Bore Place - 5th April 2007                  by Megan Claridge 

At Bore Place they make Chartwell Bricks.  The clay for the bricks comes from the ground and another part of the brick is scree.  Scree is black and contains used coal.  The clay changes colour when it is mixed with the scree and changes back to a red colour when the brick is fired in the kiln and the scree burns away. We all saw a machine that crushes stones in between two large rollers. 

The 3 men can make 250,000 bricks a year!  The bricks are fired in the kiln which is very big and can fire 30,000 bricks at a time at 1000°.  You can get different shape moulds to make different bricks.

The workmen put “smiles” on their bricks.  It is a type of signature.  While we were looking on the wall for smiles we all spotted a paw print where a naughty little cat had run on a brick whilst it was still wet!  There were some environmentally friendly bricks made of Hemp and a lime wash.  This is new to Bore Place. 

Next we had a go at making bricks.  We wet our moulds and the stocks / frog.  Isn’t frog a funny name?  The frog is the dent in the centre of the brick and it is there so that there is more space for the mortar.  We covered our moulds in brick dust to stop the clay sticking to them and then we bashed our clay into a rough brick shape and threw the clay into the mould and whacked it down.  I got covered in clay at this point! 

Then, we scraped off the extra clay with a cheese wire and then took a plastic scraper dipped in water, and held it at a 45° angle to take away any bits left over and to make it smooth.  Next, we put a tile on top and tuned the whole thing over before tapping our brick out.  We wrote our names on the frog of the new brick.

We then went to build a wall.  You start at the corner.  We all found out that the long two sides of a brick are called stretchers and the short two are called headers.  You get different types of bonds.  Henry did English Garden Bond and I did Stretcher Bond.  We had to check our wall was even with a spirit level or a plumb line and a set square. Next we had a go with wattle and daub.  We got some clay and mixed it with straw.  That was the daub.  We then stuck it on a board of woven sticks that was the wattle. 

When we had done that we went to see the cows.  The cows have a bed that is smaller than the cows themselves so that when they did a poo or a wee they would not get their bed mucky.  Bore Place is an organic farm and has been one for 30 years this year. After all of that, my friends and I relaxed by the pond and made daisy chains for a while.