Why this curious North Yorkshire brick never quite caught on

These superhard, shiny, silvery-blue bricks were made from the slag from the bottom of the Teesside blast furnaces, and now they line the back alleys and yards of Darlington through to Saltburn and have now become historic design features for the drives of larger houses.

While the slag brick is ubiquitous, only a few places, from Richmond to central Middlesbrough, are lined with the Crossley Roadway Paver.

This curiosity was made up on the North York Moors at Commondale, which once boasted one of the largest brickworks in the country.

The works were founded by John Slater Pratt, an extraordinary entrepreneur from Stokesley. He was a printer by trade, and, with an office in London, he printed 300 “cheap novels” that became best-sellers in the 1840s. He invested £30,000 of the proceeds buying land at Commondale where he probably felt he would strike gold – well, ironstone, anyway – although the only notable business he started was the brickworks.

A Crossley Roadway Paver, which can apparently be seen lining Newbiggin in Richmond

It didn’t prosper until it was bought in 1871 by John Crossley, of Stockton, who had a builder’s merchants. His bricks have either his surname or the word “Commondale” pressed into them, and they can be found all over.

His son, Alfred, used the same clay to create art deco pottery which is nearly as sought after as lustrous Linthorpe pottery made in Middlesbrough. The British Museum has an ornamental bottle that he made.

In the late 1930s, Crossley & Son was building a school in central Middlesbrough when an opportunity arose for them to trial their new Crossley Roadway Paver, an orangey brick, by lining a nearby street, Bush Street.

Although the paver provided a smoother drive for motorists than the slag brick, it was a farthing-a-brick more expensive and so it never caught on. Bush Street survives as unique example of an entire street lined with this North York Moors bricks, but some examples can be found cropping up in gutters all over the place. The driveway to Darlington’s Stooperdale offices, now the home of railway pensions, is lined with them as is, for some unknown reason, Newbiggin in Richmond.

Snow at Commondale in the North Yorkshire Moors. It was once the home of one of the country's largest brickworks

COMMONDALE was originally known as Colmandale due to a 7th Century Bishop of Lindisfarne, Bp Colman, who passed through the dale on his way to attend the Synod of Whitby in 664AD. The synod set the date for Easter – which is why we have a Bank Holiday this weekend – but Bp Colman wasn’t happy with the outcome, so he resigned as bishop and with 30 monks retired to the monastery at Iona. He died on Inishbofin Island, off the Galway coast, in 675, but he is still remembered on the North York Moors.