How Handmade Bricks Are Staged, Fired, and Graded

At Northcot Brick in Gloucestershire, England, bricks are still made by hand-throwing clay into wooden moulds, producing the textured, irregular surface that machine-pressed bricks cannot replicate. Each brick passes through staging, drying, firing, and grading taking approximately three weeks from raw clay to finished product.

The clay is dug from the company's quarry, a deposit of Lias clay laid down approximately two hundred million years ago during the Jurassic period. After weathering in stockpiles over winter, the clay is pugged, mixed with water to uniform consistency, in a mechanical mill.

Moulding by hand involves throwing a clot of prepared clay into a sand-coated wooden mould with enough force to fill every corner. The excess is struck off with a wire, and the green brick is tipped out onto a pallet. This throwing action creates the slight surface irregularity distinguishing handmade bricks from pressed counterparts.

Drying takes place in open-sided sheds where green bricks are stacked with air gaps between them. Over one to two weeks, moisture content drops from roughly twenty-five percent to below five percent. Too-rapid drying causes cracking; too-slow drying risks mould growth.

Firing takes place in Hoffman kilns or modern tunnel kilns at temperatures between one thousand and eleven hundred degrees Celsius. Bricks closer to the heat fire harder and darker. Grading sorts fired bricks by colour, hardness, and surface quality into categories: facing bricks for visible walls, engineering bricks for structural use, and seconds.

When specifying bricks for a project, visit the brickworks and handle the products. Specify handmade bricks for any visible exterior surface where character and warmth matter. The modest cost premium over machine-made alternatives is repaid in the quality of the finished wall. Visit https://www.northcotbrick.co.uk