School: Edmonton (roll number 8100)
- Location:
- Edmondstown, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: Mrs O' Brien
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0728, Page 049
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Edmonton
- XML Page 049
- XML “How Bricks Were Made”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- (continued from previous page)They chopped and tempered the clay - mixing it with water in the same way as mortar was made for building. This clay was wheeled in barrows to a place where two men made large round lumps of it sufficient clay in each lump to make a brick. This was known as up striking. Another man took these lumps and put them in oblong shaped moulds nine inches long four in wide and three inches deep. His job was known as moulding. Several boys carried these bricks in the moulds to the sand beds to dry. These beds were made of fine rabbit sand. This was called off bearing. The bricks were left on these level beds of sand for several days, sometimes a few weeks until they were dry. They were then built into walls - long and very narrow and covered with straw and grass or bog sods to keep them dry. This was called Heating.
When enough bricks were made after a few months they were taken in carts and built into kilns.(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Máire Áine Ní Lorcháin
- Gender
- Female
