A wonderful opportunity for us to get hands on and brick dusty, with designing, planning and laying of a handmade brick tile floor in a 16th Century house. The areas of floor to be tiled were relatively modern concrete and on two levels. We chose to raise the level of the higher floor to match that of the adjacent kitchen, providing flush access to the understair area from that side. So firstly we added a concrete layer to this element, and patched holes in the existing concrete. The brick tiles were sourced from Aldershaws Handmade Tiles in Sedlescombe, East Sussex. It's well worth a visit to their works to see how each tile is carefully handmade in the forms, dried and then fired. They use local Wadhurst clay from their own site, which gives the tiles wonderful provenance and a local connection. Laying them took time, from carefully setting out, laying, sealing, grouting, sealing again and the final leathery wax coat. We also used a number of special tiles from Aldershaws, made to mediaeval design, which involves removing areas of wet clay and pouring clay slip into the resultant patterns prior drying and firing. These were positioned intuitively at laying out to good effect.