YORK HANDMADE PLAYS PIVOTAL ROLE IN STUNNING NEW CHURCH RESTORATION
The award-winning York
Handmade Brick Company has played a crucial role in the restoration of one of
Scotland’s most iconic churches.
York Handmade, based at
Alne, near Easingwold, has provided 12,000 specially-made bricks for St Bride’s
Church in East Kilbride, near Glasgow.
St Brides was designed
by the celebrated architect, Professor Andy MacMillan, whose Scottish practice
Gillespie Kidd & Coia worked extensively on ecclesiastical buildings from
the 1950s through to the 1990s.
The church is heralded
as one of the finest examples of the post-war British modern Brutalist style
and has won a series of major architectural awards.
Paul Stallan of
Stallan-Brand, the architects in charge of the restoration, explained: “The
church is built entirely of brickwork. Its structure, construction, landscape
and interior are the same. Finding a brick specification and type that matched
the integrity of the existing material was no easy task.
“Thankfully the York
Handmade Brick Company assisted us in this respect, helping us source a brick
that was an exact match in every regard, a brick that was resilient in a
Victorian industrial sense and had a colouration and density that ensured
repairs to the building were seamless.
“Stallan-Brand are
delighted with the commodity and firmness of the new brick sourced and supplied
for the essential restoration of St Bride’s Church, ensuring that the
architecture remains true and accessible to the local and academic community
that love it so much,” added Mr Stallan.
David Armitage,
chairman of York Handmade Brick, commented: “This was a very significant
commission for us and we were very honoured to undertake it. To help to restore
one of Scotland’s most iconic churches, and to be praised for our work, is very
humbling.
“We took great care in
creating exactly the right type of brick in terms of texture, density and
colour to suit the Grade A-listed St Bride’s Church and Presbytery and we are
delighted our new bricks fit in seamlessly with the old.
“East Kilbride was
Scotland’s first new town, one of many towns built nationwide to accommodate
housing shortages after the Second World War. St. Bride’s, accompanied the
expansion, with a Roman Catholic place of worship that aimed to reflect the
changing tides of modernism.
The York Handmade Brick
Company has undertaken a number of projects in Scotland, the most notable being
Dumfries House, a pioneering Scottish restoration project masterminded by the
Prince of Wales.
York Handmade created
47,000 Dumfries Blend bricks for the Walled Garden and the Belvedere Folly at
Dumfries House.
The quality of the
bricks themselves was praised by Prince Charles at the prestigious opening
ceremony, which was also attended by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
The project was won the
Best Outdoor Space category in the Brick Awards, the Oscars of the brick
industry, for its “magnificent achievement” in restoring the Belvedere and Queen
Elizabeth Walled Garden at Dumfries House to their former glory.