Since the master brickmakers, the Romans, conquered Britain 2,000 years ago, many buildings across England have traditionally been constructed of brick.
In AD 410, following the end of Roman rule, the production of handmade bricks in England ceased. Then, in the Middle Ages, there was a resurgence of using this building material.
During the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts (1485 to 1714), only the wealthy and powerful constructed buildings with brick.
A substantial number of bricks were also imported as ballast on ships from the Low Countries, especially Holland, giving rise to early brick structures in the East of England.
The Industrial Revolution (mid-18th to 19th century) brought new technologies, mechanisation and demand in England, including the building of thousands of mills and factories and the growth of the railways. As a result, this vastly expanded brick production and its geographic spread. Bricks were now mass-produced by hundreds of brickworks across the country, with the many different colours, forms and textures reflecting local clay types.
In areas with less plentiful building stone, especially in the south, brick was used as a ‘poor man’s stone’, hidden under stucco or painted to represent stone.
The Georgians (1714 to 1837) used brick to create housing for the emerging middle classes, often in terraces characterised by symmetry and restraint based on Classic Roman and Greek architecture.
The Victorians (1837 to 1901) saw a population explosion in the industrial cities across England. The response was a vast building programme of brick terraced housing.
This was the heyday of brick and a ‘golden age’ of decoration, with many streets and religious and commercial buildings incorporating ornate brickwork.
Until the Second World War (1939 to 1945), most bricks used in buildings came from within 20 miles of where they were made. But brick shortages in a damaged and debt-ridden England after the war saw new materials, such as concrete, become king.
Tower blocks were built in their hundreds, along with whole estates, to house families from bomb-damaged and slum areas. Many smaller brick kilns were abandoned.
Today, brick has regained its foothold as a popular building material in England, with production processes almost entirely mechanised. There are up to 1,500 different types, with around 50% of all new buildings having facades clad in brick.
Here are 7 examples where brick has been used to striking effect in England, from the Tudor era to the present day.
1. Hampton Court Palace, Richmond upon Thames, London
In the early 16th century, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, began the transformation of Hampton Court Palace from a plain country house to a magnificent palace, mainly using brick. This was a high-status building material at the time and a province of the privileged.
Bricks were usually handmade on site by skilled itinerant craftsmen who dug local clay and formed bricks using wooden moulds. Firing was done outside in a brick clamp, one of the oldest methods of firing bricks.
Several hundred unbaked bricks were stacked to form a kiln, with fuel such as timber packed around and set alight, with the scorching heat firing the bricks.
Tudor bricks are typically characterised by being dark red, narrow in height, and often irregular, requiring thick lime-rich pointing. They are sometimes coloured black or purply-grey through burning or vitrifying, allowing for diamond or chequered patterns to be laid decoratively, as seen at Hampton Court Palace.
Many of the chimneys standing today at the palace are Victorian replicas and are undergoing conservation work to protect them for the future.
2. Decker Mill, Ancoats, Manchester
The Industrial Revolution ushered in factories and mechanisation to replace the hand production of goods by skilled workers, often in their homes. Murray Mills in Manchester was once the largest mill complex in the world. At its peak in the early 1820s, it employed around 1,300 workers, many living in overcrowded, squalid back-to-back brick housing in surrounding streets.
The brick-making industry became largely mechanised in order to manufacture the millions of bricks required to construct mills, factories, chimneys, warehouses, canals and railways across the land, as well as housing and public buildings.
Kiln technology improved during this time. Moulding machines were invented, along with pressing machines that produced bricks with smooth, hard surfaces. From the mid-19th century, the wire-cut extrusion process was used, where clay was forced into shape and cut with wire into individual and identical bricks. Bricks are primarily still made this way today.
3. Ouse Valley Railway Viaduct, West Sussex
The coming of the railways in Britain in 1825 and their rapid expansion saw bricks in enormous numbers used to build engineered railway infrastructure, such as hundreds of bridges and tunnels.
The railways facilitated the cheap transportation of bricks and other building materials around the country, which was far quicker than by canal or road, contributing to the burgeoning growth of Victorian towns and cities.
4. 15 George Street, Nottingham
In the latter half of the 19th century, there was a Gothic Revival in English architecture, inspired by the decorative and ornate style of Medieval buildings and the philosophy of truth to materials.
Colourful polychrome bricks, often brown, cream and red, were widely used to create exuberant patterning on domestic, religious and commercial buildings, as pictured above.
5. Grosvenor Estate, Pimlico, Westminster, London
This estate in London was built on the instructions of the 2nd Duke of Westminster, then one of the wealthiest people in the world, on land in Pimlico, where flooding from the River Thames had destroyed many working-class homes in 1928.
The Duke asked his consultant architect, the world-famous Edwin Lutyens (1869 to 1944), to design ‘housing for the working class’ as part of a Westminster Council Housing Scheme.
Lutyens’ design was imaginative compared to standard London County Council housing. The blocks were built in grey brick, alternating with white rendered squares, creating a bold, geometric chequerboard effect.
6. Guildford Cathedral, Surrey
This great brick landmark, towering above the town on Stag Hill, is England’s only newly-built Anglican cathedral of the last 100 years.
Construction started in 1936 but was delayed by the Second World War. Post-war, there were building restrictions and scarcity of materials. Funds were limited, so the cathedral started a ‘buy-a-brick’ fundraising campaign.
Between 1952 and 1961, more than 200,000 people bought a brick for 2 shillings and 6 pence (12.5p) and inscribed it with their name. The bricks were made from clay dug from Stag Hill.
7. New Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge
This inventive and striking brick building, which replaces the old study areas of the adjacent 17th-century Pepys Library, won the Stirling Prize in 2022. This is the most prestigious award for architecture in the UK. The college’s design brief to the practice was that the building should last at least 400 years.
The library reinterprets tradition with its pitched gables, oak-framed windows and massive load-bearing brick chimneys, paying respectful visual homage to its 600-year-old historical setting.
Written by Nicky Hughes
Further reading
- The Brickworks Museum
- Restoring Ornate Brickwork at Kensington Palace Orangery
- 6 Sensational Surviving Tudor Country Houses
- A Brief History of Reinforced Concrete Buildings
- Building Stones of England
Great Introductory article , thank you.
Since the master brickmakers, the Romans, conquered Britain 2,500 years ago??
The chimney stacks at Hampton Court are Victorian replica additions
, not Tudor at all
The chimneys at Hampton court are replica Victorian built structures. Many are currently being replaced now. None are the work of Tudor builders as stated
Thank you for your comment! This has now been updated.
Slight problem with grammar : “most bricks used in buildings came from within 20 miles of where they were made.” Most bricks were made within 20 miles of the building.
Decker Mill comprises the right-hand 10 bays of the building shown; the 11 bays to the left form Old Mill, which was built in 1798 (the site doesn’t really have three chimneys – it’s a composite photo). These are the oldest surviving cotton mills in Manchester, built for A and G Murray. Murrays’ mills continued to expand after 1806 – Little Mill was added around 1819 (where an electrically-powered replacement of 1908 now stands) and Doubling Mill and Fireproof Mill were added in 1842.
Is Guiildford the only newly built anglican cathedral in the last 100 years? What about Coventry Cathedral which was completed in 1962 or is that considered a rebuild of the Cathedral destroyed in WW2!
Magdalen College is in Oxford; Magdalene College is in Cambridge.
Thanks for spotting this. We have now amended the text.
Coggeshall Abbey in Essex was brick built from the later 1100’s. The chapel outside the walls that I recorded many years ago was the last building on the site and about 1220.
Major work was done to Hampton Court chimneys about 30 years ago when the bricks were made at Bulmer Brickworks in Essex.
Chappel viaduct in Earls Colne Essex 1847 was rated in 1925 by Nathanial Lloyd as an outstanding example of how charming a purely utilitarian structure may be if well designed. He said it possessed much of the quality of Roman viaducts in its picturesqueness.