Across much of the country buildings have been made of brick, rather
than stone, from the Roman period onwards. High-status buildings of the
Tudor and Stuart eras were often built of clay brick, but it was only in
the nineteenth century that the use of brick in rapid industrial and
urban development saw a massive increase in brick production.
Mechanisation of the various processes, along with the development of
new kiln technologies, enabled this increase in output. Age-old clamp
kilns were replaced by kilns capable of turning out thousands of bricks
per week. Because bricks had a very low individual unit cost, and
because so many were needed for each new building, brickmaking was
always a localised industry: wherever suitable raw materials occurred
close to the intended market, brickworks would spring up. The thousands
of sites that existed at one time or another have mostly been swept away
and brickmaking now is concentrated in relatively few sites. This book
explores the history of the brickmaking industry and looks at production
sites from the past and the present.
