Accrington photography student returns to heritage with Nori brick exhibition

Sophie Hambling, from Accrington, is a third year photography student at London College of Communication and has carried out a project looking at the famous brick.

The Nori brick was created in Accrington, and Miss Hambling found this has become a talking point for her throughout her projects.

Her work has now returned to her hometown to display her work at an exhibition at Howarth Art Gallery in Accrington.

The former Clitheroe Royal Grammar pupil said: "It's a part of my identity.

"People become interested when you tell them that the Nori brick, created in our world-famous town of Accrington, was used to lay the foundations of the Empire State Building in New York.

"It was seeing this interest from others that helped me decide to lay the foundations upon which my future lies on the same thing."

She carried out her work by taking a piece of brick to an electron analyser at the Natural History Museum and studied a piece of it.

This produced images in only black and white, as the electron analyser doesn't transmit any colour, which the student used for her project.

Miss Hambling said: "This is how my final year project came to be.

"These images show the content of the bricks.

"With Nori bricks, we can see that they have a much higher level of iron in them than others created outside of the region. This makes it stronger than other bricks."

The Nori was first produced at a brickworks adjacent to the quarry in Whinney Hill, Altham, by the Accrington Brick and Tile Company Ltd.

The clay there produced bricks of the highest strength and hardness, as well as being acid resistant so of use in flumes and chimneys.

There is a popular theory that the Nori brick name came about accidentally; originally iron, the mould is believed to be put on the brick the wrong way round.

Miss Hambling's final exhibition of Nori will take place on May 30 2018 from 6pm until 9pm at the London College of Communication.