Cameo corner: Making Tudor-style glazed bricks

For this programme Time Team worked with potter Beryl Hines and master brick maker Peter Minter in an attempt to reconstruct glazed bricks as used during the Tudor period. Peter Minter answered some questions for the Time Team website.

What was your experience in brick making before doing Time Team?
I've grown up with it all my life. Our firm [Bulmer Brick and Tile] has been making bricks on the same site for hundreds of years. I inherited the company from my father in 1974, so I've been doing it a long time. We specialise in making unusual bricks in a traditional way. We have a brickyard, not a factory, and we're brick makers, not manufacturers. We make over 100 sizes of brick to suit both restoration projects and new builds, and we take orders from single bricks to thousands. [If you need a Tudor-style or other special brick making, call Peter on 01787 269 232.]

What was the aim of the cameo?
We wanted to reconstruct some Tudor decorative glazed bricks such as those found on the site. It was a joint project between me, as the brick maker, and Beryl Hines, the kiln specialist. We worked very well together.

What materials did you use?
The problem with making real bricks is that they take a very long time to complete. It's not unusual for a Tudor-style brick to take three weeks to dry and then two weeks to fire. With Time Team being just three days long we needed to use some that I'd made already at our yard – true 'Blue Peter' style, you could say. It just so happened that I'd been making Tudor bricks for a restoration of a building by the same chap, John Cowper, who built the Wayneflete tower, so they were perfect. We used our three days to experiment with glazes and kiln building. Rather than a lead glaze we used a soda ash glaze made from seaweed just as Cowper would have done.

What was the hardest part of the task?
I guess the hardest part was getting the glaze to the correct colour. It's all down to a good firing of the kiln. We ran the kiln for eight hours and it needed to be continually fed. A good mix of types of wood is needed to obtain the right temperature and colour in the glaze. We changed the height of the kiln's chimney to adjust the flow of the firing until it was perfectly balanced. Though Beryl used her pyrometers to measure the temperature, I still preferred to go by the colour of the flame as I always do. When one of the pyrometers stopped working it was fun to find out that my old-fashioned way was spot on.

Did you learn anything by doing the reconstruction?
I think you can always learn by doing these things. I've been making and firing bricks for decades, yet still found a few things out. For example; I now fully appreciate that if we want a good continuity in a range of glazed brick colours it's best to use a small kiln and use wood for your fuel – that's what the Tudors did. It's just nice to have a few ideas confirmed and also to experiment.

If you did it again would you have done it differently?
I don't think so. It would have been nice to have done a larger load and see how we got on with a bigger kiln, but the reconstruction worked wonderfully as we did it. There was that nail-biting moment when we opened the kiln but when we saw the results we were absolutely delighted.

Are there any other reconstructions you would like to try?
Well I'm 73 now and think I should start writing down my experience in making bricks. We're going to build a new kiln at our yard this coming year (I remember building the current one with my father when I was a boy) and think we should also construct one of these little kilns for experimenting with. We've made specialist bricks for some 10,000 buildings so far but there are always some new things to try.

Bulmer Brick & Tile Company
Brickfields, Hedingham Road, Bulmer, Sudbury, Suffolk CO10 7EF
Tel: 01787 269232
Fax: 01787 269040
E-mail: bbt@bulmerbrickandtile.co.uk
A brickworks has stood on the site of the Bulmer Brick & Tile Company since the 15th century. The company produces hand-moulded facings and special bricks to nearly 5,000 patterns, together with a range of terracotta pieces. It specialises in purpose-made bricks for restoration, using London Bed clay to produce the mellow reds seen in some of the nation's finest buildings, as in their restoration work at Hampton Court and Windsor Castle.

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