Mysterious Paw Prints


Paw-prints in the brick floor of the Laundry House
It all started with a chance sighting of animal footprints in the Laundry House. The print was not the result of dirty paws but rather a set of indentations in a brick. A colleague was quick to point out that the marks reminded him of Roman bricks and tiles. I was unfamiliar with the phenomenon but was delighted to find a whole host of examples on-line. My favourite is an example from Northumberland which dates from the 1st century. This Roman tile has three pig-trotter prints and two faint dog paw-prints. So how did the prints end up in our bricks? The secret lays in the process of brick making. 
1st Century Roman Tile-Northumberland
Bricks and tiles have a long history of being dried in the sun before they are baked in the ferocious heat of a kiln. This basking in the sun lets a lot of the moisture escape. This may seem like extra work when the clay could just be packed into the kiln and fired, but it is worth the effort. A more gentle loss of moisture is a good safe guard against kiln explosions, an event which does not produce well-shaped bricks. 

By ensuring a good finished product, manufacturers were able to reduce waste and cut down on the number of damaged bricks which couldn't be sold. The only problem with this approach was that as the bricks lay out in the sun to gently dry, a menagerie of animals such as dogs, cats, rats and even pigs, were free to traipse all over them. This left signature paw prints in the soft clay.

It is lovely to imagine a link with the little animal who left the prints on our red bricks. We are undecided if the critter is most likely to have been a dog, cat or pine-martin!  I recently heard that some people favour bricks with a print in them because they are meant to bring luck to the buildings in which they are used. Unfortunately I am not sure the former inmates of Portumna Workhouse would agree.

By Elizabeth Carter

Image of Roman Tile courtesy of http://www.skullsite.co.uk/prints/archaeological/pig/arch_pig.htm



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