Henry George Matthews established H.G Matthews in 1923. The traditional techniques that he used have been passed on to his descendants who still run the works today. Although he may never have imagined, as a coal burner, that 90 years after he founded the company his yard would be firing bricks with wood, as even in his day wood firing was all but a distant memory. In our long history our bricks have been used on many of the most important and prestigious buildings in England. While investing in some of the latest technology in order to remain efficient we have vehemently maintained the essence of what makes our product unique, keeping the hand making skills alive as well as firing in traditional updraft Scotch kilns which are fundamentally unchanged in design since Roman times. Above all what makes our bricks unique is the clay they are made from. This clay, found only in the Chiltern Hills, has been used for centuries because of the beautiful colours that it lends to the finished brick. It is hard to find and extract as it is only found in small isolated pockets thus making very large scale brickmaking impossible in this area.
