With an increase in demand for heritage building materials, HG Matthews has revived the almost lost art of hand-made wood-fired bricks.
The bricks are ideal for those looking to renovate and restore heritage buildings with bricks which match historic buildings in terms of the unique colour and glazed effect created by a wood-burning kiln.
This ancient technique, originally used in the 18th century, is now being used to create over 500,000 bricks each year at the Brickworks in Buckinghamshire.
Buckinghamshire, with its distinctive geology, is famous for its bricks. All the company’s clay is still dug from original deposits around Bellingdon and from nearby Chalfont St. Giles.
It is this indigenous clay, the temperature of firing and the type of kiln used that is responsible for the subtle changes in the colours of the handmade bricks.
H.G. Matthews is a family-run brickworks producing traditional hand-made and machine-made bricks, founded in 1923 by Henry George Matthews and still run by the family today.
Like most industries brickmaking has seen production concentrated in fewer and fewer, but much larger factories. H.G. Matthews has managed to thrive despite this trend and retained the traditional skills and techniques to produce bricks required in high-end new builds and conservation sector.
