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Motor Mason, the 1960s bricklaying ‘robot’, discovered in British Pathé archive

Do you know anything about the Motor Mason, a mechanical bricklaying machine filmed in Essex almost 50 years ago?

Footage of the early “robot” dating from 1967 was uploaded to YouTube by newsreel archive British Pathé last year – but the organisation holds no other details.

The Motor Mason, hailed in the one-minute film as the “answer to the shortage of housing”, bears a remarkable resemblance to bricklaying robot SAM, which Construction Manager revealed last week is now commercially available.

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A spokesperson at British Pathé explained that the film would originally have been shot as an “and finally” segment for a bi-weekly news reel. The film was apparently first broadcast in cinemas across the UK in May 1967.

But all that was known about the film was that it was filmed in Shenfield, Essex: “Unfortunately all the information we have on the film, is what the cameraman wrote on the tin,” the spokesperson said.

Echoing current claims on the efficiency of bricklaying robots, the commentary to the film reports that the machine can lay “bricks five to ten times faster than by the ordinary method”.

It also sounds eerily as if it could have been written in 2015, describing the mechanical mason as “possibly the answer to the shortage of housing and any other buildings that can be made of brick. The machine spreads the mortar as easily as a man who has spent half a lifetime doing it, in fact it lays bricks five to ten times faster than by the ordinary method.”

In 1967, mechanisation of construction was hailed as the answer the skills shortages, a guarantor of better quality and a source of future export success.

The commentary continues: “The makers of the machine say it only needs two unskilled men and one bricklayer. Its not only fast but builds perfect walls and is raised and moved along as the wall grows. Its mounted on rails laid parallel to the wall. The makers believe that the Motor Mason only has to be seen by foreign buyers to create demand throughout the western world.”

But it was also apparently seen as a retort to the wave of “brutalist” concrete buildings of the era: “It will step up the demand for bricks which concrete and other materials have been pushing into the background in recent years. So more bricklayers will be required, cheaper houses, more work in the trade as well as quicker building.

“The Motor Mason sounds too good to be true, actually it is modern methods applied to an old craft.”

If you have any more information on the Motor Mason, who invented it and if it was ever used on a site, please post below or email [email protected]