[garinda]

This makes interesting reading.

Building materials
Writing in the Buildings of England volume for Lancashire, Alec Clifton-Taylor inaccurately
stated that ‘industrial Lancashire was largely built of brick’ (Pevsner 1969, 37). In particular
he cited the use of the hard, bright red bricks made by the brickworks at Accrington and
known as ‘Accrington bloods’. Whilst it is true that brick was usually the preferred
construction material of the later nineteenth century mills and workshops, and was widely
used for housing in the towns of west Lancashire, in the east Lancashire industrial towns
gritstone was the preferred building material. Accrington, the source of so much of the
brick used elsewhere and considered unsightly by architectural historians like Clifton-
Taylor, is notable for its relative lack of brick-built structures (Pevsner 1969, 45). Locally
quarried Carboniferous gritty sandstones were used for most housing and corporate
buildings, and for the majority of ecclesiastical and educational buildings as well.
Accrington brick does appear occasionally, usually in structures where its brightness
complements a building’s flamboyant design. A good example of this is the Post Office
Arcade, built in the 1890s. Indeed, throughout east Lancashire, brick is often reserved for
‘special’ buildings. It has been noted, for example, that the majority of pre-1914 brick-built
houses are architect designed quality residences (Atkinson 1972, 70)