Click on the snap to enlarge and you will see that the nail middle right has been hammered into a small block of wood which had been let into the brickwork at the time it was first laid, grain running into the wall, perhaps in the second half of the nineteenth century, probably to provide a fixing for a bit of ironmongery for holding the flap, visible to the left, open.
A fixing at a time when electric drills had not been invented, so drilling either brick or mortar would be more tiresome that it would be now. Furthermore, plastic plugs for masonry fixings had not been invented either. Altogether easier to let little blocks of wood into the brickwork as you go along, with grain running into the brickwork giving a much better fix than any other way.
Which easier would certainly not be easier now, computer aided technical drawings notwithstanding. Far too much bother to get a bricklayer to trouble his head with fixings for the carpenter who was to follow him. Bad enough getting the right shaped holes for his frames.
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