Making Bricks

"Before standardisation, effectively- totally free, yes, you made a brick having consulted with the works concerned and looked at what they themselves wanted, they had probably got drawings of bricks that they used, and if you wanted to get business out of them you sort of said- well, we could do that and made them to the drawings that the works provide."

"These were all pressed bricks and we had hydraulic presses where you'd got a bse and then above it a platen as one would call it- it could apply hydraulic pressure downwards, more sophisticated presses had pressure applied from both sides...there was a lot of frictional resistance at the side of the mould and therefore the pressure applied to the top didn't always get to the bottom because of this frictional thing, some of the pressure was taken by the side of the mould."

Brick Production

"Our bricks were lining the kiln they were sort of made with tapers on them so that they- as you went round the circle they fitted the circle. At that time initially they were made completely specially for most individual cement works- the cement industry later on, standardised a great deal...The bricks supplied to a given works was a constant width, but not otherwise, it was only later after the standardisation that had come in that most bricks were made to standard sizes, but some kilns wanted a thicker lining, for example than other kilns, therefore in order to be able to give a thicker lining you have to have a brick thicker in that direction and tapered on the other sides."

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