Bricks in Essex
Unconventional uses for bricks
Left over bricks have a way of being left laying around after a building project has been completed, sometimes for many years. Many gardens have piles of leftover bricks stacked up gathering moss and offering a home to creepy crawlies. So what can be done to make good use of them?
Bricks are heavy and robust and can be used for so much more than the usual building projects. Get creative and make use of those leftover bricks.
Bookend bricks
Sounds strange, but some bricks when painted with nice colours or designs can make fantastic bookends to keep your collection upright and in place on the bookshelf. Owing to their weight, bricks are surprisingly useful for this particular application.
Bricks for tiered planters
Bricks can be great to elevate a smaller plant pot inside a larger one. The bricks will not rot away when buried in the soil and will not harm the soil or plant roots either. Stacking planters with the help of bricks can look pretty impressive too.
Even broken bricks are good in the garden as the pieces can aid drainage in planters and even earth that has a high clay content.
Bricks to raise or support water tanks
Bricks can be really useful when you need to support, elevate or raise the level of heavy tanks. They withstand heavy weights and heat too, so you could save yourself a fair amount of money by using bricks for this purpose.
Bricks for cooking
The most obvious use of bricks for cooking is when used for making a barbecue. However, bricks can also be used in the oven too. Give the bricks a good scrub, wrap them in silver cooking foil and use the weight of the bricks to weigh down a butterflied chicken during the cooking process. An unusual use for bricks, but very effective and cheap too.
Bricks for weighing down things
Because bricks are so heavy, they make fantastic weights for keeping garden furniture covers in place, tarpaulins will not take off in winter storms if weighed down with enough bricks either.
Some history of Essex
The county of Essex has a rich history that spans many centuries. We can date Essex county from pre-historic times, but documented evidence is available from the Iron age on wards.
Iron Age Essex
Essex is known to have fairly strong ties with the known territory of the Trinovantes tribe. The Trinovantes or Trinobantes were one of the Celtic tribes of pre-Roman Britain. Their territory was on the north side of the Thames estuary in what is now Essex, Hertfordshire and Suffolk, and included lands now located in Greater London. They were bordered to the north by the Iceni, and to the west by the Catuvellauni. Their name possibly derives from the Celtic prefix of ‘tri’ and a second element which was ‘novio’, meaning ‘very new’ in the sense of ‘newcomers’, but possibly with an applied sense of vigorous or lively ultimately meaning ‘the very vigorous people’. Their capital was Camulodunum, which is now Colchester, which was Britains oldest recorded town, which had its own mint and is also one proposed site of the legendary Camelot.
The production of their own coinage marks them out as one of the more advanced tribes on the island, this advantage, in common with other tribes in the south-east is probably due to the Belgic element within their elite.
The tribe were in extended conflict with their western neighbours, the Catuvellauni, and steadily lost ground. By AD 10 they had come under the complete control of the Catuvellauni, who took Colchester as their own capital.