Kirby Muxloe

William, Lord Hastings was a favourite of King Edward IV who made a small fortune during the Wars of the Roses and decided to spend it on a very impressive new house at Kirby Muxloe in Leicestershire. The village was the site of an existing manor house belonging to his family, who also owned nearby Ashby de la Zouch Castle.

Unfortunately William's fortunes changed when Richard, Duke of Gloucester - later Richard III - seized the throne and took a dislike to  him. Richard had William's head chopped off, and work on the wonderful house stopped, with just one tower completed, in 1483.

Just one complete tower

However, what remains of the castle shows what a magnificent structure it was going to be. Built in the wonderful new material - brick - which was the height of fashion and very expensive at that time. The never finished gatehouse is probably the most impressive part still remaining. It has ornate brick work and dark patterns built in to the rich red courses that symbolise William in happier times.

Decorated in darker brick

A few technical terms: course means a horizontal row of bricks; diaper work is a pattern of bricks in a different colour from the main body, particularly in the form of a criss-cross design; bricks have short ends - headers - and long ends - stretchers; bond is the way in which headers and stretchers are mixed to create the overall pattern. Flemish bond has alternate headers and stretchers in a course, English bond has alternate courses of headers and stretchers. (More about bricks here)

Magnificent spiral stairs

Kirby Muxloe is surrounded by a moat, and there were gun ports built into the gateway. There's no evidence that these were ever planned to be defensive structures, however. They might just have been for show, as a display of William's position and power.

Now off you go over to Tricky's FAST Blog to see other Fives this Friday!

Bricks

When was the last time you looked at a brick wall?  I mean really looked at it. I know what you're thinking: "Why would I?"  Well, there's a lot more to brickwork than you'd realise. Anyone who has heard the story of the Three Little Pigs knows that bricks create a safe and stable structure in which to live or store goods. But over the millennia of their history they have often been much more than that.

Back in Tudor times bricks were the preserve of the rich. The amount of work involved, in preparing the clay, shaping individual bricks, and firing them, made them an expensive material. Noblemen across England showed off their status by investing in vast brick mansions, often with contrasting-coloured patterns  built in.

This is the gateway at Hodsock Priory near Blyth in Nottinghamshire.  It dates from the early 16th century and gives a hint of how magnificent the actual house must have been. In spite of the name, Hodsock was never a Priory. The current house is a Victorian replacement, unfortunately.

Bricks have various specialist terms connected to them. For example, the long sides are called stretchers.  The short sides are headers. The right-angled edges are called arisses. The dent where the mortar goes is called a frog. The brick height is called the gauge. Tudor bricks are typically much shallower gauge than modern ones.

Bricklaying patterns - or bonds - have changed over the years. For example, modern brickwork tends to be what's known as stretcher bond, where all the long edges face the front.

This mostly came about because of the advent of double skin houses with a cavity between the two walls. The idea was that an air gap would help insulate the house, because air is a poor conductor of heat. But the popularity of cavity wall insulation a few years ago has shown that wasn't true.

Earlier construction used different patterns. This, for example,

is a classic Victorian era bridge over the canal system in Birmingham. (The gate is to allow fire fighters to put hoses into the canal to use them as a water source.) You will notice that the bricks are in alternate courses of headers and stretchers. This is known as English bond. The wall is, of course, two bricks wide because the headers are twice the length of the stretchers.  Other bonds include Flemish, which consists of rows of alternate headers and stretchers, with the headers centred on the mid-point of the stretchers,

Here's another pattern - called herringbone. As you can see it's the infill in a half-timbered house. This was a Tudor way of having bricks more cheaply than using them for the whole wall.  The infill is called nogging.  Aren't brick words wonderful?

And finally we come to what is possibly the most interesting thing about bricks altogether. Some of them have names!

This collection can be found at Derby Silk Mill Museum and shows just a few of the makers who could be found in the area. As you can see, the names are mostly in the frog, or are on the surface that will be cemented against the next course.  Not every brick has a name, and a very few have it on a surface that will be visible. And that's where the fun comes in. Sometimes you can find a name on a wall that tells you where the bricks came from. Like this:

(Bonus photo.)

Today's post has been created for Five on Friday.