Back to the stone age Museum cements Scottish bricks’ place in history
Forthcoming Doors Open Day will allow the general public to cast their eyes over the (surprisingly) fascinating Scottish Brick Collection
THE day was said to be “as bright and beautiful a Sabbath morning as ever dawned”, and the Clyde-built SV Eskbank, her sails billowing in the breeze, made a fine sight as she headed for the port of Honolulu.
It was early November 1878, and the iron-hulled barque had been launched just a few months earlier.
Now on her second voyage loaded with a $200,000 cargo of dry goods, liquor and machinery destined for Hawaii’s sugar plantations, she was about come to a rather premature halt.
The treacherous reefs just a couple of miles from the port on the island of Oahu were well known by mariners for their tendency to claim vessels which carelessly strayed into their path.
Yet under the calm blue skies and with no apparent reason why, the SV Eskbank’s master continued on an ill-fated course on to the reef.
Having run aground with 11 feet of water sloshing in her hold and after a few days of being battered by the swell, the barque was torn in two. Her precious cargo – from cases of ale and liquor to steam boilers and sugar mill machinery – spilled from her hull.
Most of the cargo, to the sugar plantation owners’ relief, was saved. The crops of cane were almost ready to be milled and the Eskbank’s cargo was intended to play a crucial role in ensuring it would not go to waste.
Left on the seabed for almost 140 years until they were recovered by shipwreck divers, however, were two other small remnants of the barque’s cargo.
The battered bricks retrieved from the wreck site now take pride of place on the mantelpiece of Mark Cranston’s Jedburgh home, one stamped “Gartcosh” and the other “Glenboig”.
Nearby is another brick – stamped “Forth”. It was retrieved from the ill-fated Whisky Galore ship, the SS Politician.
Outside in two former stable blocks, are more than 4,000 bricks. Nearly all were made in Scotland: building blocks used for homes, public buildings, infrastructure and, said Mr Cranston, who has spent the last 12 years collecting and documenting them, countless firebricks, the overlooked heroes of the Industrial Revolution.
Building up hype
NEXT weekend the public will be able to cast their eyes for the first time over the remarkable array of, it turns out, not so humble bricks when the Scottish Brick Collection joins hundreds of sites across the country taking part in the annual Doors Open Day events.
Running during weekends throughout September, it will see properties including courthouses, windfarms, Masonic halls and crematoriums open for public viewing. Although a brick museum may sound like a pile of rubble, Mr Cranston, a former police sergeant who was inspired to begin his collection after becoming intrigued by the name stamp he spotted on a brick, insists every one held by the Scottish Brick Collection offers an insight into a lost slice of national industrial heritage.
“Every brick tells a story of where it was made,” he said. “Some stories are bigger than others, but they all help tell the story of Scottish industry.”
Brick manufacture was brought to Scotland during the Roman occupation in the first century AD, but it wasn’t until the 17th century and the use of new materials that brickmaking grew. By the 18th century, the use of bricks had expanded considerably as large estates established small brickworks to supply bricks for ice houses, garden walls and accommodation for estate workers.
Global impact
HOWEVER, the Industrial Revolution saw the development of heat-resistant bricks – paving the way for a massive export trade that saw Scottish-made bricks travel to the four corners of the world.
“Red clay bricks or sandstone bricks would split up and would need to be repaired,” said Mr Cranston. “But fire clay bricks were heat-persistent or didn’t easily break down when subjected to high temperatures. The British drove the Industrial Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution would not have progressed without the humble fire brick.
“It was used in every application under the sun – any process which required heat, fire bricks provided protection.
“As a result, they were exported in huge quantities all over the world.”
Brickworks sprung up alongside mining communities across the country, he added, often with laboratories
Every Scottish brick tells a story of where it was made
attached which would tweak the alumina and silica content within the fire clay to create designer bricks for a wide range of uses.
As production grew to meet demand from foundries such as Carron Ironworks in Falkirk, brickworks began to stamp their bricks with their name and other codes to help identify them – an early form of branding. As a result, there are thousands of different stamps on bricks, each one pointing to a particular use, period and location.
One of the largest brickworks in the world was at Whitecross near Linlithgow, which at one stage supplied bricks to 150 countries around the world, and was part of a small brick empire headed by John Stein.
“It’s amazing where Scottish bricks turn up,” said Mr Cranston. “They are in lime kilns in Argentina, smelters in Tazmania, they’re in gold mines in Australia and they’re found all over Russia. There’s a huge story waiting to be told.”
Details of properties opening as part of Doors Open Day can be found at www.doorsopenday.co.uk