After buying Chartwell House in Kent in 1922, Sir Winston Churchill carried out various major works. Around 1928 he asked his good friend George Mowlem-Burt where he could find bricks to match his house. George suggested that Churchill contact his friend, Bertrand Cardain Lamb.

Mr Churchill arranged to visit the Lambs brickworks at Godstone. At the time Bertrand and his wife were on holiday in South Africa, and their sons, Richard (18) and Anthony (20) had been left in charge of the business. Churchill explained to Richard that he was unable to source bricks to match those at Chartwell. Richard agreed to visit Chartwell with samples to try and find a match.

On his first visit, Richard was unable to find a match that satisfied him. It was agreed to remove four bricks from an existing wall to allow Lambs to match them perfectly. This was with the proviso that, should Lambs be unable to match them, they would pay for them to be replaced in the wall.

On Richard Lamb’s second visit, the samples were a good match. Sir Winston agreed that Lambs would supply him with 4,004 bricks: 4,000 were to be paid for; the remaining four would be provided free of charge to replace those removed from the wall.

During this visit the two men had lengthy discussions on bricklaying, and Richard gave Mr Churchill a demonstration. (In 1928 Winston Churchill received honorary membership of the local Bricklaying Union, but gave it up after political pressure and objections from Union Members.)

On returning from his trip, Bertrand visited Chartwell House to check on the service his young son had provided. On meeting Mr Churchill, the two men got on so well that Winston insisted Bertrand stay for lunch. Many glasses of wine later, Bertrand Lamb emerged having acquired a cigar-smoking habit which, much to the annoyance of his family, he continued into old age.