Brickwork

Lore & Background

Brickwork is produced by a bricklayer using bricks and mortar. Rows of bricks called courses are laid on top of one another to build structures such as brick walls. Brick dimensions are expressed in construction documents as co-ordinating dimensions (actual physical dimensions with mortar) and working dimensions (the size of a manufactured brick).

Reader's Guide

Brickwork has been a fundamental building technique since ancient times, with examples found from the Bronze Age onward. Much older examples of brickwork made with dried bricks survive from the Stone Age at locations such as Jericho, Çatal Höyük, and Mehrgarh. The terminology of brickwork includes specific names for brick surfaces (beds, headers, stretchers) and mortar placements (beds and perpends). Bricks can be solid, frogged (with a depression called a frog), cellular, or perforated. Various orientations exist for laying bricks, including stretcher, header, soldier, sailor, rowlock, and shiner. A nearly universal rule in brickwork is that perpends should not be contiguous across courses, and walls can be of varying thickness, from half a brick to nearly two metres thick as seen in the Monadnock Building in Chicago.

Did You Know?

• A frog is a depression on a brick's bed that should not exceed 20% of the total volume of the brick.
• A queen closer is a lengthwise half brick used for creating a lap in brickwork.

The Journey from Earth to Brick

The transformation of raw earth into a finished building unit follows a carefully sequenced path within any brickworks. It begins at the quarry, where clay—the most common source material—is extracted directly from the bedrock on which the facility typically sits. The raw material is then transported to the main factory, either via conveyor belt, truck, or, in earlier eras, by narrow-gauge railway or aerial ropeway. Sometimes the clay is stockpiled outdoors before it enters the machinery. Inside the preparation plant, the clay is crushed and blended with water and additives such as breeze, a very fine form of anthracite that improves the firing process. This stage, known as pugmilling, refines the material's consistency, texture, colour, and overall firing behaviour. The prepared clay is then shaped either by extrusion into a continuous strip that is sliced with wires, or by pressing it into moulds. Once formed, the bricks undergo a critical drying phase—whether in open air, enclosed sheds, or dedicated drying kilns—before the final step: firing in a kiln, which locks in their hardness and gives them their characteristic appearance.

Anatomy of a Brickworks

A functioning brickworks is a constellation of interdependent structures and machines, each serving a distinct role in the production chain. At its heart sits the kiln—the furnace where shaped bricks are fired, or burnt, to achieve their final density and colour. Surrounding this are drying yards or enclosed sheds where freshly formed bricks lose moisture before they can safely enter the kiln. The manufacturing buildings house the forming equipment, while a pugmill or dedicated clay preparation plant handles the crushing and mixing stage. Most sites also include a clay quarry, often situated directly on the bedrock deposit that supplies the raw material. In earlier periods, the logistics of moving clay from quarry to factory relied on narrow-gauge railways or aerial ropeways rather than the conveyor belts and lorries common today. The entire layout reflects a linear workflow: extraction, preparation, forming, drying, and firing. Notable examples of such facilities include the London Brick Company, Bursledon Brickworks, and Evergreen Brickworks, each representing different eras and scales of brick production.

From Handcraft to Industrial Revolution

For centuries, brick production was a labour-intensive craft. Workers shaped each unit by hand, a practice that persists today in developing regions and among a small number of specialty suppliers. In earlier times, production took place at temporary brickfields set up wherever a usable clay layer could be found; once that layer was exhausted, the land was returned to agricultural use. The industrial transformation arrived in the mid-nineteenth century with the introduction of automated brickmaking machines. A landmark example was Bradley and Craven's Stiff-Plastic Brickmaking Machine, which fundamentally altered the pace and scale of brick manufacturing. This innovation freed the process from dependence on manual labour and enabled the continuous, high-volume output that modern construction demands. The shift from artisanal brickfields to permanent, mechanised factories marked a turning point in building-materials history, establishing the template for the large-scale operations that would follow in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Scale, Sustainability, and the Modern Kiln

The modern brick industry operates at a remarkable scale. As of 2016, one of the largest single-site brickworks in the world stood on the banks of the Swan River in Perth, Western Australia, with the capacity to produce one million bricks per day. Yet even at this magnitude, environmental efficiency remains a concern. Traditional brick kilns have long been energy-hungry, and the industry has responded by favouring zigzag kiln designs, which are recommended over older models because they consume less coal. In some regions, dedicated programmes—such as the initiative on energy efficiency in artisanal brick kilns in Latin America—work to mitigate the climate impact of smaller-scale production. The use of additives like breeze, a fine anthracite that aids the firing process, also reflects an ongoing effort to optimise fuel consumption. These measures illustrate how a centuries-old craft continues to adapt its methods in response to environmental and economic pressures.