The brick

I've become a bit of a brick connoisseur. The fireplace and greenhouse project required some interesting bricks and these are from a reclaimed brick place in Boroughbridge. In fact Boroughbridge seems to specialise in nice brick -there are some really intricately-patterned buildings in the high street. My lot are allegedly from an old building in Thirsk and possibly 2-300 years old. Anyway, whatever their provenance, I think we can safely accept that they're hand-made since no two are the same. In fact it's a bit of a surprise when two successive ones turn out to be the same length and height.

The really engrossing bit is the Jackson Pollock-esque mosaic of colours in them. We have everything from chocolate fudge brown to purple, bleached and even standard red brick colour on occasion. The photo is a particularly nice one from today's brick scrubbing session.