The purpose of the sentence is to describe the historically most popular method of building walls. The first clause announces this topic and the second clause describes the particular method. The clearest, most efficient way to accomplish these two pieces of business is to use a parallel structure.The ways to build in the first clause is narrowed to the single way to form and to lay in the second clause. There is no need to alternate the verb phrases between active and passive voice or to shift tenses.
A. The active gerund phrase the forming of bricks does not fi t with the passive verb phrase that follows (they are laid).
B. The verb phrases forming the mud … and to lay them are not parallel.
C. In addition to faulty parallelism between having bricks formed and they were laid, the tense in the second half of the sentence unaccountably shifts from present to past.
D.Correct. The phrases to form and to lay in the second clause are parallel to to build in the first clause.
E. The relative clause beginning with which apparently (but nonsensically) describes the closest nouns, mud or clay, rather than bricks.