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Just read about the weight of a single brick in the old city walls of York
I was looking up some history on old brickwork for a project and found a fact that really surprised me. The bricks used in the medieval city walls of York, England, weigh about 9 pounds each on average. I found this in a book about historic building materials from my local library. That's way heavier than the standard bricks we use now, which are usually around 4.5 pounds. It makes you think about the sheer effort it took to build those walls back then, moving and placing all that weight by hand. I can't imagine laying a full day's worth of those without some serious muscle. It gives you a new respect for the guys who did that kind of work centuries ago. Has anyone else ever worked with or seen bricks that were way outside the normal weight range?
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patkelly5mo ago
Wow, I always figured old bricks were heavier, but that's a huge difference. It really puts the physical labor of those old builders into sharp focus. Makes modern construction look easy by comparison.
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robinson.paul4mo ago
Holy cow, wait - I didn't catch that part until you said it. So the old bricks actually weighed more than the modern ones? That's wild. I always figured brick weight was pretty much the same across the board (you know, a brick is a brick). But if they were denser or something, those guys back then must have been absolute beasts to stack those all day. Makes me feel like a total wimp complaining about carrying my groceries in from the car.
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