Alne firm recognised at the ‘Brick Oscars’
The York Handmade Brick Company, one of the leading independent brickmakers in the country, has been highly commended in two categories in the prestigious 2022 Brick Awards.
York Handmade, based at Alne, near Easingwold, was singled out for praise in the Individual Housing and the Refurbishment categories.
They provided the bricks for Green Acres, a stunning new detached house in Effingham in Surrey, and for Holy Trinity Church in the heart of Sunderland.
These commendations come hard on the heels of York Handmade’s success in the RIBA Stirling Prize, which the company’s Magdalene College Library project in Cambridge won.
The Brick Awards were presented at a glittering ceremony at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in the heart of London’s West End with television personality Hugh Dennis as compere.
Run by the Brick Development Association in conjunction with Building magazine, they are the brick industry’s Oscars.
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York Handmade Chairman David Armitage said: “We are tremendously proud to have been highly commended for these two fantastic projects this year.
“Huge thanks are due to the management team and employees for their imagination, enterprise and hard work, which all combined to make these projects so successful and so memorable.
“It is vitally important to stress that these entries are completely different jobs in design and execution, graphically illustrating our ability to work in a wide variety of colours and styles. We believe we can tackle any brickwork project successfully.”
Green Acres is located in the picturesque Surrey village of Effingham and is a brand-new house in the Georgian style. The old house was demolished and reset in the existing grounds with the new house featuring five bedrooms and five bathrooms, with the addition of stables and garages.
York Handmade provided 30,000 traditional bricks, suitable for the neo-Georgian house.
Owner Lizzy Jackson commented: “York Handmade’s bricks were the first we saw when we started researching which bricks we wanted for our house – and they were the best.
“Their stylish look, their authenticity and their roughish texture were ideal for our house, built in the Georgian style.”
Meanwhile York Handmade also played a pivotal role in the conservation-led restoration of Grade I listed Holy Trinity Church in the heart of old Sunderland.
This restoration has transformed the city’s first parish church and civic hub into a spectacular space for connecting and sharing people, stories and heritage through conservation repair and sensitive adaptation.
Holy Trinity, which was built in 1719, is a very early Georgian, Grade I listed church, which had been closed since 1988.
Since completion, the building has been removed from Historic England’s At Risk Register.