What could be less interesting than a brick, you might think! But brickwork evolved to meet the needs of society, and over the centuries it has continually responded to changing needs, technology and fashions. The Romans had bricks, but they were very different from what we think of as a brick today. Brickwork as we know it was imported from the low countries in the middle ages.

 The history told by brickwork is all around us. It is written in the buildings that you can see any day, and if you can understand the language in which it is written, you can read the buildings history. Walk around almost any town and look at the brickwork you pass. Often it can tell you something about the building and the area where it stands, about the purpose for which it was built and how that has changed over the years, and even the status of the building's original owner. In town centres especially, look up above the shop fronts where you can see the original fabric of the buildings, before they were mauled by the makers of gaudy modern shop fronts.

Sadly, as with so much else, modern buildings are becoming homgenised, with the same bricks and the same styles being used in towns all over the country, but even so, after several decades of uninspired building, brickwork is once again being used imaginatively to help to enrich our townscapes.