The York Handmade Brick Company, one of the leading independent brickmakers in the country, has been shortlisted in two categories in the prestigious 2023 Brick Awards.
York Handmade, based at Alne, near Easingwold, in North Yorkshire, is short-listed in the Medium Housing category for the stunning Lancer Square development in Kensington, London, and for the acclaimed Renshaw Hall student housing development in Liverpool in the Specialist Brickwork Contractor category.
The Brick Awards will be presented at a glittering ceremony at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in the heart of London’s West End on Wednesday November 8. Run by the Brick Development Association, they are the brick industry’s Oscars.
The ceremony will be hosted by popular TV personality and architect George Clarke, best known for his work on the Channel 4 programmes The Home Show, The Restoration Man, George Clarke's Old House New Home and George Clarke's Amazing Spaces.
The Brick Awards celebrate the very best clay brick architecture and designs in the global built environment. The awards have attracted entries from housebuilders, developers, architects and contractors across 18 hotly contested categories.
York Handmade Chairman David Armitage said: “We are tremendously proud to have been shortlisted for these two fantastic projects this year.
“Huge thanks are due to the management team and employees at York Handmade for their imagination, enterprise and hard work, which all combined to make these projects so successful and so memorable.
“It is vitally important to stress that these two short-listed entries are completely different jobs in design and execution, graphically illustrating our ability to work in a wide variety of colours and styles. We believe we can tackle any brickwork project successfully.”
York Handmade’s specially manufactured bricks are a pivotal feature of the exclusive mixed-use Lancer Square development in the heart of Kensington. This flagship 146,000 sq ft building is one of the largest and most prestigious residential, office and retail developments in the West End to be completed in the past year. It was designed by London architects Squire & Partners.
York Handmade’s managing director Guy Armitage explained: “It was crucial that the bricks we provided fitted in seamlessly with the magnificent Kensington Palace, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, which is just a few hundred yards away.”
Meanwhile the company also played a crucial role in the stunning 404-bedroom Renshaw Hall development in Liverpool. Altogether the company provided bricks 200,000 bricks for Renshaw Hall, which is located on the edge of the Rodney Street Conservation Area in Liverpool city centre, close to two universities.
York Handmade has a tremendous track record in the Brick Awards, being highly commended for its work last year in the Individual Housing and the Refurbishment categories for its work on Green Acres, a stunning new detached house in Effingham in Surrey, and for Holy Trinity Church in the heart of Sunderland, respectively.
These commendations come hard on the heels of York Handmade’s success in the RIBA Stirling Prize 2022, which the company’s Magdalene College Library project in Cambridge won.
The company was also honoured for its work on St Albans Cathedral in 2021 and for both the Peter Hall Performing Arts Centre at Perse School in Cambridge and the Loxley Stables residential housing project in Hertfordshire in 2019. In 2018 the company was honoured for its involvement in the acclaimed Westgate Centre in the heart of historic Oxford and for the magnificent Halifax Library.
Going further back in time, York Handmade won a hat-trick of categories in 2012 with the triumph of Four Oaks in Little Bedwyn; Tupgill Cellar, near Middleham, North Yorkshire; and Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, while other prestigious wins included the Walled Garden at Scampston Hall in 2004 and St Brigid’s Church, Belfast, in 1995.
To find out more about the shortlisted categories and all the nominations, please visit www.brick.org.uk/brick-awards
