nori brick

MaryW commented on the word nori brick

Among its oddities, Accrington used to make the world's hardest bricks—there is iron ore in the heavy clay, and that gives the bricks their recognizable bright red colour, as well as their remarkable strength.

The bricks are known as the Nori brick because somebody said they were as hard as iron and stamped it on the bricks backwards by mistake—so Nori they became.

Thousands of these bricks went to New York to build the foundations of the 1,454-foot-tall Empire State Building. Think King Kong and think Accrington.

Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (New York: Grove Press, 2011), pp. 88-89

January 12, 2016

bilby commented on the word nori brick

Wikipedia says, apropos of the nori:
"Three theories are proposed:
Iron was written on the chimney of the brickworks, but backwards with the I at the bottom
The letters IRON were accidentally placed backwards in the brick moulds thus spelling NORI. This is by far the most common story.
It was a deliberate decision of the owners to differentiate them from the REDAC brick works in Huncoat standing for Accrington Red."

January 12, 2016