What is the strongest brick?

Answer 1

It's the Red Acrington Brick - but the company is in danger.

More than 80 workers who produce the renowned red Accrington Brick in the Lancashire town are to lose their jobs, it has been reported. The so-called Nori (iron spelt backwards) bricks were exported to New York in the 1930s to lay the foundations for the 1,453 ft tower, which was then the world's tallest building.

Closer to home, the bricks, which were once the densest and strongest in the world, built the Blackpool Tower as well as many of the finest buildings in Blackpool and the nearby town of Lytham St Annes.

They were also used to build a life-size locomotive in Morton Park, Darlington, which used 181,000 of the bricks made originally by the Iron Brick Company.

The firm, now part of the Hanson Building Company, has seen an unprecedented slump in sales as a result of the housing slump.

As a result, the firm will be mothballed for 18 months, employing only a skeleton staff in the hope that the market picks up.

A Hanson spokesman said demand for bricks has fallen by up to 40 per cent in the past 18 months.

"This is the furthest we've seen the brick market fall since just after the Second World War," he said.

"We have had to take these measures to preserve the rest of the business. We couldn't carry on producing bricks with nobody buying them. But there is still a massive pent-up demand for new houses, and it will come back."

Hanson is a subsidiary of the Heidleber Cement Group, which employs 70,000 people worldwide.

Legend has it that the bricks became known as Nori, because the word iron was painted on the factory chimney with the letter I at the bottom and N at the top.