When a consignment of historic bricks arrives at the Museum, it is rarely accompanied by any information about where the bricks were found or even how many bricks are present. Collections Manager, Mary Flinn, records the arrival of the collection and enters it into her Accession Register. This book is of such importance that it is stored in a fire proof safe. Mary does not record how many bricks are present as this number could vary once the collection is sorted. For this reason it is only possible to estimate the number of historically interesting bricks we have in the Museum and it is thought to be over 4,000. About 2,500 have been entered onto the database, which leaves at least another 1,500 to do. Allowing 15 minutes per brick means that at least 400 hours of volunteer time has to be found to complete the task.

The latest collection of bricks to arrive on site was around 800 in number, donated by the late Patricia Ryan (pictured). Pat was born in 1930 and died last year aged 90. She lived most of her life near Colchester in Essex and was a school teacher. She was particularly interested in archaeology and this led her to study early bricks and tiles. Her studies, in turn, would eventually see her awarded an MA in Local and Regional History from the University of Essex. This background means that many of her brick samples are labelled which will be immensely useful when work begins on cataloguing her collection.

Pictured below is the latest consignment from the Pat Ryan collection arriving on site, overseen by Brian Holford, with his trusty fork-lift, and Collections Manager, Mary Flinn, taking a preliminary look at the new arrivals.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about the bricks and tiles displayed and stored at our Museum. With all the other great attractions we have, the brick making exhibits, indoors and out, the machines and steam engines, the drying sheds and kilns, the period rooms and social history displays, to name but a few, it’s easy to forget how it all began 125 years ago, as a factory manufacturing bricks.

Jim Beckett – archives volunteer for The Brickworks Museum

This article originally appeared in Brickbats – our informative brick-based bi-annual publication which is exclusive to members of the Museum. Joining the scheme not only means you receive Brickbats, you also get entrance to the museum including events (but excluding the Beer Festival – sorry) AND you get to support this historic building which is 125 years young this year.

More details can be found here.