Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The very influential government report,
Government Houses for Today and
To m o r ro w
, prepared under the Chairmanship of Parker-Morris, was published
in 1961, and set the 'Parker-Morris' standards of construction. The Building
Regulations of 1965 (revised several times since) became a system of control-
ling the planning and construction of buildings throughout England and
Wales replacing various local bye-laws in operation since the Public Health Act
of 1875. Research, commercial, and professional bodies also contributed to the
development of the style and use of masonry to meet contemporary demands;
the National Housebuilder Registration Council (NHBC), Building Research
Establishment (BRE) (formerly the Building Research Station, BRS), British
Standards Institute (BSI), British Ceramics Research Institute (BCRI) and the
Brick Development Association (BDA) being the most influential.
From a bricklayer's perspective new constructional practices emphasis-
ing economy of material meant that brickwork underwent dramatic changes
directly affecting traditional craft practices and, with it, much of the rich heri-
tage of the craft. Brickwork became functional as simple rectangular buildings,
and was shorn of architectural enrichment. Cavity walls of brick, and later of
brick and block requiring quick-setting and rapid strength-attaining cement
mortars, superseded solid walls laid with slow hardening lime-based mortars.
The craftsmen's pragmatic understanding of regional building limes and tech-
niques involved in their common use began to contract nationally very rapidly.
There was a loss of various bond patterns and universal use of stretcher bond,
all the more severe on the eye because of the general acceptance of less aes-
thetically appealing machine-made facing bricks. Regional variations in brick
size, type and use completely disappeared with the standard imperial size in
1965, and particularly with the standardisation and metrication of brick sizes
in 1974, which formed part of a movement towards modularization, allowing
for dimensional co-ordination using standard components and assemblies.
This was a rapid, changing, and cost-driven environment, manifesting itself
in an ever-increasing site acceptance of general poor standards of work, and
where traditional 'crafting' skills became increasingly supplanted by standardised
national 'fixing' practices. Gauged brickwork, as the highest expression of the fin-
est skill and knowledge of traditional bricklayers, was fast heading for extinction.
This dramatic demise of bricklayers who were skilled in gauged brickwork
was highlighted in
The Brick Bulletin
of March 1954, where there was a need to
re-build gauged enrichments on the bomb damaged late nineteenth-century
church of Our Lady of Grace and of St Edward in Chiswick (London) (Plaskett
Marshall, 1954, 4-5):
Rarely today does an architect have an opportunity of designing in rubbed brick.
In general, it is probably true to say that contemporary architects do not seek
such opportunity, and if a client asked for a new building with walls of rubbed
