Mark Cranston
Mark is an ex farmer and ex police officer having served 30 years before retiring in 2017. Mark says "I have always had an interest in agricultural and industrial history but my fascination for bricks came out of the blue. In 2010 I saw a brick with a name on it and googled it and from that meagre beginning a hobby of collecting bricks began and this soon became an obsession indeed an addiction! The current plan is to create a museum dedicated to the Scottish brick manufacturing industry of old ... it is a story that needs to be told.
Every brick has a story to tell too. Who made it? Where was it made? Why was it made? From what was it made? Where was it used and in what circumstances? Where was it recovered? Rather than talk about certain local brickworks this talk highlights certain individual bricks, the background stories of which show how important this industry once was to Scotland and indeed the much wider world.