Hammill, Avoca

When picking up old bricks around the place, context is everything.  Most are not stamped with a maker and where a hand made brick is found can be the only way to reasonably determine a maker.  Such is the case with this one.  I found it in a hotel car park in Avoca recently.  People don't value individual bricks as part of their heritage so they can be found just lying around, or dumped in skips.  The only person that I know of who was making this type of brick in this town was John Hammill.

John Hammill (1832 – 1899) arrived in Victoria in November 1852 with his family aboard the ship “Nuggett”; an appropriate name for potential gold diggers.  John however went into brick making, a profession he practiced with his son, also named John, for many years.  He was active from at least 1855 when he is remembered as doing the brick and stone-work for the Avoca Hotel where around 100,000 bricks were used.  From the look of buildings around town, he made both red and cream bricks. 

Chances are that they also made the bricks for the Post Office, Victoria Hotel, Albion Hotel (now closed), the former Hollands Drapery Shop, the former Bank of Victoria building, the Police Residence, the Uniting Church Complex, the Presbyterian Church Complex, the Powder Magazine, the Newsagency, the Pyrenees Cellar building, the former National Schools building and Lalor’s Pharmacy, as well as numerous homes and brick chimneys on timber homes.  Distinctive features of some of Hammil’s work appears to be the use of corbelled brickwork and dark headers.