Brick Bonds: A Life in Britain's Building Trade, 1902-1987

Book excerpt: Despite recent academic interest in oral history and working-class writing, few other autobiographies reveal daily life for early twentieth-century itinerant gasworks bricklayers, or 'retort-setters'. Charles Hansford recounts constructing his own home single-handedly aged twenty-one, describes economic privations and poor weather conditions. 'Brick Bonds' documents his relationships with fellow workers and specific building techniques they used (a bond is a brick-laying pattern). His personal memories of enemy action in wartime, working-class social and leisure pursuits in London, the 1924 National Building Strike, and notable ships like Titanic and Bismarck are set into historical context. Hansford reveals an evolving class awareness and trade union activism; a declared Socialist, he readily left building sites in protest, even into the 1970s. His career encompassed Fawley Refinery, Royal Netley War Hospital, British Overseas Airways Company flying-boat bases, and Harrods store in London.