The Surprising Fact About Many London Buildings

It's probably the most interesting video ever made about London stock bricks, told by an experienced builder with fantastic storytelling skills. Thank you!

Never would have thought I would watch a 20min video about bricks but that was bloody interesting mate actually

This is the sort of thing that should be on the tele instead of all that celebrity stuff. Really interesting, thanks Roger :)

My Great grandfather was a brick maker in Gillingham Kent. I have his note book dated 1896 recording his daily make. The typical gang was 1 maker, 1 labourer and a boy/young person (age11 to 18). My great grandfathers note book sets out the regulation for employing the boy/young person. It also records that from March to September his gang produced 937,766. The days output depended on the weather, their daily output was typically 30,000 to 50,000. For this they were paid 4 shillings per thousand. They would draw 3 shillings and 8 pence per thousand and hold back the remainder for the winter months when the brick fields were likely frozen and the weather extremely bad.

The BBC or someone needs to put people like you on TV. I might even go back and pay a TV Licence as a consequence. Absolutely brilliant video. Fascinating, informative, humorous (“poor builder, if there’s such a thing”!), articulate, and most of all, genuine. Thank you.

I am an architect in Greece and I absolutely loved your video. We don't have many bare brick buildings in my country and I'm always fascinated by the beautiful buildings I see when I visit London

That was surprisingly engaging. There was no waffle. The man obviously knows his subject, and he was straight in there!

I never thought I'd be enjoying a program about bricks. But here I'm am, fascinated!

Just got home from the pub, watched a 20 minute video about bricks in another city and was fascinated the whole time. Awesome stuff.

The man is a very good commentator the Way he sets it all out makes it so easy to understand and appreciate the inheritance that we have in buildings

We need historical documentaries presented by this man

I love this combination of first-hand trade experience, historical knowledge, and a genuine appreciation for craftsmanship. From one Londoner to another, keep up the great work!! 🙌

Been a Builder,( started as a Bricklayer,) for nearly 45 years, coming from the midlands nearly all our bricks are red. Always loved those yellow stocks when visiting London, something less harsh and in your face about them. Great video roger.

A few years ago this would have been a BBC Documentary with a big budget. Nowadays all it needs is a phone, a selfie stick and a talented narrator.. with a bit of post production on a home computer. Great video.

“another 100 years no one will notice”. 😊 I never knew a tutorial on bricks could be so fascinating. Thank you. 🇺🇸💙🇬🇧

This is the most informative programme on London's buildings I've ever seen.

When I was learning my trade as a bricklayer (back in the 60s) I recall hearing that, during the blitz, most houses in London would have lime mortar. This was a blessing because it would allow walls to bounce back after being hit by the shock wave from a nearby bomb. Some walls, they reconed had moved by upto a foot and simply bounced back like the skin of a drum. Whereas anything constructed from sand and cement, in the same circumstaces would simply shatter and bring the whole building down. The red rubbers you mention were part of that Dutch influence you mentioned. These were generally used for "guaged" brickwork. Where very fine and ornate brickwork would be included in the facade. Artificial columns could be moulded into the reveals around windows etc. This moulding would be performed by, literally, rubbing them down to the shapes required for the job at hand. It's for this reason that they were intentionally made much softer than your average brick. This made red rubbers a natural choice for flat arches where the taper of each brick could be carefully controlled. In fact, it was quite common to have flat arches supplied as "kits" where all the bricks were rubbed to shape off site, then delivered, with all the bricks neatly numbered, ready for a bricklayer to simply put them in place.

The vast majority of the London stocks were actually produced in the vast brickfields in the Medway towns region in Kent . The yellow stocks from the upper Gault clays were first produced by George Smead ( Smead and Dean ) of Sittingbourne. The coal dust and clinker ( burnt clay found naturally in coal ) would be collected from industrial and domestic fires and travel by barge along the Thames to the brickfields , combined with the local clays and calcareous deposits , stocked and clamp fired loaded onto barges and shipped back up river to London. At times of war, these barge loads of yellow stocks would find themselves being beached and off loaded around our coasts to build the fortifications that fended off Napoleon as in our famous Martello Towers , each one taking around 1 million bricks to build. The autoclave technique of brick firing caused a chemical reaction within the brick that not only made the brick lighter but also harder making it highly suitable to resistant impact from cannon fire. The calcareous material combined with fine wind blown glaciel clay deposits ( Loess ) from the upper Gualts gave the bricks that creamy yellow colour. The London bricks would later be named after the old brick works of Rainham, Sittingbourne, Funton , Otterham etc , of the North Kent coast .

As an Australian born of English parents, I'm always fascinated by stories around historical places in England. My parents came to OZ as children in the 1920's. From my English in laws, I learned a lot about London during the war as they had lived through it in their 20's. So much history is embedded in those bricks.

Brilliant. I grew up in a brick hose in a brick neighbourhood and this man is a living national treasure.