The seller paid the auctioneers’ expenses from the proceeds. For Rowley, Son and Royce that might include the cost of posting bills, distributing catalogues, the town crier (one shilling) and advertising in the newspaper (sixteen shillings). Even in 1822, auctioneers were not averse to giving credit, although requiring a joint note of security, a deposit of twenty per cent payable on the day of the sale and the final balance due on a quarter day such as 24 December.
For accounts and books still existing (Discovery is useful), go to the relevant record office where ledgers, bound and written in meticulous copperplate, hold the itemised inventories and accounts. The signatures of officiating agents and clients, perhaps your ancestor, are a bonus.
An estate agent managed rents, leases and property for landowners and was salaried. In 1730, Richard Andrews was the estate agent/steward for the London Grosvenor Estate and was paid £80 a year. His son, Robert, originally a solicitor, also acted as land agent to the Grosvenors and when he died in 1763 was receiving £150 per annum.
According to The Book of Trades 1806 a bricklayer working in London tiled, paved and built walls and chimneys. To survive in the countryside where jobs were few, he was more versatile, occasionally dabbling in stone masonry and plastering, a trade in itself especially when exposed brick was unpopular, as during the Renaissance. Sounding like a careers advice booklet, it explains tools: brick trowel, saw, brick axe, plumb lines, square, level and ten-foot measuring rod and materials: bricks, tiles, mortar, nails and lathes. Bricklayers were not expected to supply bricks. Their labourers made mortar from lime and the duo was expected to lay a thousand bricks a day. At four to five shillings and sixpence a day, the journeyman bricklayer earned less than other trades. His labourer received between half a crown (two shillings and sixpence) and three shillings and sixpence a day. Because a bricklayer calculated estimates for the job and included scaffolding – more health and safety conscious than we would have expected – he was both numerate and literate. Removing rubbish was extra. Digging wells was charged by the foot on a sliding scale; deeper wells were more expensive. Soil dispersal was extra.
Massive building projects from the mid-1800s created a shortage of skilled labour, including bricklayers, especially as bricks were cheaper than stone. These projects included Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s (1819–91) plans for building 1,300 miles of sewers beneath London to prevent cholera epidemics, the London Embankment and the railway network. The Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras, which opened in 1868, cost an enormous £438,000 to build. Wages rose. In 1865, bricklayers were earning six shillings and sixpence a day. For those working in 1871 on the Chelsea Embankment, a shilling bonus a day was added with labourers earning sixpence more. Bricklayers on these projects were merely subcontractors laying bricks supplied by London Brickworks. The censuses highlight the burgeoning building projects; in 1851, 67,989 bricklayers were recorded and two decades later, nearly 100,000.
When the Romans left, Britain returned to former materials of timber, stone, flint and cob (clay and straw found in old Devon houses). Bricks, generally from the Low Countries, were reintroduced around the twelfth century but only became fashionable, for those with money, after the fabulous Tudor palaces such as Hampton Court were built.
Brickmaking requires clay and sand, so brick makers worked where clay was abundant and easily obtainable, such as in the marls of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire. For a history of the London Brick Company in Stewartby, follow the links on www.bedfordshire.gov.uk. In Kent, it is estimated that one in five of the male population were working in the brickfields at one time.
Brickmaking requires a plentiful supply of water – clay needs moisture to be turned into bricks. Physically dug out of the ground in autumn, clay was left to weather over winter. In spring, the clay was broken up, stones removed, water and sand added and it was kneaded by men or animals into a paste. Lumps were knocked out. Hunks of clay were rolled in sand to prevent it sticking and hurled with force into a brick mould (bigger than the subsequent brick as they shrink in the kiln) to remove air pockets. A wire, like a cheese wire, cut excess clay from the top of the mould, sand was sprinkled on the top of the brick, a wooden board was placed on top and the mould inverted to release the brick, which was stacked and dried before firing in a kiln. It took at least a day for the brick to cool down. The type of clay, its colour and iron content predetermined the final colour of the brick although they could be dyed.