What is a Reclaimed Brick?
Reclaimed bricks are bricks that are rescued from old buildings and cleaned up.
Their edges are typically worn and irregular and they may have remnants of mortar due to their original use.
Good quality reclaimed bricks only require 2 workable sides, 1 bond and 1 stretch.
Many will have fine creases, characteristic folds and variations in colour that typify old brickwork. It is this combination, which many feel gives "Reclaims" a charm and character all of their own.
Most reclaimed bricks are typically more than 60 years old.
Hand Made Bricks
For centuries bricks were moulded by hand in wooden moulds, these were four sided and rectangular in shape with no base or lid. Moulds were placed either directly on the ground or on a roughly made brickmakers table.Firing methods were fairly primitive and a certain amount of distortion and shrinkage took place during firing, so generally, hand made bricks are less even in colour , texture and shape than their more modern counterparts.
Prior to the industrial revolution, when all materials were transported by cart, most hand made bricks would have been sourced locally when first purchased. As clay colours vary from region to region, so the colour of hand made bricks also varies, and accurate matching is essential. This is where The Brick Merchant has over 20 years worth of experience.
Hand made bricks vary in height from approximately 60mm(2½") to 89mm(3½") and in length from approximately 240mm (8") to 11"(330mm).
Hand made bricks are generally rarer than their machine made counterparts, and are consequently more expensive! But due to our countrywide contacts always has an excellent selection available. As an alternative, The Brick Merchant has sourced a number of reproduction hand made bricks which are generally less expensive than the originals and are also available in large quantities.
Machine Made Bricks
With the advent of the industrial revolution, the brick making industry was transformed. Demand for bricks exploded due to the expansion of cities such as London, Birmingham and Manchester.
With the introduction of steam power, brick making became mechanised where volume justified it. Steam driven extrusion plants became the norm which greatly increased production. Transportation of the finished goods became easier and less expensive with the dawn of the canal and later rail systems.
Generally, these machine made bricks were far more uniform in colour, size and texture than their hand made cousins. As time went by, brick manufacturing became increasingly more sophisticated, and decorative feature work became a familiar part of many Victorian and Edwardian buildings.
Machine made bricks can be divided into several different types. By far the most common being the Wire cut brick, which to this day remains a firm favourite with our customers. Less common but still widely used is the pressed common brick, similar to the Wire cut, but generally more consistent in colour and containing a shallow indentation known as a Frog on the laying faces. The Rolls Royce of the machine made brick family is the Facer. These bricks are highly consistent in colour, texture and depth and as their name implies were used on the front face of buildings.
As our stock changes on a daily basis, if you do not see a close match in our brick library, please still contact us as your ideal match may just have arrived and may not be shown on our website.
