Two sets of questions: 1 historical & 2 scientific. Quite a lot of explanation required. The brickearth being considered is the brickearth found in south east England, particularly in south Essex and north Kent. This is what we now think of as brickearth. The Oxford English Dictionary OED (which will be our main etymological source) has a geological definition for brickearth/ brick earth:
brick earth n. Earth or clay suitable for making bricks. Now chiefly in form brickearth. A fine grained silty deposit consisting of or derived from loess, occurring in the Thames basin and other parts of southern England.
1816 W.Smith. Strata identified 11. The Oak-tree clay also may be mistaken or confounded with the Brick earth, which in several parts produces good oak.
The famous early reference to brick-earth is that by John Evelyn the diarist, who in 1667 is involved in schemes to rebuild post-fire London in brick.
6 March 1667: I proposed to my Lord Chancellor, Monsieur Kiviet's undertaking to wharf the whole river of Thames, or quay, from the Temple to the Thames, as far as the fire destroyed, with brick, without piles, both lasting and ornamental.
26 March 1667: This afternoon I had audience of his Majesty, concerning the proposal I had made of building the quay... Sir John Kiviet dined with me. We went to search for brick-earth, in order to a great undertaking.
7 Sept.1667: Came Sir John Kiviet, to article with me about his brickwork.
2 April 1668: To the Royal Society, where I subscribed 50,000 bricks, towards building a college.
Evelyn lived in Deptford, on the south bank of the Thames, adjacent to Deptford Creek. He lived at Saye's Court, Deptford and it appears that he may have been planning to use local ground for his bricks.
14 Aug. 1668. His Majesty was pleased to grant me a lease of a slip of ground out of Brick Close, to enlarge my fore-court, for which I now gave him thanks.
Actually the Evelyn brickmaking project does not go well (one suspects that Sir John Kiviet may have been less than trust-worthy) and another famous diarist comments on the endeavour:
Samuel Pepys 23 Sept 1668: At noon comes Mr Evelyn to me, about some business with the office, and there in discourse tells me of his loss, to the value of £500, which he hath met with, in a late attempt of making of bricks upon an adventure with others, by which he presumed to have got a great deal of money; so that I see the most ingenious men may sometimes be mistaken.
After the Great Fire of London there was a huge increase in brick production because it was ordered that London should be rebuilt from non-combustible materials. The Company of Tylers and Bricklayers had kept some control on the world of bricks but this proved impossible to maintain after the fire and widespread brick manufacture developed. And, of course, the fates had placed, in the Thames basin, a large amount of loess material (to become eventually known as brickearth) which could be turned into excellent bricks- assisted by a great post-fire discovery.
Useful reference: T.P.Smith 2007. 'Upon an adventure with others' John Evelyn and brickmaking after the Great Fire of London. British Brick Society Information 103, 10-15.
According to the Company of Tylers and Bricklayers in 1714 it was not until after the failure of the Evelyn Deptford brickyard that a new method of brick masking was discovered.. Here one of our questions might be answered. When was it discovered that adding rubbish to the brickclay made brickmaking in Kent & Essex extra profitable? A virtuous network was established with a great and expanding city needing an endless supply of bricks connected by a convenient river to large deposits of ground material which proved ideal for brick making. And the city waste provided fuel for firing the bricks and enabled the transport barges to be loaded in both directions of travel. The discovery of the useful combustible admixture appears to have been made by accident.
" the practice of using ashes commonly called spanish (was) begun about forty years since [hence not until early 1670s] occasioned by diging up several fields contiguous to the city after the great fire which fields having been much dunged with ashes it was observed the bricks made with earth in those fields would be sufficiently burned with one half of the coles commonly used. "
Why was the admixture called Spanish? Here is one of the great brickearth questions. Loessic brickearth + Spanish makes fine bricks; but why is Spanish so-called? And have our investigations exposed an error in the OED?
OED 1714 London Gazette no.5209/4. Together with two stools of Brick-Earth ready dug and spanished.
OED definition: etymology- of obscure origin; obsolete, rare. Earth or clay unfit for brickmaking.
This definition is wrong; it should read- rubbish or waste material added to brickearth to improve the efficiency of the firing process. OED suggests that Spanish is a bad thing but the opposite is true. Spanish is useful and virtuous in brickmaking with Thames brickearths (aka loess).
Daniel Defoe (yet another journal keeper of the time ; see in particular Journal of A Plague Year- not 2020 but 1665) casts a useful light on Spanish.
Daniel Defoe: A brickmaker being hired by a Brewer to make some bricks for him at his country house, wrote to the brewer that he could not go forward unless he had two or three loads of Spanish, and that otherwise his bricks would cost him six or seven chaldrons of coals extraordinary, and the bricks would not be so good and hard neither by a great deal, when they were burnt
There ensues some misunderstanding because the brewer understands spanish to be liquorice juice.
Defoe was writing in 'The Complete English Tradesman'(1726) and he was making a point about clarity in communication. Chaldron was a volume measure, maybe about 32-36 bushels; Newcastle coal about 2850-2978 lbs; 1.309 cubic metres..
Defoe again: the brickmakers all about London, do mix sea-coal ashes, or laystal-stuff, as we call it, with the clay of which they make bricks, and by that shift save eight chaldrons of coals out of eleven, in proportion to what other people use to burn them with, and these ashes they call spanish.
Laystal: a place where rubbish and dung are deposited.
OED 1725 Act 12 Geo I c.35. Several persons.. continue to make bricks of bad stuff and unsizeable dimensions, and do not well burn the same, and in making thereof mix greate quantities of soil called Spanish. In other words too much Spanish and not enough brickearth, but the spanish properly used is a valuable ingredient. Spanish begins to be used after the great fire and contributes to the exploitation of the great brickearth deposits of Kent and Essex. And they were great deposits- hidden by history and industry were very large deposits of loess material which was used in the construction of a large brick city. Eventually brickearth will come to mean the deposits in Kent and Essex, and the loessic brickearth will come to be differentiated from brick clay in general.
The Smeed Dean brickworks in Kent was said to be the largest in the world; 60 million bricks were made in 1877. The loess deposits being exploited were of considerable size and thickness but because they had largely been mined away before loess science developed tended to be somewhat neglected and under-appreciated. These bricks were made with the aid of the added ashes and cinders, the spanish, and the history of the spanish could be a topic for further exploration. The ashes and cinders from houses all over London were collected into vast heaps and accumulations, and the trade in these materialsdependent on the brick making industry, provided a source of much economic activity.
The last complete book by Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend 1865, relates largely to a large heap of spanish which serves to provide the monetary fortune for some of the protagonists. The picture by E.H.Dixon 1837 shows a large dust heap in the Kings Cross area.
Useful reference: Richard Hernry Horne 1850. Dust or ugliness redeemed. Household words 1, 379-384. The brickmakers at Uxbridge would contract for 15 or 16 thousand chalrdons of cinder-dust.. Brickmakers all around London relied on the constant supply of spanish and on the vast resources provided by the brickearth deposits.
Another dust heap picture; this time by C.H.Matthews
Questions 2: scientific
Where did all that brickearth/loess come from, and how was it emplaced? It appears that the story of the English loess is complicated and involves many steps and events.
The chart shows the route to the bricks. The chart (constructed by Colin Bunce) shows events and stages on the journey from the initial loess particles to the bricks made by Smeed Dean. It follows the old PTD (1966) scheme and indicates formation events, transportation events and deposition events (hence P, T and D). The D2 event puts loess all over SE England; subsequent events move this material about to give the deposits and concentrations that we observe. The large drainage basin is the Thames basin and material falling therein is eventually concentrated in the Kent and Essex brickearths. The Kent brickearth is augmented by material from the Medway basin.
Loess material in SE England; it has been suggested that it is the concentration of loess material in SE England that accounts for the concentration of brick buildings in SE England.
Useful reference: Smalley, I.J. 1986. The nature of brickearth and the location of early brick buildings in England. British Brick Society Information 41, 4-11.
