THE PEASANT'S COTTAGE 227
great curved rafters are each connected by two horizontal ties."1
Such was the framework of the majority of small houses and
cottages, built with the help of the village carpenter and re-
quiring no great skill in setting up. Once the framework was
constructed, the walls and roof followed fairly easily. Few in-
stances are recorded of the use of stone for the walls—even in
good stone country—but almost everywhere wattle-and-daub,
or cob, or earth and mud were the principal materials in use. In
the first of these a number of sticks were stuck upright, and
twigs were woven in and out between them forming a sort of
rude lattice work, and on this was thrown the dab until it was of
the right thickness. The fragile and easily combustible nature of
such buildings needs no emphasising, but may help to explain
the constant references in medieval writers to the ruinous con-
dition of the countryside after plague or war.2
Other houses, again, were built with mud walls, or of cob as it
is called in the Western counties. A-Ir Addy thus describes the
process in Yorkshire:
The walls are built of layers of mud and straw which vary from five
to seven inches in thickness, no vertical joints being visible. On the
top of each layer is a thin covering of straw, with the ends of the straws
pointing outwards, as in a corn stack. The way in which mud walls
were built is remembered in the neighbourhood. A quantity of mud
was mixed with straw, and the foundation laid with this mixture.
Straw was then laid across the top, whilst the mud was wet, and the
whole was left to dry and harden in the sun. As soon as the first layer
was dry another layer was put on, so that the process was rather a slow
one. Finally the roof was thatched, and the projecting ends of straws
trimmed off the walls.3
The majority of cottages were thatched, although wooden
shingles were not unknown. The thatch was nearly always a
1 H. Hughes and H. L. North, The Old Cottages of Snowdonia, 5.
3 Hugh, St (R.S.), 69; Essex Review, xin, 219.
8 Evolution of the English House, 40, 47 and n. i. Country Life (1914), 395.
Cf. Thomas Hardy's account: "What was called mud-wall was really a
composition of chalk, clay and straw—essentially unbaked brick. This was
mixed up into a sort of dough-pudding close to where the cottage was to
be built. The mixing was performed by treading and shovelling—women
sometimes being called in to tread—and the straw was added to bind the mass
together___It was then thrown by pitch-forks on to the wall, where it was
trodden down to a thickness of about two feet, till a rise of about three feet
had been reached. This was left to settle for a day or two, etc,": The Timesp
March n, 1927.
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