Mark Cranston, 56, took up brick collecting as a hobby in 2010 after realising he had propped open his garden shed door with a brick from a former colliery, Yahoo News reports.

He said: “I was just looking for a brick to keep the garage door open and the first I picked up had a name on it. The first brick was the one from Whitehill Colliery in Ayrshire which peaked my interest.

“When I looked it up online I was surprised by the history behind bricks. I started to see there was a lot more bricks out there.”

The former cop from Jedburgh now has thousands of bricks from England, Scotland, Wales and abroad, dating back as far as 1833.

He runs his own website called Scottish Brick History and is regularly tipped off about demolitions in order to locate more bricks.

He said: “Over time I’ve met other folk out and about, online and through email. They look for bricks for me or send me photographs and drop me hints of buildings coming down. There’s also other people who’ve once had a brick collection and donated them to me.”