Hand Laid Bricks: Unearthing the Past

I forgot to mention that there will be no specific chronology in this blog. Unfortunately, the time for chronographing my efforts to find the build date of my second mother's house is long past. So my entries on it will be as things come to me and as I remember them.

My latest discovery at my second mother's house comes from a bout of super impulsiveness and a five year desire. Before I get to my discovery, though, I have to give you a little background on the backyard as that is where the discovery was made.

When my second mother moved into the house, there was an old, rotting stump in the almost in the middle of the backyard. At the time, she had three dogs: Brownie, Dougie (pronounced Doogie), and Draco. Draco was the youngest of the three, and went on a digging spree for a period...much to my chagrin as I had to mow the yard and did not appreciate twisting my ankle. That is, until one day when I came across three bricks that Draco uncovered in his digging spree. Just three bricks, in a line, about a foot and a half away from the old stump.Over the next few years, I'd occasionally take a shovel and just press stick it onto the ground, trying to figure out what the bricks were. There was a dip in the ground next to the three Draco uncovered, but I was wondering if maybe there had been a walkway or something. Over the next few years I would occasionally take a shovel and walk a straight line back from the three exposed bricks trying to find how far back they went. Still, I was never allowed to actually dig anything.

Late last fall, I was clearing out grass that had grown in front of the basement door and accidentally uncovered a brick walkway leading away from the basement door. I asked for permission to continue uncover the walkway if I could find somewhere to put the displaced dirt. That particular walkway only went about three feet as it curved into the present stairs leading from the back door into the backyard. It was three bricks wide, and was obviously laid into the ground by hand. The were, as I found them, perfectly level and seemed painstakingly laid. 

Hard to see, but there are old bricks still with a coat of surface dirt, but you can clearly see how deeply they had been buried.

The next Friday I returned from a particularly bad day at work (I was staying with my second mother while working a temp job in Chapel Hill) and borrowed an axe from a friend. I had tried taking a chainsaw to the stump about a month before, but I didn't want to dull the chain by going into the dirt. Armed with what I assumed was a decent axe, I went to town on the stump. Apparently, the axe was duller than a butter knife. Still, momentum prevailed. Slowly, but surely, and with the assistance of the hatchet I used six years earlier, I began to break through roots.

Ok, so what? I started to get the stump out and then it came out, right? Hell no! That thing put up a huge fight. There were places that actually sparked when I hit them with the tools. By the time the sun began to set, the stump was nearly root free. So I grabbed two shovels and began to try to leverage it out, only to find more places that needed to be cut through. Finally, around dusk, I had the stump broken free of all but the tap root. I had also managed to break both shovels. So, being the MacGuyver want-to-be that I am, I went to my car and got my jack. I stuck it under one side of the stump, and began to jack it up. I placed some pieces of cement, rocks, and bricks and braced where I had jacked and moved to another place.

Finally, around 6:30 I had the entire stump raised into the air; suspended only by the tap root. After hours of cursing at the stump, trying to rationalize with it (yes, I went so far as to say "don't you want to join everyone who ever enjoyed you? Don't you want to join the rest of your body?") I was on the verge of giving up. Exhausted, thirsty, and ready to just give up forever I walked over to where I originally jacked it up, grabbed two roots, and pulled. Then, nothing. I don't know if it was because I felt so weak or what, but I couldn't even feel myself pulling on the stump, until...creeeeaaaaakkkkk, creeeeaaaaakkkkk, CRACK. The stump flipped out of the hole.

Me: 1, Stump: 8 (6 years, two shovels)

Once a thriving three, now a garden decoration. No joke. It now sits like this in a garden.

Well, now that I had the stump out of the ground, I needed dirt to fill in where it had once been. So, the next day, I began to dig around those three bricks. What I found was more than I ever could have hoped for...well, other than money. I found a beautiful, hand-laid brick walkway that led right to the back stairs. The reason why I could never trace it before? It curved. I also couldn't pin point anything because the three that Draco uncovered were just three bricks behind each other, unlike the rest of the walkway that were three bricks wide!

My friend, and son of my second mother, who took took pottery classes at Guilford College and is amazing with clay identified the bricks as handmade, low-fired. Someone, sometime, made these bricks himself (I'm assuming it's a male given the likely hood that these bricks predate 1900) and then made a pathway out of them. Some had quartz and feldspar showing. Others, a purple hue indicating a high sulfur content (if I recall).

Since uncovering the bricks, I have completely removed them from the ground in small groups, put sand below them for drainage, and reset them. I also modified the area at the bottom of the stairs to make it match the width of the stairs (see photo). Currently, bricks have been set on top of the ground to extend the walkway a little further and then into a round patio (pictures to come later).

I added a fourth row at the base of the stairs to make it match the width of the stairs.

There is no telling where this walkway once went or exactly why it was buried. My best guess is that years of grass clippings and leaves buried the long forgotten walkway. The same thing happened to slate stepping stones at my old house.

Moral of the story: if you have stepping stones or a painstakingly made walkway: bag your grass clippings or at least make sure to clean them!