bricks & mortar: the beauty of brick
This article appeared in the Property section of the Daily Telegraph on 1st December 2007.
Handmade bricks bring style and substance to a house - not to mention extra value.
Anna Tyzack learns how to tell her flumps from her tumbles. It was the cleverest little
pig who built his house of bricks. When Mr Wolf huffed and puffed, the straw and stick
houses blew down, exposing their porcine occupants to the wolf's insatiable hunger.
Meanwhile, the third brother lived to tell the tale, staying safe as houses in his brick
cottage - with a cauldron of boiling water awaiting the wolf's arrival down the chimney.
These days it would take more than a gust of wind to topple a straw bale or timber-frame house - but there is still a lot to be
said for the bona fide British brick. By this, I'm not talking about the machine-made varieties used in cheap office developments,
but the hand-thrown sort created in the country's few remaining traditional brickworks.
Admittedly, handmade bricks are rather more expensive - 60p a brick, compared to 25p for a standard one - and you would
need about 20,000 of them for a five-bedroom house (£12,000). On average, standard bricks count for 2 per cent of the cost
of building while handmade bricks equate to 4 per cent.