile 2014 (made) Recycled China Beijing Size: 29.3 14.5 x 1 cm Given by Recycled China (Thomas Schmidt and Jeffrey Stephen Miller)
The design initiative, which is fairly recent, provides an example of ways wasted material, including that which is non-biodegradable, can be up-cycled into functional objects or materials anew.
All artworks images for educational purposes only. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London