Scoria bricks[a] is a type of blue-grey brick made from slag, originally manufactured from the waste of the steelworks of Teesside, common across the North-East of England.[3][4] The bricks were also exported around the world and can be found in Canada, West Indies, Netherlands, Belgium, United States, India and South America.[5]
The word Scoria originally comes from Greek, meaning "Excrement", but came to be used by the Romans for a kind of volcanic rock.[5] The bricks were invented by Darlington industrialist Joseph Woodward, in the 1870s, with him registering a patent in 1873 and forming the "Tees Scoriae Company" the same year.[6][1] At its peak the company was taking 30% of the slag from the South-Tees works.[3]
The bricks were produced by pouring the slag caldrons, coming on trains from the steel works, into moulds made with hinged bottoms and mounted on a revolving platform allowing the moulds to be filled separately. As the bricks solidified they were removed and placed in a beehive oven, where the residual heat annealed the whole of the brick.[7][2] The bricks were found to be extremely durable against water, frost, chemicals and heavy loads, which led to them being used as a road surface.[4] On the other hand, an early trial of the bricks in Liverpool found the bricks to wear unevenly and become slippery in wet conditions.[8]
- ^ a b "Patent Scoriæ Bricks". Northern Echo. 1 November 1873. p. 1. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
- ^ a b "Scoriæ Bricks". Waterville Telegraph. 9 October 1874. p. 1. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
- ^ a b Walsh, David (6 March 2022). "Scoria bricks: history at our feet". North East Bylines. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
- ^ a b Lloyd, Chris (20 March 2022). "The almost unbreakable slag bricks which lined the streets of the Tees Valley". Darlington and Stockton Times. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
- ^ a b Lloyd, Chris (14 July 2008). "There's mortar bricks than meets the eye". The Northern Echo. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
- ^ Lewis, Stephen (20 April 2024). "York's back alleys in the spotlight: who designed those distinctive bricks?". York Press. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
- ^ "English Slag Paving Blocks". The Peabody Gazette-Herald. 24 November 1910. p. 7. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
- ^ Boulnois, Henry Percy (1898). The Municipal and Sanitary Engineer's Handbook. E. & F.N. Spon. p. 59. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
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