Bricks of Barbados

A visit to the Wildlife Reserve found  me somewhat distracted by the paths and patios being made of recycled bricks. Not any old bricks you understand but very old bricks imported to the island during the C17th and C18th from England and Scotland and used in the construction of the boilers for the sugar cane mills.

As with most things there are collectors of bricks and blogs and websites, giving great detail of the manufacturing history, sizes and uses.

The centuries I mention above are from the pamphlet given out at the reserve and upon a quick and by no means definitive search, it would seem that most of the bricks were likely to be early C19th, this based on the information gleaned from expert and collector sites. However also discovered that bricks travelled far and wide, not only to Barbados but the Yukon and Pennsylvania, strong connection with mining communities.

http://www.penmorfa.com/bricks/history.html

http://www.britishbricksoc.free-online.co.uk/

The reserve is an excellent example of recycling on the island. The coral stone walls were collected from the surrounding cane fields, the small concrete and iron wheels are from the tractors when rubber was not available during WWII. Chains were salvaged from the conveyor systems in the sugar factories, which fed the chopped cane to the mill rollers, also a huge iron wheel which drove the crushing rollers. Also iron plaques are used to decorate various buildings, assume they came from tractors or mill machinery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbados_Wildlife_Reserve