The Brickmakers of St Albans
A Talk given to the St Albans & Hertfordshire Architectural & Archaeological Society at St Albans on 7th January 2003

Blanks & Lefebure
of Sydney, New South Wales
Brickmaking Machine

Installed 1894

Brick-making Machine. – We understand it is proposed to form a company, with a capital of £50,000 for the purpose of placing on the markets of Great Britain and Ireland, the "Invicta" brick-making machine, invented by Messrs Blanks and Lefebure of Sydney, New South Wales. It is claimed for this machine that it produces bricks by the semi-dry process at a cheaper rate than any other machine, and the bricks have been pronounced by competent experts in Australia to be superior to all other machine-made bricks. The machine is at work, or shortly will be, at Messrs Reynold’s brickmaking works on Bernards Heath.

Herts Advertiser, 23^rd June, 1894

Talk: This Australian machine almost certainly came to Jacob Reynolds' brickworks because Frederick Blanks, one-time secretary of the St Albans Cricket Club was a cousin to George Blanks of Sydney.

Supplementary Information

See Blanks & Lefebure Brickmaking Machine

If you can add to the information given above tell me.