Show on mapBlue tinged Scoria blocks are still a fairly common sight in the gutters around Cleveland as they were manufactured from molten blast furnace slag, a waste product that was available in huge quantities in our area.
Joseph Woodward first took out a patent in the mid 1870s for a machine for making blocks from molten blast furnace slag.
The Wharton Arms was built in 1878 so the bricks in the yard behind could be original examples from this early phase. Nearly all the blocks carry the name “Tees Scoria Company – Patent” where most examples in Cleveland are just plain.
In 1893 the Institution of Mechanical Engineers visited the Tees Scoria Brick Co. at Cargo Fleet Iron Works and described a more advanced process :
The manufacture carried on at these works is that of slag blocks for paving. The plant comprises one rotating wheel, fitted with 140 moulds; and also eighteen kilns, each capable of holding 1,000 blocks. From twenty to thirty different sizes of blocks are made. By arrangement with the Cargo Fleet Iron Co. these works are carried on at U, Plate 55, within the boundary of the Cargo Fleet Iron Works.
The blocks were also manufactured at Skinningrove up until the 1950s.
Skinningrove Works had a ‘Brick Wheel’ Most of those in the immediate area came from there.
I have a picture of Teesside Scoria bricks used to ‘edge’ a granolithic pavement construction in Edinburgh New Town
I see a few on kerbs in the north of Hampshire and west Surrey.
I see a few on the kerbs in north Hampshire and west Surrey.
I have just taken up a concrete path in the garden of my Edwardian house in Nunthorpe and discovered a Tees Scoria brick path underneath!
Just seen some today used as footpath edging at Preston Park near Yarm
There’s some in Beamish Open air museum too, including hexagonal ones near the cafe.
I wonder how these bricks came all the way into my hometown in Belgium, in Bruges where I found a couple of very small and old streets covered with those bricks. Does anyone knows something on the export of these bricks to other countries, especially Belgium? I’m writing an article to preserve them as “heritage”….
They were exported all over. A background article here:
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/3206104.mortar-bricks-meets-eye/