These tiles are shaped from clay, then fired at a high temperatures or around 2,000 F°. Available in flame red or flame brown. Quarry tile are widely used for hearth tiles and floors as extremely durable materials are needed for these purposes. They are equally suitable for use indoors or outdoors. Quarry tiles are sometimes used as a wall finish and also less commonly for countertops, though wide grout joints can make cleaning countertops built in this way quite difficult. Almost all working commercial kitchens specify that a quarry tile to be used owing to its slip resistance and non-porous attributes.
Vast quantities of high quality "Etruria Marl" clay were discovered in the Ruabon area of Wales in the Nineteenth Century. This led to the heralded the beginning of quarry tile and terracotta tile production on an industrial scale. The increase in business It also brought great prosperity to many factory owners and boosted employment in villages like Ruabon and Gresford.
By the turn of the Twentieth Century, several factories employed roughly two thousand people. If was from the distincitve red bricks that were produced during this era that the quarry tiles got their name, hence the popular Ruabon Tiles which would became famous. The material so captured the public imagination that it was chosen to build mani important pubic buildings including hospitals, universities, schools, law courts, pubs and other notable buildings in cities throughout the United Kingdom.
Evidence of the heritage of these products is still evident in the architectural landscape of the Wrexham area where these hard, highly durable bricks were used for the construction for the many red buildings in the area, also becoming very popular right across the UK during the late Victorian era of re-building.
The term 'Redbrick" which was applied to the building of universities in industrial cities came directly from the use of Ruabon tiles and bricks. Notable examples include Liverpool University, were the Victoria Building was constructed in 1892 from Ruabon brick and Ruabon tile. Ruabon quarry tiles are a staple of the built heritage of our country and connect us with our architectural past, with its emphasis on values of practicality and aesthetic appeal.
