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Not many buildings in the district were made purely from stone. Because there are few large quarries nearby, stone is an expensive building material. Some homes have modern stone cladding on the front. |
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Timber was common in Medieval, Tudor and Stuart periods in Wakefield because it was cheaper than brick or stone. During the Tudor period in the 1400s and 1500s many of Britain’s forests were cut down. This then made timber more expensive. Many timber framed buildings survived into the 1900s but most were demolished by the 1940s. |
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Brick has remained the material of choice for building houses for over 400 years. When timber prices increased in the 1500s and 1600s, brick became the cheaper option. In Victorian times, when Wakefield’s population grew very rapidly, brick making factories opened all over the district, especially in Normanton. |
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The modernist movement in the early 1900s used concrete as the main material for building houses, but not many were built in Wakefield before the Second World War. Concrete buildings such as high rise flats, office blocks and multi storey car parks were built in the district from the 1960s onwards, but not many houses. Today, concrete is used for floors and in walls in brick built houses today. |
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In the late Georgian period a type of painted plaster called Stucco was popular on the outside of buildings. It was a way of decorating a building, and in the case of this museum, made bricks look like stone. |
