At the double! York Handmade highly commended at 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, in North Yorkshire, was singled out for praise in the Individual Housing and the Refurbishment categories.

York Handmade 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.

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 at York Handmade 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. We are absolutely delighted with the result, we couldn’t be happier.

“They look especially brilliant at night, with the moonlight shining on them. We were thrilled that the brickwork for our house has been honoured in this way and we couldn’t be prouder.”

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 Sunderland’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.

Keith Aldis, chief executive of the Brick Development Association, paid tribute to York Handmade in his opening speech, praising the company for its success in the prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize as well as its two highly commended accolades in the Brick Awards.

York Handmade has a tremendous track record in the Brick Awards, being highly commended for its work on St Albans Cathedral last year and for both the Peter Hall Performing Arts Centre at Perse School in Cambridge and the Loxley Stables residential housing project in Hertfordshire in 2019. In 2018 the company was honoured for its involvement in the acclaimed Westgate Centre in the heart of historic Oxford and for the magnificent Halifax Library.

Going further back, York Handmade won a hat-trick of categories in 2012 with the triumph of Four Oaks in Little Bedwyn; Tupgill Cellar, near Middleham, North Yorkshire; and Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, while other prestigious wins included the Walled Garden at Scampston Hall in 2004 and St Brigid’s Church, Belfast, in 1995.

For further information visit www.yorkhandmade.co.uk