Brick company makes the grade for school’s £2.5m art and design centre

York Handmade Brick Company has completed a £78,000 contract to supply specialist material for a £2.5m art, design and technology centre at a school in York.

York Handmade, based at Alne near Easingwold, supplied 31,000 bricks for the exterior of the building and 4,300 terracotta tiles for the interior floor at Pocklington School.

David Armitage, chairman of York Handmade, said: “It was a tremendous honour to be asked to provide our bricks and tiles for such a prestigious project. Pocklington School has a long and proud artistic heritage and this stunning new building reflects this.

“Our increasingly popular linear Maxima Galtres bricks have been used on the building’s exterior, complementing the contemporary design and fitting in with the school’s architecture and landscape.”

Mark Ronan, headmaster of Pocklington School, said: “The design of our new art and design technology centre has been very well received and the York Handmade bricks we have used for the exterior fit perfectly within the school’s campus. The floor tiles provide a striking feature within the building itself and we are greatly looking forward to beginning teaching in there, inspiring pupils to develop their own creative skills.”

The original 1969 art and design centre, a single-storey structure out of keeping with the rest of the school, has been removed to make way for the new building, which will be completed by November.

George Houlton of Hull are the main contractors on the project.