Brick Tales The Story of Brick Table of contents Think Brick Australia represents Australia’s clay brick and paver manufacturers. We aim to inspire contemporary brick architecture and building design in all areas of the Introduction 2 built environment: commercial, residential and landscape. Reaching back into pre-history 3 Think Brick Australia undertakes extensive research, provides technical resources and training to ensure clay brick is recognised as a pre-eminent building material by Brick spreads throughout the colonies 4 leading architects, developers, builders and property owners. Changing technologies 6 www.thinkbrick.com.au Architects of influence 7 Brick Tales / 1 Introduction Reaching back into pre-history From the Tower of Babel to the European settlement of Australia, brick has a It was probably as long ago as 8000 BC fascinating history going back thousands of years. in Mesopotamia (part of modern Iraq) when mankind first discovered clay On 4 June 1789, just sixteen months after the could be shaped and sun dried to first landing at Sydney Cove, the ladies and Among the First Fleet’s produce a building material. gentlemen of the settlement gathered to cargo were 5000 bricks celebrate the birthday of King George III and and brick moulds the grand opening of Government House, Bricks from Assyria, in the Australia’s first brick building. heart of Mesopotamia, Located on what is now the south-west corner of Phillip and Bridge Streets, the two weighed over 18 kilograms storey Georgian-style residence was designed and built for Governor Phillip by a convict brickmaker, James Bloodsworth. A piece of Roman brick from the Theatre at Fiesole, near Florence, Italy. Although this fragment is about Among the First Fleet’s cargo were The Tower of Babel was constructed in 2000 years old it is similar in composition and 5000 bricks and brick moulds, sun-dried bricks - they were also made in texture to Australian bricks of the 18th century. wooden boxes used to hand-mould many parts of the Middle East, India, wet clay into bricks ready for firing. A North Africa, and North and Central common Roman bricks were broad and good supply of clay was soon located America. However it wasn’t until bricks flat, like modern floor tiles. on what became known as Brickfield were fired in a kiln that they became Hill and convicts were put to work truly durable. Excavations have Brickmaking was introduced into making bricks. uncovered perfectly preserved fired Britain following the Roman invasion bricks from as far back as 5000 BC. in 54 BC but the skill was lost after the Convicts hauling a wagon laden with bricks. Image from The work was hard - the colony’s And So We Graft from Six to Six: The Brickmakers of New South last Roman legion withdrew in 410 AD. Wales by Warwick Gemmell, courtesy the author. most intractable convicts were sent Some are barely recognisable as bricks to However Roman bricks were recycled to the brickfields as punishment. modern eyes. Bricks from Assyria, in the over the centuries, a prominent example But the hardest work was carting heart of Mesopotamia, weighed over 18 being Colchester Castle completed the bricks. There were no horses so kilograms! Triangular bricks were used to in 1080 from bricks then almost a a team of 12 men drew a cart laden build the Roman Colosseum. The more millennium old. Today the castle houses with 750 kilograms of bricks, making a historical museum. nine trips a day to the settlement a kilometre away. This was considered The industry was revived by Flemish the most extreme punishment, often brickmakers brought to England in the resulting in death by exhaustion thirteenth century and it was these skills or accidental crushing under an that came to Australia with the First Government House, Australia’s first brick building was upturned cart. designed and built by James Bloodsworth, a convict Fleet. brickmaker who was responsible for many of Sydney’s early public buildings. Drawing by Morton Herman. Despite problems with dampness and rotting timbers, Government House was used for 57 years before the old building was demolished and its foundations disappeared beneath the pavement. Some of the original bricks are now held in Sydney’s Mitchell Library. However the story of brick goes back not hundreds Brickmakers (including children) in Hull, England in but thousands of years. the 1850s. Brick Tales / 2 Brick Tales / 3 Brick spreads throughout the colonies By the time of the First Fleet, brickmaking technology hadn’t changed greatly and bricks were well established as an essential building material. Their use was limited at first in Sydney because of a shortage of lime, a key ingredient in early mortar. The lime used in the mortar in the first Government House was made from oyster shells collected by women convicts. Hair, mostly from animals, was also used to Australia's oldest existing building is Elizabeth Farm, Parramatta, New South Wales. Photograph courtesy bind mortar. In 1832 400 Norfolk Island National Trust (New South Wales). convicts were shorn and their hair mixed with mortar. skills. The bricks were imported from Van The oldest existing building Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). Melbourne’s The convict brick mark of a broad arrow in Australia is Elizabeth oldest existing brick building is believed was introduced in 1819. Some early to be Tavistock House in Flinders Lane, Australian bricks have a thumbprint, Farm at Parramatta dating from the 1840s. thought to be a tally mark, while others carry paw prints from dogs, cats and Van Diemen’s Land was settled in 1803 possums scavenging for food among the The oldest existing building in Australia and brick buildings were common by the bricks set out to dry. The broad arrow is Elizabeth Farm at Parramatta, home 1820s, thanks largely to a plentiful lime was replaced by a dazzling variety of of John and Elizabeth Macarthur. supply for mortar. marks pressed into the brick frog (the Completed in 1794, this long, low shallow depression in the top surface of brick building with a steeply-pitched, Queensland’s first settlement, the a brick) including animal designs, stars, shingled roof is the archetypal Australian Moreton Bay District, was established heel prints and even a military medal. farmhouse. in 1824 with the first bricks being made two years later from clay obtained in The administrators of Victoria’s first what is now Tank Street, Brisbane. The settlement at Sorrento in 1802 reported brick towers of The Windmill, later The Traditional brickmaking in Australia (from top):. finding “several kinds of clay for Observatory, were completed in 1827. A brick yard in Chapel Street, Melbourne, 1860. pottery, brick, etc”. Victoria’s first bricks were made in early 1827 at Corinella The Swan River colony in Western Hand moulding bricks by "throwing" wet clay (date on Western Port, eight years before Australia was settled in 1829 and unknown). Melbourne’s founding. brickmaking commenced the following Dehacking (unloading fired bricks from kiln) onto year with good clay and sufficient wooden barrows (date unknown). Melbourne’s first brick structure is said lime for mortar. to be a chimney built in late 1835 for John Batman by William Buckley, the newly- Until the mid-1800s brickmaking rehabilitated ‘wild white man’, who may technology had not altered for Typical convict brick arrows. Photograph from And So We Graft from Six to Six: The Brickmakers of New South have abandoned white society many many centuries. All that was Wales by Warwick Gemmell, courtesy the author. years before but not his bricklaying about to change. Brick Tales / 4 Brick Tales / 5 Changing technologies Architects of influence For untold centuries human labour Architects to brickwork and railed against stylistic was largely responsible for all aspects such as Francis pretence. Most of his work was in New of brickmaking, from extracting clay to Greenway South Wales and included churches, shaping bricks and setting and (New South cathedrals, schools and private houses. drawing the kiln. It was common in Wales), James remote areas for clay to be extracted and Blackburn (Van Hunt is remembered as quick tempered, bricks shaped and fired on the site by Diemen’s Land) argumentative, conceited and eccentric, itinerant brickmakers. and Joseph Reed but most of all gifted. He was a walking (Victoria) were architect’s office, his suits having a The technology of brickmaking began to influential in the labyrinth of pockets holding drawing change dramatically in the second half of development instruments and paper! John Horbury Hunt, a gifted the nineteenth century with the advent The distinctive appearance of a Hoffman kiln at 19th Century architect and of the young of steam power. A handmoulder Standard Brickworks in Box Hill, Melbourne, about champion of brickwork. colonies. Reed, His memory was commemorated in the turning out 1000 to 1300 bricks a day 1934. for example, John Horbury Hunt Award for Excellence was no match for a machine producing introduced from Lombardy, Italy in Brickwork, an annual competition 15,000 bricks a day. Steam power the polychromatic (multi-coloured) conducted by the NSW chapter of the took away some of the hard work brickwork that even today is distinctly Royal Australian Institute of Architects of brickmaking and allowed further Melbourne. and in a book, John Horbury Hunt: efficiencies. Radical Architect 1838—1904, published One of the leading architects of the in 2002 by the Historic Houses Trust of For centuries clamp kilns - temporary, nineteenth century was John Horbury New South Wales. wood-fired kilns - had been widely Hunt. Born in Canada and raised in used. Bricks to be fired were encased Boston, he arrived to Australia in 1863, Today, of course, “bricks and mortar” has in a housing of green (unfired) bricks escaping the American Civil War.