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Brick-making has been an integral part of construction in Ireland for four centuries, creating an important part of the urban landscape, competing in earlier times against stone and in more modern times against concrete.
While the sheer number of brickworks around the country has shrunk drastically, bricks still form an integral part of urban settings and old bricks remain an important built legacy.
One of the first major buildings where bricks were used was Jigginstown Castle, near Naas, Co Kildare, whose ruins can still be seen. The castle was built between about 1637 and 1640, using both locally made and imported bricks.
Trinity College Dublin had been originally built using red Dutch bricks.
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Bricks had been made in Co Wexford as early as 1550, while the earliest record of brick-making in Dublin came in 1599, when one George Burroes was making bricks on a 4½-acre site in an area that is today part of Hawkins Street.
During the 1770s, brickfields existed at Merrion in what is now south Dublin, while the late 18th-century brickworks in what is now Sandymount gave rise to the district’ s earlier name, Brickfield Town. The houses around Sandymount Green were originally built to house the families of men working in the local brickworks.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, locally made bricks were widely used in Dublin and other coastal towns and cities, but they were competing against imported bricks that were often cheaper. But the tremendous legacy of brickwork in Dublin can be seen in the Georgian squares and buildings such as the former Kildare Street Club and the Shelbourne Hotel.
Many of the houses built in Rathgar and Rathmines in the 1880s were constructed with Athy- made bricks, while around the same time, many military barracks around Ireland were built with bricks from the brickworks at Kingscourt, Co Cavan.
Bricks were less comprehensively used in inland areas, but the development first of the canals and then the railways helped spread the use of brick.
At its height, the industry had 150 brickworks spread throughout Ireland.
The best-known brickworks in Dublin was undoubtedly the Dolphin’ s Barn brickworks, based on the Crumlin Road. The clay pits extended from Kimmage to the Grand Canal at Goldenbridge, and this clay gave these bricks a distinctive yellow biscuit colour. When this brickworks was closed in 1944, the site was purchased by Dublin Corporation to build the large housing estates in Drimnagh.
William Lacey, a lecturer in the School of Architecture at the Dublin Institute of Technology, and a specialist in brickwork, considers that Dolphin’ s Barn was the most important of the old brickworks.
While the brickworks at Dolphin’s Barn and Clonsilla both produced yellow-coloured bricks, the renowned Portmarnock brickworks, just north of the city, were famed for their red-coloured bricks, made between 1850 and 1918.
South of Dublin, the brickworks at Rathnew, Co Wicklow, lasted from the earlier 19th century right up to 1922. Many builders considered that Rathnew bricks were the finest in the country.
The most important technical advance had been the expansion of Irish-made machine bricks in the later 19th century, which helped do away with the old cottage industry style of brick making.
Bricks had long been made by hand and were much smaller, often in random sizes.
As bricklayers’ wages increased, bricks were made taller, so that by mid-Victorian times, one foot of wall required just four courses, saving on construction costs.
But mechanisation only offered a temporary reprieve. By the time the Irish Free State had come into being in 1922, only five brickworks survived: at Dolphin’ s Barn, Dublin; Courtown, Co Wexford; Tullamore, Waterford; and Youghal.
Steadily rising costs and cheaper imports had militated against the continuation of the industry.
William Lacey says that Kingscourt, the only current clay-brick manufacturer in the Republic, still supplies an imperial range of bricks. Present-day bricks normally come in metric sizes.
Many of the older bricks used in buildings across Ireland can still be in very good condition, if properly maintained, but if bricks are needed for repairs, using imported bricks is the norm.
Since the 1980s, brick imports generally, including from the UK and the Netherlands, have accounted for up to 70 per cent, and sometimes much more, of bricks used in Ireland.
But despite all the imports, the brick making industry in Ireland is still hanging in, having travelled far from the days of hand-made bricks, which were fired in hand- stacked kilns fuelled with turf.