Name for a brick type?

[N_Cook]

Regular dimensions and flat parallel faces except one, a header. Used for decorative purposes in header-bond work. So not malformed/kiln-rejects , perhaps single-part moulding rather than 2-part moulding, relying on shrinkage for mould release, prior to firing. As that face , only, is slightly convex , like part of the surface of a sphere about the size of a space-hopper perhaps. Not bullnose header or radial header, convex header googles nothing sensible.

[Chris French]

I've never come across them either. Maybe a local thing? from the time when bricks were made fairly locally?

What sot of age buildings are we talking about?

[Chris Hogg]

Google for cownose brick, or if not that, then try clinker brick.

[Chris French]

You might want to reconsider who is being the idiot here?

That image isn't hosted by an an isp.

[Chris French]

The OP specifically says it isn't bullnosed, which is a different shpae than he descibes

[harryagain]

ISTR I saw bricks like that years ago. No apparent reason for them, I assumed they were just cheap bricks and they were that shape due to the (dodgy) manufacturing process/clay they were made from.

[N_Cook]

I think I'm coming round to that opinion. Why make a profile that is so subtle that you can only see the effect with a glancing sun angle and even then not that pronounced

natuaral colour pic, the lower left corner is in shade from a tree, so dead flat looking. On reveiwing the pics I don't think the cobbling is that consistent to be deliberate, some seem more "radial" shape of curvature, on one axis only, and not "sperical" The other wall is only obvious likewise in angled sun or , as first seen , from light cast at night from a bulkhead external lamp, so slight grazing angle of light again. Both these walls must be mmore than 70 years old.

[polygonum]

Have a look here:

I couldn't see anything as subtle as the picture you linked to. I am sure I have seen something like their cownose used for infill panels between massive piers, buttresses, etc., such as you get in parts of the London Underground. With a half-width offset they produced a strong bumpy pattern.

They also list radial headers but, again, they look more pronounced. Also, they are intended for curved walls and built in the flat would have excessive gaps.

I think yours are simply bricks with slightly curved ends! Such things might occur with specific clays which exhibit uneven shrinkage, I wonder if excessively wet clay could have made for that effect? I think you said 75 years or so - which would correspond to start of WWII. Maybe poorer quality because of that? (Inexperienced workers, attempts at economy, etc.)

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think that is the key. They weren't built like that, they have eroded to that

Or something in the mortar has caused it.

[N_Cook]

I was hoping no one could put a name to these sorts of bricks. Because I reckon they are not bricks but undiscovered examples of mathematical tiles from antiquity, my page on these beauties

The Bugle St, Southampton house and the main front facade of the Kings Somborne vivcarage, that only the rear elevation is redorded to have them. That slight bowing is exactly how most of these brick-tiles warp in the kiln. It seems only one modern day company (the snap-cut tiles, so they can double as headers and stretchers) knows how to make the exact flat-plane orthogonal tiles of its mathematical name. I've not been able to establish what company that is. In antiquity there seems to have been perhaps only one company that could make them also, I wonder if there was continuity of knowledge as they have been made , to various extents over the intervening centuries.

[rick]

There is a British Standard list of defined specials ... majority are shown in this pdf ..you can grab it on my dropbox:

[DerbyBorn]

N_Cook wrote in news:m9im1e$l9f$ [e-mail]:

Thanks - interesting.