Cathrinesminde Brickworks

Facts

Wall to wall bricks from Flensborg Fiord

By Torben A. Vestergaard, Mag.art. i etnografi og socialantropologi, Aarhus Universitet 1979. (1 story)

Cathrinesminde Brickworks on Broagerland near Flensborg Fiord was built in 1732 for farming purposes. The farming side of the business was divided off in 1880. And in the 1890s, Andreas Hollensen introduced machines and steam engines, and built a circular kiln with 16 chambers. The circular kiln could fire bricks around the clock – 7,500 bricks per chamber, or one or two million a year. The workmen's houses date back to the same period. The brickworks closed in 1968, when the new type of kiln that was needed was considered too expensive an investment. Now preserved as a department of Museum Sønderjylland, the brickworks was designated one of 25 national industrial memorials in 2007.

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Flensborg bricks to Copenhagen

Story written by Torben A. Vestergaard

Time / Periode 1732 1890

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Bricks have been produced at Flensborg Fiord since the Middle Ages, mostly for local use. It was easy to ship bricks off from the brickworks along the coast. Frederiksberg Castle was built in 1699-1703 from bricks from Aabenraa and Flensborg Fiord. Reconstruction work after the fire of Copenhagen in 1728 created intense demand and Flensborg bricks became a very successful export product. Copenhagen's second fire in 1795 and the bombardment in 1807 also boosted sales. In 1796, Flensborg and Sønderborg shipped a staggering 7.5 million bricks to Copenhagen. The area around Broager and Nybøl Cove had the largest concentration of brickworks in Northern Europe, about 40 or so in 1900. Today, you can still spot small four-centimetre-high 18th and 19th century Flensborg bricks in buildings in Copenhagen, Christiansfeldt and in the former Danish West Indian colonies, for example.