Gartcraig brick found in Australia
— 05/12/2023Found by Joe Fletcher at “Turonville” in Tarana, NSW Australia. The property is a farm dating back to the 1850s. Gartcraig Fire Clay Works, By Millerston, Glasgow. . . . .
M 2 R
Found on the site of the Jenny Lind Brickworks, adjacent to the Ravenscraig Steelworks, Lanarkshire.
Note the ‘2’ is set within a triangle shape.
John Bramall has pointed out that this is likely to stand for Morgan Refractories Ltd, a division of Morgan Crucible Ltd. They used a ‘triangle’ emblem as a trademark.
Morgan Crucible Ltd had an association with the Douglas Firebrick Company, Dalry, Ayrshire. Please read this as it is of interest. Click me.
John thinks such bricks may have been manufactured at the Douglas Fireclay Works by Morgan Refractories Ltd and states – I think they would have used MR for their Scottish made products – which I think would have been the high Alumina brands. I’d guess they’d also use the Douglas brand for the lower grade firebricks. Your Douglas piece refers to the triangle being used for Kyanite (higher alumina) raw materials. The Morgan factories in England didn’t make bricks except for plumbago products. Their big factory at Neston, Wirral might have made bricks at one time plus monolithics (Tri-Mor brand) but by the early 1970s were making ceramic fibres – they were early adopters of that technology – they had a manufacturing license from Babcock & Wilcox (inventors USA) and sold their product with the B&W brand name Kaowool. Looking at their current trademarks I can see that they still have Tri-Mor and I saw somewhere on their website that they are selling 90%-99.5% High Alumina bricks (made abroad? bought in?) – their SR brand. See here http://www.
It is likely from the composition of the brick that this is a press made, chemically bonded brick. These were not fired.
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Below – 05/09/1950 – The Scotsman – Annual report for Morgan Crucible Ltd.
Below – 08/1960 – The Refractories Journal – Morgan Crucible Group, Neston, Cheshire ‘MR2’ super duty bricks exported to The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited, NSW, Australia. (Note – SBH – Does this infer that ‘MR2’ bricks, if they are the same as the one depicted here, were actually made in Cheshire, England?).
Below – 03/11/1978 – Liverpool Echo – Advert for Morgan Refractories. Note the ‘triangle’ emblem on the bottom line.
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