60: Barnack stone, one of the earliest stones to be shipped to London
Barnack stone, as mentioned in the previous Building London post, on London’s Roman wall, has been used in England since Roman times. It is a limestone from in and around the village of Barnack, now in Cambridgeshire, but historically in Northamptonshire. [1] Barnack stone generally refers to a rock from around 170 million years ago…
59: The building blocks of London’s Roman wall
The oldest visible walls in London are the remnants of the 3.2Km 2ndC Roman landward wall, [1] [2] that surrounded the city of Londinium, now known simply as London Wall. There are other Roman walls visible, at Guildhall and the Mithraeum and Amphitheatre at Guildhall but none so large or tall as in London Wall.…
58: London’s hidden and not so hidden, wooden streets.
London’s wooden block roads and their manufacturers, have been fairly well covered, by Ian Mansfield, in Ian Visits, [1], Mary Mills [2][3] and Carlton Reid in the fantastic ‘Roads Were Not Built For Cars’ [4] with a brilliant ‘Sherlock Holmes’ skit on road surfaces, Don Clow for the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society [5] and…
57: The Marston Valley Brick Company and it’s cable tramway
Building London has covered the Bedfordshire Fletton brick industry before, concentrating on the London Brick Company [1] but for 40 years LBC was not the monopoly it became. The Marston Valley Brick Company, in mid-Beds, [2] which was formed in 1929 rivalled LBC for many years till LBC swallowed it up in the late 1960s,…
56: More of London Bridge, and much more, at Myddelton House, Enfield
Just north of London and north of Enfield stands the late Georgian Myddelton House, built between 1812 and 1818 from apparently Suffolk bricks [1] The yellow bricks of the 1870 extension are probably local. [2]It was named after the great Welshman Hugh Myddleton [3] who had had the extraordinary New River [4] built in the…
55: The sandstones of the 1840 Limehouse viaduct.
The Limehouse Viaduct on the London and Blackwall Railway, [1] which opened in July 1840, is said to be the 2nd oldest railway viaduct in world [2] [3], though while that is certainly not true as a number of others were built in the 2nd and 3rd decade of that century, though it may be…
54: The glass walls of Tottenham
While looking at unusual garden walls for posts 51 and 53, an even more remarkable wall was noticed at Mount Pleasant Road in Tottenham. Not only are there burnt and fused bricks, beautifully vitrified bricks, there are large blocks of beautifully coloured glass, not just vitrified fireclay, but actual glass! A wall made from glass!…
53: The London garden walls made of Stourbridge gas retorts
As noted in the previous post on Building London on the beautifully named burrs, wasters, clinkers and crozzles, https://buildinglondon.blog/2022/11/06/51-burrs-and-wasters-clinkers-and-crozzles/ it turns out that many walls initially thought to be built from burnt bricks are built from materials even more unexpected including, as this post will cover, what appears to be the discarded ‘gas retorts’, used…
52: A little bit of Southend in Wanstead
(dedicated of course to Wilko Johnson 1947-2022 who bought a whole lot of Southend joy to London and music in general. ) One of the annoying things about bricks used in London, or anywhere, is that the stamps which identify them, are not visible as they are almost always in the ‘frog’. [1] And yes…
51: Burrs and wasters, clinkers and crozzles!
One of the fascinating materials that was used in building London is/are the melted, vitrified, burnt London Stock bricks that were a by products of the old inefficient London brick clamps and kilns. They are known as burrs, clinkers, wasters, crozzles or just burnt bricks. The bricks stacked nearest the heat source in the clamps…
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Building London - what London is made from and where it came from! 