East Knoll, 200 year old Birthday, The Bricks

In the year 1820ish, carts full of bricks were delivered to this little knoll on the east side of the highway in Torringford CT.  The house came to be known as East Knoll. A standard 2 story rectangular house of the era, designed in the Adams style, it was to be 20' x 30' feet at its base, 2 stories high with a gable roof.


Each of these pallets (instead of cartload) holds 1,000 bricks. That would be 21 pallets full and that does not include the bricks that made up 3 chimneys!




They would need more than 21,000 bricks for the building alone, excluding the chimneys.

The house had 3 brick chimneys. One large one in the kitchen 7 feet long and built inside the house, mostly. The oven extended outside off the house on the bottom floor. The base of the kitchen fireplace started in the cellar which included the brick smoke oven. Two chimneys were built inside the front of the house with fireplaces on the first floor in two rooms with small chimneys that ran up the inside of the upstairs rooms, over the fan window in the attic, joined above the window and exited the room at one point in the peak.

A double layer thick of small 3.5" x 7.5" x 2".  It is difficult to find out where they came from. The family that built the house had an uncle with a brick yard in Harwinton about 2 miles down the road. There was also a brick yard about 3 miles up the road in Burrville.

At any rate, the bricks were made from hand dug red clay, bits of white and grey stones where added the the wet clay, slammed into wooden molds, dried in the sun and fired in a scove kiln. Raw dried bricks were stacked and covered with clay. Fires were lit inside to fire the bricks as they were stacked.

https://brickcollecting.com/history.htm







 

It is amazing how much work went into old houses. How much skill and labor it took to get anything done in earlier times.  Being a potter, weaver and knowing many wood carvers, stone masons and loggers, I am awed by the way things used to be done before Home Depot.

My soul is enriched by the knowledge and dedication of these workers of the past and our family has been blessed to be able to live amid these walls for almost 75 years.

Happy Birthday East Knoll!