Turf Zone – Between7And8
Okay, this may not be for everyone but the other day I sat wondering if there was something out there that would enhance my turfing sessions, no matter where I’m actually turfing. Something that would add a degree of additional excitement to the Game Of Turf, something different, something interesting, something totally crazy.
The first thing that my aging brain cell (note the singular, which may explain a lot) fired up with, and bearing in mind that I’ve just starting watching the Game Of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon Season 2 on Amazon Prime, was wouldn’t it be great to have a bloody enormous fiery dragon to ride rather than a bicycle. However, could not find any bloody enormous fiery dragons for sale online and the teenage girl behind the counter at Pets At Home just laughed. They would probably not be a permitted form of transport under Turf Law anyway.
Then I had a Eureka! moment, just like Archimedes, threw the towel away and sprinted naked from the bath to the computer. Bricks. Yes, bricks, or more accurately brick marks, also called brick stamps. That’s essentially the letters you find on older bricks. So, I’ve created an unofficial Planet Gray medal called Brick Spotting. Here’s the details from the Unofficial Medals page.
“To achieve this prestigious medal, you need to spot bricks showing a brick mark either in the actual zone or visible from the zone. A brick mark is usually the makers name but can also be any sequence of number, letters and other marks. Medals are awarded for spotting 5, 10 and 25 brick marks. Note that modern bricks do not have brick marks. The same brick mark can be spotted more than once.”
So, this morning on a turf session around Newbattle I started looking for bricks. Of course, bricks, while they are all around you much of the time, are actually quite shy about revealing their brick names and it takes a keen eye to find them, well, generally speaking.
Finds were none existent until zone Between7And8, which sounds like a character from Star Trek: Voyager. There, in full view of all and sundry, a NEWBATTLE, a local common brick from Newbattle Brickworks, Newbattle. It dates no later than the late 1960’s when the brickworks closed down. From the image above it looks like the brick has been deliberately left exposed, the roughcast kept clear of the brick. Oh, the excitement.
Turf Zone – MinerMemorial
Next finds were at zone MinerMemorial though not actually in the zone but part of a low wall across the other side of St David’s, the adjacent street. First find was an SBC, standing for the Scottish Brick Corporation. In the image above you may just spot some dots and dashes in addition the lettering. There are a form of secret symbols denoting the name of the original brickworks that were taken over when the Scottish Brick Corporation was created. Unfortunately, I don’t have the key to the symbols.
Turf Zone – MinerMemorial
Further along the street was another brick, this one a WHITEHILL, made at the Whitehill Brickworks, Rosewell and dates between 1893 and 1947. The brickworks once stood near zone RosewellPath in Rosewell. It was taken over by the National Coal Board in 1947 and the brick marks changed to NCB WHITEHILL. This information is from what I refer to as the “Scottish Brick Spotters Bible”, a 1985 booklet by Scottish Industrial Archaeology Survey (S.I.A.S) publications, “A Survey of Scottish Brickmarks” by Douglas, Hume and others. The booklet is very rare and much sought after.
Nothing else was forthcoming as I toured around Newbattle, taking zones here and there. Called in at The Bike Shed for a cuppa but it was closed. Even the zone at the National Mining Museum offered up nothing, much to my surprise. In fact, there used to be some wedge-shaped firebricks with THISTLE stamped on them at the red-painted winding wheel but they seem to have been removed.
Turf Zone – Prestonholm
On the way back to Bonnyrigg, I remembered that there was another brick mark showing not far away, and it was actually right inside a turf zone. The zone is called Prestonholm and while it’s just “another brick in the wall”, it’s also another WHITEHILL. This brings my brick spotting tally to four, one short of that prestigious Brick Spotting 5 medal. Hope to find another one next session. On the way home, at zone KirkCockpen, I think there are some brickmarks showing under some of the gravestones but worshipers were milling about and I though it would look rather suspicious, so left it for another day.
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