Walking along Tooley St and these blue brick tiles on a 19thC warehouse jumped out. [1] And immediately noticed they were stamped, and stamped backward, though not until after, when looked at in more detail was it spotted what there were. And no idea why they would have been stamped backward or why the contractor would have then used then! Maybe they were a cheap job lot!

‘JOSEPH’

‘HAMBLET’

‘WESTBROMWICH’

So these are ‘blue brick’ tiles made by Joseph Hamblet, a West Midlands/Black country brick maker who specialised in the hard ‘Staffordshire blue bricks’ that became much used across Britain in railway bridges, wall copping, tiles and floor bricks. [2]

Hamblet’s works were in West Bromwich, part of an area that sent so much to build London, bricks and iron, the Piercy Brick Works on the junction of the Birmingham Canal ‘New Main Line’, ” The 19th-century equivalent of a motorway” [3] [4]

Hamblet’s is, like the Staffordshire Blue Brick industry almost completely gone. The Piercy brick Works were these tiles in Bermondsey were made was shut in 1915. [5] All that remains is a blue brick wall, photgraphed by the Google Map phenomena that is Uy Hoang [6]

The tiles on Tooley Street should last a while yet as the building is locally listed [1]

Nb credit to Martyn Fretwell at the incredible https://uknamedbricks.blogspot.com for much of the detail and old images.

Visiting:
The building is on the corner of Tooley Street and Barnham Street, a few minutes walk from London Bridge Station.

References:
[1] https://geomap.southwark.gov.uk/connect/analyst/Includes/Listed%20Buildings/LocalList/871.pdf
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staffordshire_blue_brick
[3] https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/canals-and-rivers/new-main-line
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCN_Main_Line
[5] https://uknamedbricks.blogspot.com/2020/02/joseph-hamblet-brickmaker-west-bromwich.html
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zIII9HiNtM&ab_channel=Jochnowicz