This is a slightly longer post than usual, so I've listed the contents
at the top, and provided a figure number for each of the photographs as
some of them are referred to more than once in the text. As always, you
can click on any of the photographs to see a bigger image.
Contents:
Introduction
at the top, and provided a figure number for each of the photographs as
some of them are referred to more than once in the text. As always, you
can click on any of the photographs to see a bigger image.
Contents:
- Introduction
- A very brief history of London stock
- London stock in Rotherhithe
- After London stock
- Conclusion
Introduction
 |
| Figure 1. Rotherhithe watch-house, 1824, St Marychurch Street |
tended to be despised as commonplace or, at best, ignored and taken for
granted. Yet it was the principal building material of houses in the
metropolis from 1700-1840, giving them much of their distinctive
character." So starts Alan Cox's excellent article A Vital Component: Stock Bricks in Georgian London.
I am so glad that Alan Cox provided that handy little sound-bite
because I was really wondering how to introduce something that might
sound uninspiring, but is in fact such an important and engrossing part
of how London was built in the 18th and 19th Centuries. I had no idea,
when I started doing the research for this post, that the story of
London stock would be so compelling.
 |
| Figure 2. London stock, Mills and Knight, Rotherhithe |
First of all, what is London stock? London stock, also known as yellow
stock, is a type of brick. It is coloured pale brown to yellow made
from a clay unique to the Thames basin area (figure 2). Other bricks,
varying from reds to
purples, may also be stock bricks, but are not referred to as London
stock. To be termed London stock, the brick must be both manufactured
from London clay and turn a shade of yellow when fired. Different
qualities of the brick were used for different parts of a building.
London stock had many benefits to
the builder, and today it stares out at us from every sort of London
building, from the lofty heights of Bedford Square
in WC1 down to the humble Rotherhithe watch-house (figure 1) on St
Marychurch Street. We
have huge quantities of London stock in Rotherhithe, It was the most
popular London building material of the 18th and early 19th Centuries,
and continued to be used right up until the late 1800s, when it was
still the cheapest building brick available. Many of the 19th Century
granaries and wharves are good cases. Those that stand out as
particularly fine are Nelson House and the Old Police Station. There is
also a lot of it on the Thames foreshore near the Surrey Docks Farm,
where
it was bulldozed following the massive destruction of the bombings in
the Downtown area of Rotherhithe during the Second World War. I will
talk more about Rotherhithe examples of London stock below, but first a
look at the brick itself, and how it was used.
the builder, and today it stares out at us from every sort of London
building, from the lofty heights of Bedford Square
in WC1 down to the humble Rotherhithe watch-house (figure 1) on St
Marychurch Street. We
have huge quantities of London stock in Rotherhithe, It was the most
popular London building material of the 18th and early 19th Centuries,
and continued to be used right up until the late 1800s, when it was
still the cheapest building brick available. Many of the 19th Century
granaries and wharves are good cases. Those that stand out as
particularly fine are Nelson House and the Old Police Station. There is
also a lot of it on the Thames foreshore near the Surrey Docks Farm,
where
it was bulldozed following the massive destruction of the bombings in
the Downtown area of Rotherhithe during the Second World War. I will
talk more about Rotherhithe examples of London stock below, but first a
look at the brick itself, and how it was used.
A history of London stock
 |
| Figure 3. The distribution of London clay, used to make yellow London stock. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geological_map_of_London_Basin.jpg |
All 18th and early 19th Century London stock is hand-made, and most of
the buildings made of it in
London pre-date machine-made brick. It is made from a local clay called
London clay, which
is blue-black in its raw state, but weathers to a shade of brown and
turns different colours when fired (i.e.
when subjected to high heat to make it hard). The colouration is
dependent on the clay used for making the bricks. The clay itself is a
marine
sediment and dates to the lowest level of the Eocene epoch, around
56-47.5 million years ago. It is rather superb to think that the bricks
that make up some of Rotherhithe's most impressive buildings are made
of a mud that formed in a warm sea when this part of the world
luxuriated in a tropical and sub-tropical climate with abundant
forests, plants and rich animal life. The clay extends over a vast area
of the Thames valley and part of its estuary (figure 3).
 |
| Figure 4. William Gaitskell House, Paradise Street, Rotherhithe |
but tropical, Georgian London (1714-1830) was the place where London
stock made its first appearance, and continued in use almost to the end
of the Victorian period. New laws following the 1666 Great Fire of
London required houses to be built in stone or brick, and brick was
favoured by most due to the prohibitive expense of stone. During the
Georgian period, London clay was found to be particularly convenient and
economical for building London homes because it underlies all of
London, in some places down to a depth of 150m (most of the London
Underground trains were tunnelled through London clay). London stock
was particularly good for building because it hardens with both age and
in response to pollutants in the London atmosphere.
During
the Georgian period, when new housing was erected in the fields around a much smaller
London in places like Berkeley Square and Russell Square, the London
clay could actually be excavated from beneath those very fields, in the
form of "brickearth." So before building started, the clay was
excavated and the bricks were manufactured in situ. Then the
ground was levelled and the houses were built. As Cox puts it, "London's Georgian houses were largely built
from the clay on which they stood" (p.61). Some areas were not
suitable for extracting clay from the sites on which buildings were to
be erected, and in these cases the brick was brought in from other
locations. Many London building
contractors owned their own brickearth fields on the outskirts of town,
or further afield in Middlesex and other counties, and this could be
transported cheaply by river and more expensively by road.
Rotherhithe's London clay,
being covered in several metres of Thames alluvium, was probably seated
too far down for it to be cost-effective to dig down to it,
and during the Georgian period her bricks were probably brought by river
from elsewhere to be erected on the site. Later on, during the mid to
late 1800s, it is entirely possible that it was extracted, along with
other less useful sediments, during the excavation of the numerous
enclosed docks that defined 19th Century Rotherhithe.
 |
| Figure 5. A small sample of brick bonds used in English buildings. From Wikipedia, where a much larger selection can be found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brickwork |
A considerable amount of space and
labour were required for the extraction of the clay. John Middleton,
writing in 1798, states that one million bricks were produced per acre
for every foot in depth of brickearth with an average depth of four
feet. In her 1992 book on building materials, Linda Clarke says that
it took between six and eight brickmakers
and labourers to produce around a million bricks in a four monthly
period over the spring and summer, which would produce 33 "fourth rate"
houses. House ratings were standardized in the 1774 Building Act, and a
fourth rate was a relatively small house that occupied less than 350 sq
ft and were worth less than £150.00 in ground rent. During the
Georgian period mould sizes were frequently standardized,
making it easier for architects and builders to plan. Initially most
buildings were built using a brick laying pattern ("bond") called
English bond, but this was superseded by Flemish bond, with English bond
becoming briefly fashionable in some homes in the early 1800s. Bonds
were initially adopted to provide stability to walls, but cost and
fashion were also factors.
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