Tuesday, September 20, 2011

'Scotch brick', a sink and 'plenty mair'

Some photos below of my growing collection of bricks from Scottish brickworks, mainly along the west coast of course. About half of them I've picked up here on the Ards Peninsula of Northern Ireland, and the rest have been collected in the west of Scotland (thanks again to Joe and Billy for gathering a brave wheen of these up for me.)

I've been cleaning at them today (a wee bit of vinegar is great for dissolving mortar, so be careful when you're eating chips and don't sit too near the wall). You'll see that many of these are marked 'Bourtreehill, Irvine' - well today I found the sink pictured below in a salvage yard near Newtownards, and as you can see from the maker's stamp it was also made at Bourtreehill, but this time Dreghorn, Kilmarnock. The man who owns the yard told me that he gets a lot of folk from Scotland buying things to 'repatriate' them back to the country where they had been made.

I then went over to Saintfield and found a wee matchbox holder in an antique shop there, with the message 'Help yersel' there's plenty mair' printed on it. Got it for just £3! As ever, you dinnae hiddae go terble far tae fin connections wi' Scotland roon aboot oor pairt o' County Down. Click to enlarge:









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