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Cottage building In cob, pise, chalk &

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COTTAGE BUILDING IN
COB, PISE, CHALK & CLAY

Jf'irsf Edition, September 1919
Second Edition {Revised and Enlarged), July 1920

COTTAGE BUILDING

COB, PISE, CHALK &* CLAY

A RENAISSANCE

CLOUqH WILLIAMS-ELLIS

WITH AN INTRODUCTION

J. St. LOE STRACHEY

SECOND EDITION
REVISED AND ENLARGED

LONDON

PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICES OF "COUNTRY LIFE," 20,
TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.2, AND BY
GEORGE NEWNES, LTD., 8-11, SOUTHAMPTON STREET,
STRAND, W.C,2. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

MCMXX

^^^-^205

Preface to Second Edition

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The exhaus;^on of the first edition of this book, within so
short a time of its publication, makes it difficult to add
much new matter for the reissue now called for, or, in the
light of subsequent research and experience, to revise what
had already been written.

Any book that seemed to show a way of meeting the
present building difficulties, however partially, was fairly
assured of a welcome, but the somewhat unforeseen demand
for my small contribution to the great volume of literature
on cottage-building is, I think, to be attributed chiefly to
its, description of Pise-building.

Of the very large number of letters that reach me from
readers of the book, quite ninety-nine out of every hun-
dred are concerned with Pise.

The other methods of building have their advocates and
exponents, but it is clearly Pise that has caught the atten-
tion of the public as well as of the Press both at home
and abroad, and it is to this method of construction that
I have chiefly devoted my attention since the writing of
sthe book as it first appeared.

In our English climate Pise-buUding is a summer craft,
and the smaU-scale experiments of one person through a
single summer cannot in the nature of things add very
greatly to the sum of our knowledge of what is possible
with Pise and of what is not.

Most of the new data have come through the building of
Mr. Strachey's demonstration house, an account of which is
included in the present volume.

At the time of writing, various tests are being carried
out with the help of the National Physical Laboratory, but
the results, though exceedingly encouraging, are not yet
ready for publication.'

The fact that Pis6-building is essentially a " Dry-earth
method " makes necessary the creation of artificial summer
conditions under which the experiments may be conducted

' Certain of these have since been issued and will be found in Ap
pendix IV. at the end of the book.

Preface to Second Edition

during the past winter. As a result of these researches,
a considerable mass of useful data has become available
for the opening of the present building season.*

Much helpful information is also likely to come to us
from the Colonies, particularly from Rhodesia and British
East Africa, where there is great activity in Pise-building,
and where there is no " close season " such as our winter
imposes upon us here.

It is instructive also to note that great interest in Pis6-
building has been aroused in Canada and in Scandinavia,
the two countries that we were wont to associate particu-'
larly with timber-building.

From both I have received a number of letters com-
plaining of " the lumber shortage," and discussing the
advantages of Pise as compared with their traditional
wood-construction.

If these great timber countries are themselves feeling the
pinch, the advocates of wooden houses for England may
find that they are not merely barking up the wrong tree, :
but up a tree that is not even there.

The timber famine is, in any case, a calamity to any-
one dependent on building, that is to everyone, for even
a Pis6 house must still have a roof and floors and joinery. %

But to invoke the timber house as gur salvation under|
existing conditions seems to be singularly perverse and un-*
helpful. Pis6, at all events, seems to offer us a more
promising field for exploration than most of the other,
heterodox methods of construction that have been
suggested, too often upon credentials that will not bear
any but the most cursory scrutiny.

Pis6, even now, is stiU in its experimental infancy.

It has yet to prove itself in the fields of National Hous-
ing and of competitive commercicd building schemes on a
large scale.

Lastly, Pis6 does not claim to solve the housing problem.
There is no solution unless, by some miracle, the present pur-
chasing power of the sovereign appreciates by 200 per cent.

Clough Williams-Ellis.

22, South Eaton Place,
London, S.W.i.
May 1920.

* See Appendix IV.

Contents

CONTENTS

PAGB

INTRODUCTION II

GENERAL SURVEY 26

I
COB 33

pisie; de terre 57

III

CHALK 107

IV
UNBURNED CLAY AND EARTH BRICKS . . • 121

APPENDIX 127

INDEX ^39

Illustrations

ILLUSTRATIONS

COB HOUSE BUILT BY ME. ERNEST GIMSON, NEAR BUDLEIGH"

SALTERTON, DEVON ' . . . . Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

PISE WAGGON-HOUSE AT NEWLANDS CORNER . . . l8

THE NEWLANDS WAGGON-HOUSE (INTERIOR) . . . l8

THE BEGINNING OF A PISE FRUIT-HOUSE . . . IQ

THE FRUIT-HOUSE COMPLETED WITH ROOF OF PEAT BLOCKS

ON ROUGH BOARDING ...... I9

MODEL OF A PISE DE TERRE HOUSE TO BE BUILT IN THREE

SUCCESSIVE STAGES ...... 22

WAYSIDE STATION OF PIS4 AT SIMONDIUM, SOUTH AFRICA,

FRONT AND BACK ELEVATIONS OF COTTAGE DESIGNED BY SIR

EDWIN LUTYENS AND MR. ALBAN SCOTT ... 28

PLAN OF COTTAGE DESIGNED BY SIR EDWIN LUTYENS AND

MR. ALBAN SCOTT 29

ANOTHER VIEW OF THE COB HOUSE BUILT BY MR. ERNEST

GIMSON, NEAR BUDLEIGH SALTERTON, DEVON . . 34

A FINE SPECIMEN OF A DEVONSHIRE COB HOUSE • • . 35

A DEVONSHIRE COB FARMHOUSE, PROBABLY BETWEEN 200

AND 300 YEARS OLD 36

A COB-BUILT VILLAGE 37

A DEVONSHIRE FARM, LOCAL MATERIAL (COB) ... 42

DEVON COUNTRY HOUSE, BUILT OF DEVON COB • • . 43

Illustrations

COB HOUSE TEMP. ELIZABETH, LEWISHILL .

ANOTHER DEVONSHIRE (COB) FARMHOUSE, WEEKE BARTON

CEILINGS OF MODELLED PLASTER FROM OLD COB HOUSES
IN DEVON

TAaHG PAGE

A COB GARDEN-WALL WITH THATCHED COPING .

PIS^ PLANT AND IMPLEMENTS

DIAGRAM OF MARK V PISE SHUTTERING .

MARK V SHUTTERING

A SIMPLE MOULD FOR PISE BLOCKS

BLOCK-MOULDS, LARGE AND SMALL

SKETCH OF A PISE HOUSE IN COURSE OF ERECTION

THE NEWLANDS CORNER BUILDING

THE COTTAGE FROM THE SOUTH-EAST

THE GARDEN COURT

THE BACKYARD

FRAMING THE ROOF

AN INTERIOR, SHOWING FIRE-BRICK HEARTH FIRE .

DETAILS OF CHALK CONSTRUCTION AT AMESBURY .

COTTAGES AT COLDHARBOUR, AMESBURY

THREE CHALK COTTAGES AT HURSLEY PARK

MARSH COURT, HAMPSHIRE

BRICK-AND-CHALK VAULTING AT THE DEANERY GARDEN
SONNING

ONCE CORN HALL, NOW COUNCIL SCHOOL
A ROW OF CLAY-LUMP COTTAGES
ENGINEERING WORKSHOPS

CONSIDERATIONS

" If all available brickworks were to produce

AT their highest LIMIT OF OUTPUT AND WITH
ALL THE labour THEY WANTED AT THEIR DISPOSAL
THEY COULD ONLY TURN OUT 4,000,000,000 BRICKS
IN A YEAR AS AGAINST A PRE-WAR AVERAGE OF

2,800,000,000." — {See Report by Committee appointed
by Ministry of Reconstruction to consider the post-war
position of building.)

The first year's programme of working-class housing
alone calls for at least 6,000,000,000 bricks. That is
to say, unless wall materials other than brick are freely
used, we shall fall alarmingly short of what the popu-
lation of Great Britain needs in bare accommodation,
and all building and engineering projects whatsoever
other than housing must be postponed indefinitely.

" The COUNTRY districts OF ENGLAND AND- WALES ARE
UNSURPASSED FOR VARIETY AND BEAUTY OF CHAR-
ACTER, AND IT WOULD BE NOTHING LESS THAN A
NATIONAL MISFORTUNE IF THE INCREASED DEVELOPMENT
OF SMALL HOLDINGS WERE TO RESULT IN THE ERECTION
OF BUILDINGS UNSUITED TO THEIR ENVIRONMENT AND

UGLY IN APPEARANCE." — [Extruct from the report sub-
mitted by the Departmental Committee appointed to
inquire as to Buildings for Small Holdings-, 1913.)

INTRODUCTION

The country is faced by a dilemma probably greater and
more poignant than any with which it has hitherto had to
deal. It needs, and needs at once, a million new houses,
and it has not only utterly inadequate stores of material
with which to build them, but has not even the plant by
which that material can be rapidly created. There is not
merely a shortage, but an actual famine everywhere as
regards the things out of which houses are made. Bricks
are wanted by the ten thousand million, but there are
practically no bricks in sight. All that the brickyards of
the United Kingdom can do, working all day and every
day, is to turn out something hke four thousand million
a year. But to those who want houses at once, what is
the use of a promise of bricks in five years' time ? To tell
them to turn to the stone quarries is a mere derision. Let
alone the cost of work and of transport, it is only in a
few favoured places that the rocks will give us what we
want. Needless to say we are short, too, of Ume and cement,
and probably shall be shorter. No coal, no quicklime, and
No coal, no cement, and as things look now, it is going to be
a case, if not of no coal, at any rate of much less coal.
Even worse is the shortage in timber — the material hitherto
deemed essential for the making of roofs, doors, windows and
floors. Raw timber is hardly obtainable, and seasoned
timber does not exist. The same story has to be told about
tiles, slates, corrugated iron, and every other form of
" legitimate " roofing substance. There are none to be had.

12 Introduction

In this dread predicament what are we to do as a
nation ? What we must not do is at any rate quite clear.
We must not lie down in the high road of civilisation and
cry out that we are ruined or betrayed, or that the world
is too hard for us, and that we must give up the task of
living in houses. Whether we Uke it^or not we have got
to do something about the housing question, and we have
got to do it at once, and there is an end. Translated into
terms of action, this means that as we have not got enough
of the old forms of material we must turn to others and
learn how to house ourselves with materials such as we have
not used before. Once again necessity must be the mother
of invention, or rather, of invention and revival, for in any-
thing so old and universal as the housing problem it is
too late to be ambitious. Here we always find that there
has been an ancient Assyrian or Egyptian or a primitive
man in front of us.

It is the object of the present book to attack part of
the problem of how to build without bricks, and indeed
without mortar, and equally important, as far as possible
without the vast cost of transporting the heavy material
of the house from one quarter of England to another.
That is my apology for introducing to the public a work
deaUng with what I can hear old-fashioned master-builders
describing as the " bastard " forms of construction. One
of these is Pis6 de terre, the old system of building with
walls formed of rammed or compressed earth : a system
which was once known throughout Europe and of which
the primitive tribesmen of Arizona and New Mexico knew
the secret. Down to our own day it has been practised
with wonderful success in the VaUey of the Rh6ne, Then
come our own cob, once the cottage material par excellence
of Devonshire and the West of England, our system of
building with plain clay blocks, a plan indigenous in the
Eastern counties, and again the use of chalk and chalk
pis6.

The Search for Cheap Material 13

Pise de Teree

For me Pis6 de terra, ever since I heard of it, has offered
special attractions. It, and it alone provides, or if one must
be cautious, appears to provide the way to turn an old
dream of mine and of many other people into a reality.
My connection with the problem of housing, and especially
of rural housing, i.e. cottage housing, now nearly a quarter
of a century old, has been on the side of cheap material.
Rightly or wrongly (I know that many great experts in
building matters think quite wrongly), I have had the
simplicity to believe that if you are to get cheap housing
youmust get it by the use of cheap material. It has
always seemed to me that there is no other way. What
more natural than first to cisk why building material was
so dear, and then what was the cause of its dearness ? I
found it in the fact that bricks are very expensive things
to make, that stones are very expensive things to quarry,
that cements are very expensive things to manufacture,
and worst of aU, that all these things are very heavy and
very expensive to drag about the country, and to " dump "
on the site in some lonely situation where cottages or a
small-holder's house and outbuildings are, to use the
conventional phrase, "urgently demanded." Therefore,
to the unfeigned amusement, nay, contempt of all my
architectural friends, I spent a great deal of my leisure
in the years before the war in racking my brains in the search
for cheap material. My deep desire was to find something
in the earth out of which walls could be made. My ideal
was a man or group of men with spades and pickaxes coming
upon the land and creating the walls of a house out of what
they found there. I wanted my house, my cottage in
"Cloud-Cuckoo Land," to rise like the lark from the
fiirrows. But I was at once dissuaded from my purpose
by cautious and scientific persons. The chemists, if they
did not scoff like the architects, were visibly perturbed.

14 Introduction

" Your dream is impossible," they said. " Nature abhors
it as much as she used to be supposed to abhor a vacuum.
If your soil is clay, and you can afford the time and cost
of erecting kilns, and bringing coal to the spot to make
the bricks, you can no doubt turn the earth on the spot
into a house, but even then you had far better buy them
of those that sell. Your dream of having some chemical
which will mix with the earth and turn it into a kind of
stone, is the merest delusion. It is the nature of the
earth to kill anything in the way of cement that is mixed
with it. For example, even a little earth will kill concrete
or mortar. Unless you wash your sand most carefully,
and free it from all earth stain, you will ruin your concrete
blocks," I appeared to be literally " up against " a brick
wall. It was that or nothing. And then, and when things
seemed at their very worst, a kind correspondent of The
Spectator showed me a way of escape. I felt Uke a man
lost in underground passages who suddenly sees a tiny
square of hght and knows that it means the way out.
Somebody wrote, from South Africa I think, asking why
I didn't find the thing I wanted in Pis6 de terre, much
used in Australia, and occasionally in Cape Colony. Then
came a rush of enlightenment. People who had seen
and even lived in such houses wrote to The Spectator, and
the world indeed for the moment seemed alive with Pis6
de terre. I was even lent the " Farmer's Handbook " of
New South Wales, in which the State Government provides
settlers with an elaborate description of how to build in
Pis6, and how to make the necessary shuttering for doing
so. It was then, too, that I began to hear of the seven-
teenth and eighteenth-century buildings of Pis6 in the
Rhone Valley. In fact, everybody but I seemed to know
all there was to be known about Pis6 de terre. For the
moment indeed, the situation seemed Uke that described
in Punch's famous picture of the young lady and the
German professor. " What is Volapuk?" asks the young

Experiments with ^^ Pise" 15

ady. " Ze universal language," says the professor.
' Where is it spoken ? " " No vairs." Pisd de terre
ppeared to be the universal system of building, but as
ar as I could make out, it was practised " no yairs," or
it any rate not in Europe.

I had got as far as the position described above, when
lown swept the war upon Europe, and everything had. to
)e postponed in favour of the immediate need of filUng the
anks of the nation's army and teaching the men how to
ight our enemies. As the war went on, however, the
lemand for rapid, cheap, and temporary building became
^ery great, and I felt I should be justified in trying some
ixperiments with Pise de terre, even in spite of the di£&-
;ulty of obtaining labour.

I think i can best illustrate the nature of Pis6 and what
t can do, and I beheve will do, if I shortly recount in
iironological order these humble pioneer efforts.

In the summer of 1915 I found that it was necessary in
;he interests of the hospital established in my house to
ind a place in which to store apples, for the men in blue
:onsiuned them in incredible quantities. I thought I
vould try Pise. Accordingly, I had some shuttering made
)n the AustraUan model — not splendid scientific shuttering
luch as is described in the body of this work, but still shutter-
ng quite sufficient for the purpose. With great rapidity
L Uttle fruit-house was put up, roofed with boards, and
:overed with blocks of compressed peat in order to make
I roof which would be both vermin-proof and also keep
mt the heat and the frost. In my ignorance and my
lurry, I now find that I violated every sound rule of Pise
instruction. I built the waUs during a week of rain,
fhen the earth was wet, which was a great mistake ; and
'. did not clear out the stones, which was another error
hat prevented the walls from being homogeneous. Worst

1 6 Introduction

of all, as soon as the walls were built (and very pretty walls
they were, looking something like soft brown marble), I
painted them over with tar, which of course would not
enter the wet wall, but only made a skin, which in a few
months peeled off exactly Mke the bark off a plane tree.
Yet in spite of this ignorant mishandling of my material,;
the httle fruit-house is still standing and sheltered tiU
January the few apples Nature allowed us to gather last
autumn. It looks disreputable, but there has been no
structural collapse, nor will there be.

No sooner was the fruit-house finished than I was met
by the demand of my wife, the commandant of the hospital,
to add to my house a patients' dining-room, which would
be bright, dry, airy, warm, and comfortable, and be large
enough for forty men to have their meals in, and to use as
a sitting-room during the rest of the day. The local buildet'
said that it was impossible to make a wooden addition, for
there was no wood to be procured, or to build in bricks, «;
since my house stands 600 ft> above the sea on an isolated)
chalk down. Croesus would have found it difficult at that
time to build on my site, and for the ordinary economic
man — " L'homme k quarantes ecus " — it was quite im-
possible. But the room had got to be built, for the men
were there, and built at once, since the out-of-door hfe of
July and August could not continue. There was nothing'
to do but to fall back upon Pis6. I decided to be ambitious
and to experiment, not merely in Pis6 de terre, but in
what I then thought — and perhaps rightly — was a new
form of Pis6, i.e. Pis6 de craie or compressed chalk. My
shuttering therefore was put up. A hole not very far ofi
was dug in the earth, the chalk which was almost at the
surface was quarried out, and we began to build the wall,,,
candid and contemptuous friends telMng us of course thafa
the chalk wall would never stand the frosts in so exposeca
a position, and that the wall, if made, would certainly
explode ! Everyone worked at that wall ; the nursing

Rammed Chalk^^ ^^ Pise de Craie''^ 17

staff, the coachman, an occasional visitor, a schoolboy, a
couple of boy scouts, members of the National Reserve
who were guarding a " vulnerable point " close by, and
even some of the patients. Patients as a rule will endure
any toil with the utmost good temper if it is for the pur-
poses of sport. If the task is useful it does not interest
them. Still, a wall which might explode offered a certain
attraction. We worked with more zeal than discretion,
but happily I had it in my mind that homogeneity was the
essential, and therefore the hard nuggets of chalk as they
were thrown into the shuttering to be compressed by the
rammers were first chopped up with spades, much as one
minces meat. The waU had no foundations. In Pis6
you can make your foundations, so to speak, as you go,
through the simple process of ramming. Anyway, and to
cut a long story short, the wall was made, was able to
receive the roof, for which happily the local builder found
some material, and not only did the wall stand, but showed
a very creditable eScterior. Its weight was of course enor-
mous, for there were some twenty tons of chalk put into
it. In spite of the irregularity of the labour it did not
take more than ten or twelve days to build. To prevent
the wet and frost getting into it, I painted the main front
with a patent liquid material for rendering walls damp-
proof. The Chalk Pis6 wall not only served its purpose,
but served it very weU. The room proved extraordinarily
warm and comfortable, largely owing no doubt to the fact
of a solid, very dry, i8-in. wall on the north-east side.

1 in

My next venture was in response to an urgent appeal from
a farm tenant to build him a waggon house. The result is
seen in the accompanying illustration. This building, about
40 ft. by 30 ft., was made purely of earth, but some experi-
ments were tried in the way of introducing hurdles into the
2

1 8 Introduction

shuttering in order to afford a surface to which plaster
could easily cling, Suf&ce it to say that the plain earthj
without plaster or any covering, more than justified itself;
One part of the wall is very much exposed to the weathei|
but it has stood the rains and the frosts of three very bad
winters without turning a hair. Lovers of the picturesque
may like to know that it presents a pleasant face of Hgh|
ochre, upon which a pale green efflorescence of Uchefl
has appeared of late. Anyway, the frost has not touched it,

Next I made some experiments in chalk farmyard walls.
Unfortunately, however, one of these, which was not made
homogeneous by chaJk mincing,, i.e. in which the nuggets
of chalk were not properly broken up, got the wet into it,
and *true to the candid friend's prophecy did Uterally
explode in the big frost of 1917-18. Another very
pretty chalk wall is, however, standing to this day. But
though ChaJk Pis6 wiU, I think, do well if property made
and properly protected, it is somewhat of a doubtful material
for an3d;hing except a building with a good overlay «f
roof. Another structure put up by me was a largish
gardener's potting shed. This was built purely of earth,
and in dry weather. When the walls were perfectly diy,
the local road authorities kindly came with their tar spiay
and sprayed it with hot tar, with most excellent resuB,
The hot tar really entered instead of merely making a
skin, with the result that the external walls thus tresied
resembled a section of tarred road stood up on end. a,

I may add that I lent my Pis6 shuttering to a Guildird
Volunteer BattaUon, who in a ten-hour day, or rather, two
days of five hours each, built an excellent hut about 20'it,
square and 10 ft. high, and thus showed that a plat^j
might house themselves with Pis6 in a day, provided tJm '
had roofing material ready. This building had subsequemy

5sr^^

Pise Waggon-house at Newlands Corner.
An experiment in rendering.

The Newlands Waggon-house.
Interior

iS}

The beginning of a Pise Fruit-house.

The Fruit-house completed with Roof of Peat Blocks on
Rough Boarding.

[19

PisS in Moulds 19

to be destroyed, because the ground on which it stood was
wanted for another purpose. When it was knocked down
the house-bre£dcers were astonished at the. strength and
tenacity of the walls. Yet the earth out of which they
were made was particularly bad — as one of the volunteers
expressed it, not earth, but merely leaf-mould and horse-
manure. The site had, as a matter of fact, been a suburban
garden for at least two hundred years.

Before I leave the record of these terrestrial adventures
I may note that in the early stages I received a great deal
of help and encouragement from General Sir Robert Scott-
Moncrieff. He was indeed so much struck by them that
he drew up a series of instructions for walls of Pis6 work
which were issued to all engineer companies at the front
in case they might have opportunities for experimenting.
These instructions were based upon the AustraUan book
and embodied the very simple form of shuttering there
recommended. The diagram that accompanied them is
reproduced in the Appendix to the present volume.

Pis^ IN Moulds

There is one thing more to be said about Pis^. I beheve
that a useful development of the system may be found in
the plan of ramming earth into moulds and making earth
blocks, something like concrete blocks. Moulds of this
kind are easy to make and are specially suitable when the
soil is somewhat clayey in its nature. They have the
advantage of being much cheaper than shuttering, and of
being capable of being handled by one man without
assistance. With a strong wooden mould and a good
rammer a small-holder may easily build his own pigsty, his

20 Introduction

own chicken house, and all the small outbuildings he
requires, if not indeed add an extra room to his house.
I am at present experimenting with these blocks and
only yesterday had- the pleasure of seeing a sergeant
(R.A.M.C), discharged through ill-health and now trying
to turn himself into a small-holder, building a pigsty with
the help of one of my moulds.

VII

Apropos of the elusive universality and yet non-exist-
ence of Pis^ work, the following personal anecdote or foot-
note to compressed earth may amuse my readers. Happens
ing to be sleeping in a bedroom at Brooks's Club in 1916, I
noticed a charming Regency bookcase full of old books.
Among them was a copy of a Cyclopadia of 1819. I thought^
it woidd be amusing to see whether there was any mention
of Pise de terre. What was my astonishment to find
that what I thought was my own special and peculiar?
hobby and discovery was treated therein at very great
length and with very great ability, but treated hot in the
least as an37thing new or wonderful, but instead as " this
well-known and greatly appreciated system of building,
etc., etc." To complete the irony of the situation the
fact was mentioned that a Mr. Holland had lately sent
to the Board of Agriculture a memorandum as to how to
put up houses and farm-buildings in this form of construc-
tion. My hair rose on my head, for I had just com-
mitted a similar official indiscretion myself, and had been
bombarding appropriate authorities with what I thought
must be a complete novelty. Truly one can never
be first or do anything new. It is always " in the
Files," as Mr. Kiphng says. Even in our most original
moments we only keep on feebly imitating somebody else.
The claim to originality is nothing but a muddy mixtuf

Cob' and Chalky 21

of pride and ignorance. What did, however, somewhat
amaze me was the calm statement of the Cyclopcsdia that
this system of building was now well known in the counties
of — and then came the names of practically all the counties
of Southern England. And yet I had been keenly on
the look-out for such buildings for several years. The
cynic will say that they had all faUen down. That only
shows the weakness of the cynic's point of view. The
truth is they are often concealed under various disguises of
plaster, paint, and weather tiles. Few people know what
their own walls are really made of till they try to cut a
new opening for a door or a window in them.

VIII

Cob and Chalk

Of Cob I know httle by actual experiment. It is fully
dealt with in the body of this work, and readers will find
that it is a kind of mud or clay concrete reinforced with
straw. It is therefore ^totally and absolutely different from
T?is6. One is wet, the other dry.

All that need be said about chalk is said by the author
of the present book.

A Postscript

In the body of this work mention is made of a very success-
ful experiment in Pis6 de terre made by the officials of a
Rhodesian mining company; the outcome, I am proud
to think, of my pre-war advocacy of Pis6 in The Spectator.
No sooner had my introduction been finished than there
came by way of -postscript an exceedingly interesting series
of photographs, sent to me by Mr. Pickstone, a gentleman
very well known in South Africa for his fruit gardens, his

22 Introduction

peaches, and his apricots. On the strength of what he
had read in The Spectator, Mr. Pickstone lately undertook to
build a station building and station-master's house for the
railway station at Simondium in the Drakenstein Vdley,
a place which during the summer is noted for its great heat.
In the January number of the South African Railways and
Harbours Magazine, Mr. Pickstone gives a detailed account
of his bold and successful experiment and illustrates it by
a reproduction of some of his photographs. Here is his
own account of what he did.

" It must have been about eighteen months ago that
the railway administration decided to promote Simondium
Siding to the dignity of a station. As a siding, it had
always been a busy place in the fruit season, during which
time a permanent checker had for some years been kept
quite busy, his accommodation being a couple of small
tin shanties, and he had been accustomed to board out
where he could. Now we were to have a ' puj^ a ' station-
master and, presumably, suitable premises. The depart-
ment quickly got to work and the station-master's house
arrived. It was what one might call a second-hand, or
even a third- or fourth-hand one, consisting of the inevit-
able sheets of galvanised iron and the everressential Oregon
and Swedish timber, ^ur new station-master also shortly
afterwards arrived, and turned out to be a married man
with a wife and four children. The station-master was not
a grouser, but during the hot summer — and it is terribly
hot in the Drakenstein Valley during that time of the year
— he complained to me that it was almost impossible to
hold on, owing to the conditions under which he and his
family had to Uve. It was just about this time that I saw
in The Spectator a series of articles strongly advocating
' Pis6 de terre ' construction for buildings of all kinds ;
especially was it recommended as a war-time expedient
for rapid and economical construction for barracks and

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The Discovery of the Old 23

hospitals, and, indeed, it was strongly recommended by
Mr. St. Loe Strachey, the editor, for all sorts of general
building and military purposes. It is a curious fact, which
many readers could verify, that frequently one lives one's
life imder certain conditions, and in reality remains abso-
lutely blind to their presence and potentialities. Here
was I, living in a country where some of the most beautiful
old homesteads are on the principle of the ' Pis6 de terre '
construction, and a large proportion of the older farm
buildings in this district also built of similar material,
with the additional pleasing accompaniment of beautiful
beams, ceilings and floors made of colonial pine — one may
advisedly add, the despised colonial pine. Some of these
buildings have stood the wear and use of close on a century,
and are still an object of joy to those privileged to have
an eye to see. Here Uved I, as I say, bUnd to its poten-
tialities for to-day, although it had been clearly appreciated
and carried out with the most charming and solid results
by our great-grandfathers in the old slave-labour dajre."

The supervising architect, Mr. Kendall, who was re-
sponsible for carrying out the work to the admirable design
of Mr. Herbert Baker, gives^the following description of
the way the work was actually executed, which contains
several very useful hints :

"The construction of walls detennined upon was that
known as ' Pis6 de terre,' consisting of earth walls some
18 in. to 24 in. thick, which owe their solidity to a simple
process of ramming between wooden casings previously
placed in position on both sides. These walls are built
in stages of some 3 ft. in height, the wood casing being
raised at intervals as required. The frames for doors and
windows are placed in position at th© right time, and
anchored into the walls by means of long hoop iron ties.
These walls, when completed, give a surface ahnost as

24 Introduction

hard as burnt brick, but the external angles present a
slight point of weal^ness, as from their exposure they would ,
be naturally inclined to chip away in cases of rough usage.
In order to overcome this it was arranged that irregular
brick quoins should be embedded in the angles all the
way up as the work proceeded. The walls, when completed, .
were then plastered and whitewashed, and present as good
an appearance as more expensively plastered brickwork.
As additional security the weather sides were given, prior
to whitewashing, a coat of hot gas tar direct on the
plaster, which in all exterior work was lime plus lo per
cent, cement. The roofs are of thatch with a fairly good
overhang at the eaves in order to form a protection for
the waUs."

On one point, however, we may reassure Mr. Kendall.
I do not think he need be afraid of his waUs being destroyed
by the weather even if he has no overhang. Part of a
Pis^ waU in my cart-shed, built in a very exposed situation,
has no overhang. Further, the waU is not covered by
cement or any other protective covering. The compressed
earth was left quite bare, and yet the three worst winters
of alternating wet and frost known for many years have
made no impression upon the wall; It seems to be both
rain-proof and frost-proof.

I may add that Mr. Pickstone informs me in a letter
dated February 19th that the Pise walls have proved an
enormous success from the point of view of protection from
•the heat. Whereas in an iron building lined with wood
the temperature in the hot weather went up to 104 degrees
Fahrenheit, in the station-master's Pis6 de terre dining-
room the thermometer registered only 86 degrees. Those who
have ever lived where such temperatures prevail will note;,
the immense advantage gained by the Pise walls. Such-
temperatures try strong men and women, and for children
they are positively death-dealing. With so successful an

Pise— a South African Lead 25

^periment as that at Simondium before my eyes, I am
beginning to feel that I may hve to correct my view, that
this universal system of building is practised " no vairs."

Pliny on Pise de Terre

Now for something which I have kept as the honne, bouche
of my earthy story. At the end of my researches and ex-
periments I found that Phny has got it all in his Natural
History in six lines ! There is no need for more words.

" Have we not in Africa and in Spain walls of earth,
known as ' formocean ' walls? From the fact that they are
moulded, rather than built, by enclosing earth within a frame
of boards, constructed on either side. These walls will last
for centuries, are proof against rain, wind, and fire, and are
superior in solidity to any cement. Even at this day Spain
still holds watch-towers that were erected by Hannibal." —
Pliny's "Natural History," Bk. XXXV, chapter xlviii.

J. St. Loe Strachey.

Newlands Corner, Surrey.

GENERAL SURVEY

Always necessity has been the mother of invention. The
-war has proved her prolific indeed, and her teeming offspring
are seen in the multiplicity of war contrivances and the
bewildering array of substitutes for the once common
things of our daily Ufe. Where necessity has been most
dire, there invention has unfailingly come to the rescue
with the most amazing " Ersatz " products to replace
the vanished originals.

At any rate it pleases us to attribute the truly astonish-
ing feats of the Germans in this direction to their greater
need rather than to any superior ingenuity or enterprise
on their part.

That their success was often no more than moderate
will be readily admitted by anyone- who, for instance, has
made trial of their " Ersatz " cigars or ration coffee.

Still, need did at least awaken prodigious effort, in-
genuity, and enterprise — all co-ordinated and concentrated
on the business of making good a hundred paralysing de-
ficiencies.

In this present matter of National Housing the shortage
of all the generally recognised building materials as well
as of actual houses is extreme and grave. Effort, ingenuity,
and enterprise in overcoming these insufficiencies are as
urgently and vitally necessary to England in Peace as ever
they were to Germany in war. Little will be said here of
the direct and intimate connection between good houses
and good citizens.

It is assumed that those who go to the pains of reading

The House Famine 27

this book have at' least glanced at the Housing Reports,
and drawn certain disquieting conclusions from the
criminal and vital statistics with which the case for refonn
is reinforced.

In a recent speech the Registrar-General said : " War
does not only fill the graves, it also empties the cradles."
This is no less true of bad and inadequate housing.

Only the most reckless and thick-skinned of the poorer
population will adventure on marriage and the bringing
up of a family whilst the odds against decent and reason-
able housing persist as at present.

True, " Housing " is very properly being given con-
siderable prominence in the press, and scarcely a day passes
but there appears an article or letter dealing with this
question.

Usually we are left but Uttle wiser than we were, whilst
if we chance to know something about the subject, the
general tone of vague cheerfulness that pervades them
all fills us with misgiving.

Nothing is easier or pleasanter or more popular than
to make airy promises or predictions about the " Homes
for Happy Human Beings" that, somehow, are to be
prepared for our returned soldiers, and for all those others
who are housed miserably or not at all. It is very easy
to predict and promise, but without adequate materials
performance is not merely difiicult, it is impossiWe.

There is a world-shortage of almost every manufactured
or cultivated product ; there is also a labour famine', a
money famine, and a transport famine.

In this country, closely connected with these deficiencies
and looming ominously over them aU, is, as we have said,
our house-famine.

To relieve the last in face of the others, and without
further aggravating them, is one of the most grave and
pressing of the man5^- problems that confront us.
Briefly the problem is this: To provide a -maximum of

28 General Survey

new housing with a minimum expenditure of labour,
money, transport, and manufactured materials.

Broadly speaking, so far as rural housing is concerned,
the solution must be sought through the use of natural
materials already existing on the site, materials that can
be worked straight into the fabric of the building, without
any elaborate or costly conversion, and that by local labour,

"Pise de Terre," "Chalk Compost," and "Cob" are
three alternative forms of construction, one of which will
usually fulfil the above conditions in any given situation.

Despite the somewhat outlandish and high-soundin|
name of the first, it is nothing more than a very old and
very simple method of building, recently revived through
stress of circumstances. The rude technique has happily
been kept aUve and preserved for us in out-of-the-way
corners of the Continent and in our Colonies, Wherever
there is a sufficiency of sunshine to effect the necessary
drying, there have earth buildings arisen and prospered,

" Cob " building needs less introduction, as it is still
well understood and^a Hving craft in several parts of Great
Britain, notably in Devonshire and South Wales, where
its merits and advantages have been recognised apparently
from the earUest times.

All those indeed who are famihar with this method of
construction are fully aUve to its virtues, and the same
is true of Pise-building, both in chalk and earth, and also
of clay-lump.

This book, however, is addressed to those who have in
the past built only with stone, brick, concrete, timber and
plaster, etc., and who are only now considering a reversion
to the more primitive construction here described, througl
the shortage or absolute lack of their former materials. i_

It is not so much a question as to whether a Cob or.
Pise house is .prefergi)le to one of brick or stone or concreli
— ^though there are many who profess a hvely preferencf
for the former — but as to whether you wiU boldly revert to

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Local Materials 29

these old and well-tried methods of building, or, in the
absence of the ordinary materials, feebly sit down and build
nothing at aU.

For that will, inevitably, be the alternative for a great
many private persons. National and PubKc-Utility Hous-
ing Schemes and pubhc and industrial works of all sorts
will naturally and properly claim priority in the matter of
all building materials — and the private individual, so far
as he can secure such materials a:t all, will only do so at
a price that is the logical outcome of an unprecedented
demand and an ominously inadequate supply.

Timber, tiles, slates, plaster, and ironmongery he must
stiU purchase and transport as best he may — but the
shell of his house, its outer walls at least, could and should
be raised from the soil of the site itself by the em-
ployment of the simplest gear and a small amount of
unskilled local labour.

So acute indeed is the transport problem, and so small
is the hope of any substantial improvement in the near
future, that any expedient tending to ease matters in this
respect is worthy of the most serious attention.

The restrictions imposed by high freights will of them-
selves tend to check the often senseless and unnecessary
importation of materials foreign to a district, which in the
past was the despair of architects of the " traditional "
school.

It was a wasteful practice that had gone far to obliterate
all but the most robust traits in the old and very diverse
local building conventions of rural England.

Formerly, he who wilfully carried bricks into Merioneth
or the Cotswolds, or slates into Kent or ragstone-rubble
into Middlesex, was guilty of no more than fooHshness and
an aesthetic solecism.

Under present conditions such action should render
him liable to prosecution and conviction on some such
count as " Wasting the shrunken resources of his country

3° General Survey

in a time of great scarcity, ... in that he did wantonly
transport material for building the walls of a house by
rail and road from A to B when suitable and sufficient
material of another sort and at no higher cost existed,
and was readily accessible hard by the site at B."

That indeed is our one chance of salvation, the existence
and use of " the materials of another sort hard by the site."

These natural materials and their appropriate use in
building will be considered in the following pages.

The Lutyens-Scott cottage, of which illustrations are
given, is designed with a special view to the use of such
local materials as cob, chalk, and Pis6, though it could also
be constructed without appreciable modification in stone
or brick.

It is thus a model of unusually universal application,
providing, too, accommodation such as is certain to be
demanded by the new and more educated generation that
it is the aim of the country to produce.

COB

§ I. General

If ever the counties of England recover their bygone loyalty
to their own materials and their old traditions, then cob-
building wiU return to Devon and the West. Cheap bricks,
cheap transport, and the ignoble rage for fashions from the
town went far to oust provincial cob from the affections
of those whom, with their forbears, it had housed so well
for several centuries.

Whether the new loyalty be from within, or be imposed
from without by force of circumstances, matters httle.
What does matter is the fact of its revival.

For with it will come again the building of cottages that
are knit intimately to their sites and surroundings as of old,
cottages consanguineous with the ground they stand on,
be it brick-earth, rock, or common soil.

The soil of Devonshire and of many parts of Wessex and
of Wales serves excellently well for buUding in cob or
" clom." '

The soil itself suggested the construction, and the men of
Wessex were quick to take the hint and to act on it.

The yeomen and small-holders of earher days were
commonly builders too, and often built their own homes
in their own way, yet by the guiding Ught of local tradition.

Thus the old Devonian countryman in need of a house
would set to and build it himself — of stone if that were
handy and easily worked, of cob if it were not.

* Probably, indeed, there is no county in the kingdom that has not
considerable areas where the soil would, if tried, prove well adapted for
cob-building.

3 33

Cob

No doubt the doors and windows would be made and
fitted by the village wheelwright ; but the cottager himself
would thatch or slate the roof as naturally and successfuHy
as he built.

The skill and care with which these versatile amateurs
built their houses was not always of the highest, and careless
construction, like other sins, is visited on the children-^he
worse the sooner.

Thus it is that there are to-day plenty of old cob cottages
that are both damp and insecure, but to condemn cob
building in general because certain old builders were careless,
ignorant, or in competent is to condemnall materials from
wattle and daub to ferro-concrete in the same breath.

Cob, being a humble, amenable, and thoroughly accom-
modating substance, has reaped the inevitable reward of
good nature in being " put upon " and in being asked to
stand what is quite beyond its powers of endurance, and
yet Devon cob houses of Elizabethan date are not
imcommon.

It is very reasonable in its demands, but two things it
does require — dry foundations and a good protecting roof.

To quote an old Devonshire saw on cob-^" Giv'un a gude
hat and pair of butes an' 'er'l last for ever."

In many instances the Devonshire leaseholder, usually
only a " Ufe-lease " holder, built badly and on indifferent
foundations. He neglected to repair his thatch, with the
consequence that ruin followed sooner or later. He did not
always use rough-cast, so that it often happened that by the
time the lease expired the unfortunate landowner found that
the cottage fell in — in the literal as well as in the legal
sense. The lower portions of the walls were honey-combed
with rat-holes, the walls bulged out or fissiires resulted
from subsidence, and the dwelling presented that appear-
ance of squalor and meanness that has led so many to decry
the mud buildings of Devon as relics of bygone barbarism.
But if adequate care is bestowed on the construction, there

The Beauty of Cob 35

is no reason why cob cottages should not prove at one and
the same time comfortable to the inmates and pleasant
to the eye, and endure for many generations.

As to their comeUness and longevity, a day's walk in
Devon, or, failing that, a glance at the printed pictures
will tell all that need be told. That the beauty of cob
bmldings is not due merely to the irregularities and
weathering produced by the passage of time is sufficiently
proved by the photographs of Mr. Gimson's charming
cob cottage, taken soon after he had finished it.

The work was done a year or two before the war ; this is
Mr. Gimson's own description of the manner of its building :

" The cob was made of the stiff sand found on the site ;
this was mixed with water and a great quantity of long
wheat straw trodden into it. The walls were built 3 ft.
thick, pared down to 2 ft. 6 in., and were placed on a pUnth
standing 18 in. above the ground floor, and built of cobble
stones foimd among the sand. The walls were given a
coat of plaster and a coat of rough-cast, which was gently
trowelled over to smooth the surface slightly. I believe
eight men were engaged on the cobwork, some preparing
the material, and others treading in on to the top of the
walls. It took them about three months to reach the
wall plate ; the cost was 6s. a cubic yard, exclusive of the
plastering. No centring was used. The joists rested on
plates, and above them the walls were reduced to 2 ft. 2 in.
in thickness to leave the ends of the joists free. The beams
also rested on wide plates and the ends were built round
with stone, leaving space for ventilation. Tile or slate
Untels were used over all openings. The cost of the whole
house was 6\d. a cubic foot. Building with cob is soon
learnt — of the eight men, only one of them had had any
previous experience, and, I beUeve, he had not built with
it for thirty years. This is the only house I have built
of cob."

36 Cob

What is most interesting in this narrative is the work-
men's lack of experience, which seems to have been no
hindrance. Anyone who proposes to revive the use of cob
may take courage from Mr. Gimson's evidence. The time
spent in building the walls was reasonable and the cost
low. It may be guessed that the post-war rise in cost
will be no greater in proportion, if as great, when compared
with brickwork. The natural charm of the wall surface
is enhanced by the crown of thatched roof, modelled with
a skill which few can bring so certainly to their task as
Mr, Gimson.

§ II. Method of Building

Composition. — Cob is a mixture of shale and clay, straw
and water. Shale is a common and widely distributed
stratified formation of a slaty nature, and there are few
types of clay soil that would not serve for cob-making.

The precise relative proportion of the first two ingredients
varies, depending on their individual peculiarities.

Local custom as to the composition and preparation of
the mixture will generally be found to have adjusted
itself to the peculiarities of the soil.

The following extract is from an analyst's report on a
sample of ts^pical old cob waUing :

" The material when placed in water fell to pieces. On
analysis, it was found to consist of :

Per cent.

Stones (residue on 7 by 7 mesh sieve) . 24*40

Sand, coarse (residue on 50 by 50 mesh sieve) 1970

Fine sand (through 50 by 50 mesh sieve) . 32-50

Clay ....... 20-6o

Straw i'25

Water, etc i"55

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Method of Building 37

"The material is a conglomerate of slaty gravel with a
very sandy clay, to which mixture a small proportion of
straw has been added.

"The clay acts as an agglutinant, and the straw as a rein-
forcement.

" Efficient protection from frost and rain would be neces-
sary before such material could be considered weather-
proof."

(N.B. — Lime is occasionally added to the clay-shale,
but this is not usual.)

. Mixing. — ^The old method of mixing by hand is as follows :
A " bed " of clay-shale is formed close to the wall where it
is to be used, sufficient to do one perch. A perch is super-
ficial measurement described as 16J ft. long, i ft. high,
and the amount of material will vary according to the
thickness of wall required. Four men usually work together.
The big stones are picked out. _ The material is arranged
in a circular heap about 5 or 6 ft. in diameter.

Starting at the edge the men turn over the material
with cob picks, standing and treading on the material all
the time. One man sprinkles on water, and another
sprinkles on barley straw from a wisp held under his left
arm. The heap is then turned over again in the other
direction, treading continuing all the time. "Twice
turning" is usually considered sufficient. Straw bands
may be wrapped puttee-wise around the legs of the men
to keep them clean, and these are removed at the end of
the day.

More rarely the mixing is done in a rough trou^, whilst
a power-driven " pan-miU " has also been tried with
success ; though one would think that the use of such a
machine might tend to diminish the binding strength of
the straw submitted to its grinding,

Building. — In building a man stands on the low base-
wall, and lays the material handed up to him on the cob

Cob

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picks, treading it into position. Thorough treading is
important, and the heels should be well used. The material
is allowed to project each side an inch or so beyond the
stone base to allow for paring down afterwards. The
courses are usually about 2 ft. high. The cob should be

COB COURSE, OR SCAR, SHOWING DIAGONAL LAYERS.

Implements

laid and trodden in diagonal layers, as shown in the
diagram : this is to secure proper bonding. It takes from
two to three weeks for a course to dry, according to the
weather, and five or six men would be required to build
the walls of an ordinary cottage. This would not keep
them continuously . employed, however, and they would
require to have several buildings in hand at the same time,
so as to be able to turn from one to the other while the
courses were drying.

At the completion of a course the corners are plumbed
up from the stone base below, a Une is stretched through
and the wall is then pared down " plumb "with the " paring

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iron" by the man standing on the wall. Sometimes,
however, the paring down is left until the wall is finished
and dry. Four men will do about four perches per day
of a wall 2 ft. thick, preparing and laying material.

The material is rarely laid between timber shuttering as
in Pis6 work, as the retaining boards tend seriously to
retard the drying out.

Drying. — If a course takes from two to three weeks to

-4^ Cob

dry, it naturally takes a long time for a whole cottage to
completely dry out. The walls can be built from about
March to September. The internal fitting, plastering, etc.,
can be done in the winter, but the external rendering must
not be done for at least a year, perhaps two years, to
allow the walls to become perfectly dry.

As unprotected cob is sensitive to frost, especially if not
thoroughly dried out, it should be given a good external
rendering as soon as it is really dry, and should in the
meantime be protected from frost by some temporary
covering, straw-matting or what not. Also all cob-work
must be protected from the rain both whilst building and
when built.

No artificial methods of dr5dng are at present usual,
beyond good fires inside during the winter, though, as
under such conditions a cob cottage is not usually con-
sidered fit to live in for several months after com-
pletion, some artificial means of drying might be worth
considering.

Foundations and Base. — ^The depth of the excavations
required for the foimdations naturally depends upon the
character of the site and soil, as also does the spread of
the footings, if any.

The base-course wall of brick, stone, or concrete should
be carried up some 2 ft. or so above ground level. In
old days this walHng was not infrequently built " dry " —
but good has lime or cement should be used in all new
work.

The damp-course too was an unknown refinement to the
by-gone builders, and the introduction of this one improve-
ment alone makes the new cob cottage a very different
dwelling from the old. "^

The usual forms of damp-course serve well for cob walls,
though slates laid butt and broken joint in cement are prob-
ably the best.

Thickness of Walls. — ^The thickness of walls may be any-

Walls and Roofs 41

thing you please from i8 in. upwards. There are old
examples a fuU 3 ft. across, but for an ordinary two-
storied cottage a thickness of about 2 ft. is general. Eighteen
inches is certainly the minimum thickness, and would not
ordinarily be adopted for any but one-storied buildings.

The first-floor walls are made the same thickness as those
below, for if they were reduced in width, as is usual in a
stone building, the extra weight thus thrown on to one
side of the ground floor walls would tend to make them
bulge, unless quite dry and thoroughly set.

There are old cob walls in existence fully 30 ft. in height,
and there is no apparent Umit in this direction provided
they are thick enough.

The upper layers compress the lower ones, and automati-
cally render them more dense and stone-like and fit to
bear the load imposed above.

Hipped Roofs. — As a general rule, however, it is found
expedient to hip back the roof rather than carry it up
in a tall gable, partly because cob-bmlding at a great
height above the ground in short and diminishing layers is
a somewhat tedious process, partly because a hipped roof
with good eaves is very welcome for the protection that its
projection affords the walHng.

Masonry and Carpentry. — ^The bonding of cob to stone
and brick is sometimes Hable to leave an open joint that
will require filling when the cob dries and shrinks. Many
of the chimneys m old cob houses are of brick or stone, and
brick and stone jambs are sometimes to be seen in cob
walls, but they are probably by way of repairs to damaged
comers. It is considered better to have cob all round, so
ensuring the uniform settlement of the building.

The timber built into old cob does not seem to decay.
The walls are usually so dry, especially when plastered,
that the wood is well preserved. The straw in the interior
of old cob walls is often as bright as when put in. The
straw in cob performs a similar function to hair in plaster;

Protection 43

times near the inner-face. Where the door-frames are
on the interior face of a 2 ft. thick wall, a convenient porch
results.

Other joinery is fixed to wood pins driven into the cob
where required.

Comers are usually of cob, though stone quoins are
occasionally met with.

Lintels are usually of wood well tailed into the wall
and resting on a wood pad placed crosswise.

Protection. — Old buildings that have been neglected are
often found to be somewhat eroded towards the bottom of
their walls through the action of rain and frost.

Protection is less here than higher up under the pro-
jecting eaves, and the Achilles' heel of the cob wall is
undoubtedly its base.

This vulnerable part, exposed as it is to driven rain,
back-splash, and the casual kicks, should be given special
protection.

Where the base is of cob and not of masonry, the tra-
ditional method is to provide a good deep skirting of pitch
or tar, or a mixture of both, applied hot to the face of the
rendering that should completely cover the exterior of all
cob work.

This rendering is usually composed of Ume and hair
mortar, though Portland cement has come into use to
some extent recently.

Cement, however, is apt to be rather too " short " and
brittle, and it does not always hold to the cob walling
very securely.

A rendering consisting of an equal mixture of cement
and lime with three parts of sand adheres well to cob,
however, and is probably the best coating that can be
given to it.

This coating can be colour-washed or lime-whited in
the usual way. The granular surface of rough rendering
or of "slap-dash" on the slightly wavy surface of cob

Cob

walling perhaps gives to whitewash its very highest oppor-
tunity and charm.

Certain it is that the old cob cottages of Devon with
the pearly gleam of their white walls, their heaving bulk
of thatch and their trim black skirtings, are as gracious and
as pleasant to the eye as any in all the length and breadth
of England.

Within, Ume-and-hair mortar plastered straight on to
the cob makes an excellent lining.

Chimneys. — Nowadays, chimneys are. commonly built
up in brick or stone, but niunerous good examples survive
of flues and stacks constructed in cob. The insides of
these are pargeted with lime, and cow-dung in the usual
way, brickwork being only introduced immediately around
the fireplaces.

Rats. — Where the surface rendering of cob-walls has
been omitted or has been allowed to fall away, an enter-
prising rat will sometimes do considerable damage by his
timnelling.

A little powdered glass mixed with the lower strata of
a wall will discourage any such burrowing, but the best
preservative for any cob building is a thoroughly good skin
of rendering, especially iLthis be reinforced by fine-mesh
wire-nettin§» secured to the wall.

Strength. — ^The strength of cob walls is surprisingly
great so long as they are vertical, and are not subjected to
undue lateral thrust or tension.

Beams as large as 12 in, by 12 in, -may be seen supported
by old cob walls, and there is nothing likely to be asked
of the material in the way of strength to which it cannot
easily respond.

Design. — Cob, like every other material, should have a
certain say in the design of any building in which its use
is intended.

The chief desiderata are a plain straightforward plan
and broadly treated elevations where voids and solids are

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Raleigh's House 45

carefully disposed with an eye to getting as large unbroken
blocks of cob as possible.

The cracks that are sometimes found in old cob buildings
are almost entirely attributable to unsuitable design in
such respects, or to bad foundations.

Cob walls built up in the ordinary way are not very suit-
able for internal partitions on account of their considerable
width and the consequent waste of space, though in old
work cob was sometimes used as a filling for stud and
lath partitions which were finally plastered over in the
usual way.

The sun-dried clay-lumps so much used for walling in
Suffolk would seem to be admirable for forming the
partitions in a house of cob,

Cob work is usually repaired with rubble, stone, or brick.

New openings are easily cut through cob walls, and
this fact has occasionally led to the collapse of an old
building through the zeal for light and air of some new
occupier exceeding his caution, and causing him to cut away
the substance of his walls in cheerful disregard of the laws
of gravity.

§ III. Conclusion

AUTHORITIES — ANCIENT AND MODERN

Not by any means was cob exclusively the poor man's
material, and several old homes of this sort still survive
that are of some consideration.

Amongst them is Hayes Barton, the birthplace of Sir
Walter Raleigh. Writing of Raleigh and his home, Mr,
Charles Bernard says :

Sn Walter Raleigh's House.— " Re had great affection
for his boyhood's home — the old manor-house at Hayes

46 Coh

Barton where he was born, and did his best to secure it
from its then owner. ' I will/ he wrote, ' most willingly
give you whatsoever in your conscience you shall deme it
.worth ... for ye naturall disposition I have to that place,
being borne in that house, I had rather see myself there
than anywhere else.' But alas ! it was not to be, and
the snug and friendly Tudor homestead passed into other
hands. The house at Hayes Barton was probably not newly
built when Raleigh's parents hved there, and it says much
for the character of cob that the house is as good to-day as
ever it was ; though for all that it has, to use Mr. Eden
Phillpotts' words, 'been patched and tinkered through
the centuries,' it 'still endiures, complete and sturdy, in
harmony of old design, with unspoiled dignity from a far
past.' Lady Rosalind Northcote gives the following descrip-
tion of the house in her Devon. She writes : ' In front of
the garden, a swirUng stream crosses a strip of green ; and
in the garden, at the right time, one may see the bees busy
among golden-powdered clusters of candytuft, and dark
red gillyflowers, and a few flame rose-coloured tuUps, proud
and erect. The house is very picturesque; it has cob
walls and a thatched roof, and is built in the shape of the
letter E ; a wing projects at either end, and in the middle
the porch juts out sUghtly. The two wings are gabled;
there is a small gable over the porch and two dormer
ones over the windows at each side of it, the windows
having lattice hghts and narrow mullions. Dark carved
beams above them show up well against the cream-
coloured walls. The heavy door is closely studded with
nails, and over it fall the deUcate sprays and lilac
" butterfly " blossoms of wistaria.' "

Reed Thatch. — In recent years slates or tiles have replaced
thatch for the roofing of cob buildings and walls, owing
to the cost of reed (the local name for the straw from

/V^i

Ceilings of Modelled Plaster from old Cob Hodses in Devon.

46]

S
o
u

«
u

Mr. Baring-Gould 47

which the grain has been hand-threshed by flail to prevent
the straw being broken), and the difiiculty of getting good
thatchers. The opinion is held by many that the lasting
quality of thatch has deteriorated since the practice of
liming the comland has unfortunately been given up.

Primitive Methods. — Formerly the ground floors of cob
cottages were all cobbled, but these have, generally speaking,
been replaced by Ume, ash, or cement floors. The cob
builders of past generations apparently made no use of the
square, plimib-Une, or level. No laths were used for the
walls, which were plastered within ; outside, rough-cast or
" slap-dash " was laid on.

Mr. Baring-Gould's Testimony. — Mr. S. Baring-Gould, in
his Book of the West, writing on the subject says,: " No
house can be considered more warm and cosy than that
built of cob, especially when thatched. It is warm in
winter and cool in summer, and I have known labourers
bitterly bewail their fate in being transferred from an
old fifteenth or sixteenth century cob cottage into a newly-
built stone edifice of the most approved style, as they
said it was like going out of warm Ufe into a cold grave."

DEVON COB

The following paragraph, taken from C. B. Allen's Cottage-
Building, is of interest :

" The cob walls of Devonshire have been known to last
above a century without requiring the slightest repair,
and the Rev, W. Elicombe, who has himself built several
houses of two stories with cob walls, says that he was
bom in a cob-wall parsonage built in the reign of EUzabeth,
or somewhat earUer, and that it had to be taken down to
be rebuilt only in the year 1831."

Fruit Walls. — Again quoting Mr. Baring-Gould : " Cob
walls for garden fruit are incomparable. They retain
the warmth of the sun and give it out through the night,

48 Cob

and when protected on top by slates, tiles, or thatch,
will last for centuries." It will be seen that the disadvan-
tages of cob buildings are solely due to f a\xlts of construction,
and not to any inherent defect in properly made eob as
a material, and that the construction of cottages, farm
buildings, and garden walls is well within the compass of
an averagely intelligent workman.

It is not intended to airgue that the cob cottage could
be advantageously built in every county, but only that
where it has been used and Uked for centuries, a wise
building policy would encourage its continuance. The
materials are at hand, and the population ready to welcome
this form of dweUing-place.

An Old Authority. — An old writer treating of cottage-
building thus delivers himself :

" A Bill for inclosing the waste lands of the kingdom
having been introduced into the House of Commons, under
the auspices of the Board of Agriculture, and as so beneficial
a Bill cannot fail, sooner or later, to pass into a law, and as
in consequence thereof, many small houses must necessarily
be built, suited to small estates issuing out of allotments
of such wastes, we have been induced to submit to the
consideration of the Board three plans of such small houses
to be built of different species of materials.

"The first is with mud walls, composed of soft mire and
straw, well trodden together, and which, by degrees, is
laid on, stratum-super-stratum, to the height required ; a
species of building not uncommon for cottages, and even
for better houses, barns, etc., in the western and some
other parts of the kingdom. It is the cheapest habitation
that we can construct and is also very dry and comfortable."

And again :

" Walls of mud, or of compressed earth, are still more

Old Cob Lore 49

economical than those of timber, and if they were raised
on brick or stone foundations, the height of a foot or i8 in.
above the ground, or above the highest point at which
dung or moist straw was ever likely to be placed against
them, their durability would be equal to that of marble,
if properly constructed and kept perfectly dry. The cob
walls of Devonshire, which are formed of clay and straw
trodden together by oxen, have been known to last above
a century without requiring the sUghtest repair ; and we
think that there are many farmers, especially in America
and Australia, who if they knew how easily walls of this
description could be built, would often avail themselves
of them for various agricultural purposes.

"The solidity of cob walls depends much upon their not
being hurried in the process of making them, for if hurried,
the walls wiU surely be crippled, that is, they wiU swag
or swerve from the perpendicular. It is usual to pare
down the sides of each successive rise before another is
added to it. The instnunent used for this purpose is like
a baker's peel (a kind of wooden shovel for taking the
bread out of the oven), but the cob-parer is made of iron.
The lintels of the doors and windows and of the cupboards
and other recesses are put in as the work advances (allow-
ance being made for their settUng), bedding them on cross
pieces, and the walls being carried up soUd. The respective
openings are cut out after the work is weU settled. In
Devonshire the builders of cob-wall houses Uke to begin
their work when the birds begin to build their nests, in
order that there may be time to cover in tl;e shell of the
building before winter. The outer walls are plastered the
following spring. Should the work be overtaken by winter
before the roof is on, it is usual to put a temporary covering
of thatch upon the walls, to protect them from the frost."

Mr. Fulford's Evidence.— Mx. Fulford, of Great Fulford,
near Exeter, whose own village and estate can show as

50 Cob

many good examples of old cob work as any place in Devon,
writes as foUows :

Cost. — " It is not possible to give a close estimate of
what would now be the comparative cost of a building in
cob, stone, or brick, as this must depend upon the exact
locaUty of the site. It may, however, be of assistance if
I quote particulars of the relative cost of cob and stone
building in Devon in the year 1808 when cob was in common
use. The stonework referred to was rough rubble, and
not with square or dressed blocks. It must be borne in
mind that up to that date practically all material, stone,
lime, etc., was carried on horses' backs, Wheeled carts
which began to creep in about the beginning of 1800, were
not in general use imtil twenty or thirty years later. As a
boy I knew a farmer who remembered the first wheeled
cart coming to Dunsford. In 1838 the Rector of Bridford
(the ' Christowell ' of Blackmore's novel) recorded the fact
that in 1818 there was only one cart in the parish and it
was scarcely used twice a year. In 1808 the price of
building varied according to the district. In the northern
part of the county the common price of stonework, includ-
ing the value of three quarts of cider or beer daily, was
from 22i. to 24^. the perch (16J ft.), 22 in. in width and
I ft. in height. Including all expenses of quarrying and
carriage of materials, stonework worked out at from 5s.
to 6s. per perch running measure, and cob estimated in
like manner at about 3s. 6i. Masons when not employed
by the piece received 2s. per day, and allowance of beer or
cider. In the Dunstone district (the clay shales from which
make the best cob) masonwork was i8rf. per rope of 20 ft.
in length, 18 in. thick, and i ft. high, stone and all materials
found and placed on the spot ; cob work of the same measure
was 14^. In the South Hams district masonwork cost
2s. 6d., and cob 2S. per perch of 18 ft. in length, 2 ft. thick,
and I ft. high."

Mr. Fulford's Evidence 51

Use of Shuttering.— " In those parts of the red land where
Dunstone shillot or clay shale is not available, the red clay
was mixed with small stones or gravel, and frequently the
coh was laid and trodden down between side boards as
used in building concrete walls. Three cartloads of day
built a perch and a half of wall 20 in. wide and i ft. deep.
Eight bundles of barley straw, equal to one pack-horse load,
were mixed and tempered with nine cartloads of clay."

Roofing. — " Thatching in 1808 cost 8s. per square of
10 ft.; 100 sheaves of wheat-straw reed, weighing 25 lb.
each, were sufficient for one square. Thatching, however,
is not, as many suppose, indispensable as a roofing for cob
buildings ; slate found in many parts of Devon was fre-
quently used, and of late years Welsh and Delabole slates,
tiles, and unfortunately, from the picturesque point of
view, corrugated iron, have to a large extent supplanted
thatch."

A Protective Wash. — "Vancouver, in his report on the
Survey of Devon for the Board of Agriculture in 1808,
gave the following recipe, which he described as a preserv-
ing and highly ornamental wash for rough-cast that was
then getting into common use : ' Four parts of pounded
Ume, three of sand, two of pounded wood ashes, and one
of scoria of iron, mixed well together and made sufficiently
fluid to be applied with a brush. When dry it gives the
appearance of new Portland stone, and affords an excellent
protection against the penetrating force of the south-
westerly storms.'

Rendering. — " For the rough-weather sides of cob build-
ings I have found cement and sand, finished with a rough
surface, satisfactory, and far more durable than ordinary
Ume and gravel rough cast. For interior cob walls, laths
are not necessary. The old plastering was frequently laid
on too thick. Of late years I have used with excellent
results granite siUcon plaster for ceilings and walls. This'
requires no hair, and is easily applied.

52 Cob

The Cob Tradition. — " Cob-making was, like many other
local trades, carried on in some families from generation
to generation and developed by them into an art, but apart
from these specialists, practically every village mason
and his labourers built as much with cob as they did with
stone. There are men still left in various parts of the
county who have made cob, and it would, in my opinion,
be of advantage if demonstrations could be given by them
to discharged sailors and soldiers who are anxious to take
up work on the land."

Training of ex-Soldiers. — " In cob-building, as in many
other arts and crafts, a little showing is of far greater
help to the novice than any amount of text-book instruc-
tion. The knowledge and experience that these men would
gain from being shown, and better still, assisting an expert
in making cob, would be of material advantage in the
development of the county scheme promoted by the Central
Land Association for the establishment of ex-Service men
on the land. They could try their 'prentice hands on walls,
tool-sheds, cart linhays, etc., for their own use, and some
no doubt would develop into expert builders capable
of constructing walls for dwelling-houses from approved
plans."

1819 Conditions Returned. — " The depletion of our home-
grown timber supply and the prohibitive cost of practically
all building material has in effect brought about the con-
ditions that led our forefathers to utilise sQitable material
that lay nearest to hand, and unless some endeavour is
made to follow their methods and profit by their example,
it will be impossible to provide sufficient buildings for the
necessary equipment of the allotments and small holdings,
let alone housing accommodation for the workers on the
land."

There is probably no one who knows more about cob
than does Mr. Fulford— certainly no one who has done

A Champion of Cob 53

more to promote the revival of cob-building both by precept
and example.

Cob is the traditional material of his native place, he has,
as it were, been brought up on cob — he is familiar with
both the ancient history and the modem practice of cob-
building, and in short, he " knows."

When a revivalist has knowledge as well as enthusiasm,
the grounds of his faith are usually worth serious attention.

PIS^ BE TEBBE

PISE DE TERRE

§ I. General
What it »s.— "Pis6 de terre " is merely the French for
rammed earth, and rammed earth is an exceedingly good
material for the building of walls.

The odd thing is that its very obvious merits should
have secured it such small attention.

It is no new-fangled war-time invention brought forth
by our present necessity, but a very ancient system well
proved by centuries of trial.

History. — Pliny gives an excellent account of Pis6-building
in his Natural History, and Monsieur GorfEon, who pub-
lished a treatise on this method of construction in 1772,
states that it was j&rst Introduced into France by the
Romans.

The following extracts from an old book based on a
French original will serve well as an introduction to the
study of Pis^-building :

Capabilities. — " An account of a method of building
strong and durable houses, with no other materials than
earth ; which has been practised for ages in the province
of Lyons, though Uttle known in the rest of France, or in
any other part of Europe. It appeared to be attended with
so many advantages, that many gentlemen in this country
who employ their leisure in the study of rural economy
were induced to make a trial of its efficiency ; and the
result of their experiments has been of such a nature as

58 Pis^ de Terre

to make them desire, by all possible means, to extend the
knowledge and practice of so beneficial an art.

" The possibility of raising the walls of houses two or
even three stories high, with earth only, which will sustain
floors loaded with the heaviest weights, and of building the
largest jnanuf actories in this manner, may astonish every
one who has not been an eye-witness of such things."

Of PisS and its Origin. — " Pis6 is a very shnple manual
operation ; it is merely by compressing earth in moulds or
cases, that we may arrive at building houses of any size
or height."

Locale. — "This art, though at present confined to the
single province of the Lyonqse in France, was known and
practised at a very early period of antiquity. The Abb6
Rozier, in his Journal de Physique, says that he has dis-
covered some traces of it (Pis6) in Catalonia; so that
Spain, like France, has a single province in which this
ancient manner of building has been preserved. The art,
however, well deserves to be introduced into more general
use. The cheapness of the materials which it requires,
and the great saving of time and labour which it admits
of, must recommend it in all places and on all occasions,
but the French author says that it will be found particu-
larly useful in hilly countries, where carriage is difficult,
and sometimes impracticable; and for farm buildings,
which, as they must be made of considerable extent, are
usually very expensive, without yielding any return."

§ II. Method of Building

There is an exhaustive article on Pis6 in Vol. XXVII of
The Cyclopadia or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences,
and Literature. pubHshed in 1819. The writer, Abraham
Rees, D.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., draws chiefly on French authori-
ties and his directions are most detailed and precise.

P 1 S li .

W'^F''' :

Pise Plant and Implements.
(Reproduced from an old Encyclopedia,]

Method of Building 59

Definition. — He introduces his subject thus :
" Pis^-building, in Rural Economy, the name of a method
of building with loamy or other earthy matters, v^ich
has long been practised with great success, and In a very
cheap manner, in some departments of France, and which
is now had recourse to with similar advantage in some
parts of this country. It has been described, delineated,
and recommended by Mr. H. Holland in the first volume
of Communications to the Board of Agriculture, and is to be
managed somewhat in the manner directed below,"

At great length and with immense detail, the plant,
the preliminaries, and the process are each severally
described.

The pith of the matter is sufficiently given by the follow-
ing extracts :

Shuttering. — " For the construction of the mould, take
several planks, each lo ft. long, of light wood, in order
that the mould may be easy to handle ; deal is the best
as being least Uable to warp. To prevent which the boards
should be straight, sound, well seasoned, and with as few
knots as possible. Let them be ploughed and tonguedj
and planed on both sides. Of these planks, fastened
together with four strong ledges on each side, the mould
must be made, 2 ft. 9 in. in height ; and two handles should
be fixed to each side.

" All the boards and ledges here mentioned must be, after
they are planed, something more than z in. thick."

Rammer. — "The instrument with which the earth is
rammed into the mould is a tool of the greatest consequence,
on which the firmness and durability, in short the perfection,
of the work depends. It is called a pisoir, or rammer;
and though it may appear very easy to make it, more
difficulty will be found in the execution than is at first
apprehended. A better idea of its construction may be
formed by examining the Plate, in which it b deUneated,^

6o Pisi de Terre

than any words cin convey. It should be made of hard
wood, either ash, oak, beech, wahiut, etc., or what is prefer-
able, the roots of either of them."

Method of Working. — " Pis6 contains all the best principles
of masonry, together with some rules pecuhar to itself,
which are now to be explained.

" To begin with the foundation ; this may be made of any
kind of masonry that is diirable, and should be raised to
the height of 2 ft. above the ground ; which is necessary
to secure the walls from the moisture of the earth, and the
splashing of the rain, which will drop from the eaves of
the roof.' When these foimdation walls are made level,
and i8 in. thick, mark upon them the distance at which
the joists are to be set, for receiving the moulds; those
distances should be 3 ft. each from centre to centre. Each
side of the mould being 10 ft. long, will divide into three
lengths of 3 ft. each, and leave 6 in. at each end, which
serve to lengthen the mould at the angles of the house and
are useful for many other purposes. After having set the
joists in their places, the masonry must be raised between
them 6 in. higher, that is, to a level with the joists ; there
will, therefore, altogether be a base of 2\ ft., which in most
cases will be found more than sufficient to prevent the
rain, frost, snow, or damp from injuring the walls. Raise
the mould immediately on this new masonry, placing it
over one of the angles of the wall.

" A workman should be placed in each of the three divisions
of the mould, the best workman being placed at the angle.
He is to direct the work of the other two, and by occasion-
ally applying a plumb-rule, to take care that the mould
does not swerve from its upright position. The labourers
who dig and prepare the earth must give it in smaU 'quan-
tities to the workmen in the mould, who, after having

* The introdtiction of a damp-course and the provision of gutters
at the eaves greatly reduce the function of the masonry base in modern
work.

The Ramming 6i

spread it with their feet, begin to compress it with the
rammer. They must only receive at a time so much as
will cover the bottom of the mould to the thickness of
3 or 4 in. The first strokes of the rammer should be given
close to the sides of the mould, but they must be after-
wards applied to every other part of the surface ; the men
should then cross their strokes, so that the earth may be
compressed in every direction. Those who stand next
to one another in the mould should regulate their strokes
so as to beat at the same time under the cord, because that
part cannot be got at without difficulty, and must be
struck obUquely ; with this precaution, the whole will be
equally compressed. The man at the angle of the wall
should beat carefully against the head of the mould.

" Care must be taken that no fresh earth is received into
the mould till the first layer is well beaten, which may
be ascertained by striking it with a rammer ; the stroke
should leave hardly any print on the place. They must
proceed in this manner to ram in layer after layer, till
the whole mould is fuU. When this is done, the machine
may be taken to pieces, and the earth which is contained
will remain firm and upright, about 9 ft. in length and
2 J ft. in height. The mould may then be replaced for
another length, including i in. of that which has first been
completed.

" The first course being thus completed, we proceed to
the second ; and here it must be observed that in each
successive course we must proceed in a direction contrary
to that of the preceding. It may easily be conceived,
that with this precaution the joints of the several lengths
will be incUned in opposite directions, which will con-
tribute very much to the firmness of the work. There is
no reason to fear overcharging the first course with the
second, though but just laid ; for three courses may be
laid without danger in one day.

" This description of the first two courses is equally appUc-

62 Pise de Terre

able to all the others, and will enable any person to build
a house, with no other materials than earth, of whatever
height and extent he pleases..

" With respect to the gables, they may be made without
any difficulty, by merely making their- inclination in the
mould and working the earth accordingly,"

§ III. The Theory and Science of Pise
The Value of Ramming,—" Beating, or compression, is
used in many different sorts of work ; the ancients employed
it in making their rough walls ; the ItaUans employ it for
the terraces which adorn their houses ; the Moors for all
their walls; the Spaniards, the French, and others for
some of the floors of their apartments. The intent of the
ancient architects, when they recommended the beating
of cement and other compositions used in building, was to
prevent them from shrinking and cracking ; and it is
employed for the same purpose in walls which are made
of earthi The beater, by repeated strokes, forces out
from the earth the superfluous water which Is contained
and closely unites all the particles together, by which means
the natural attraction of these particles is made powerful
to operate, as it is by other natural causes in the formation
of stones. Hence arises the increasing strength and aston-
ishing durability which houses of this kind are found to
possess."

An Experiment. — " Upon beating a small portion of earth,
and weighing it immediately afterwards, it was found to
weigh 39i lb. Fifteen days after, it had lost 4i lb. In
the space of another fifteen days it lost but i lb. ; and
in fifteen days after that its weight diminished only \ lb.
In the space of about forty-five days the moisture was
completely evaporated, and its weight was diminished
about one-eighth ; consequently only one-eighth of the
whole mass was occupied by moisture, and this small pro-
portion cannot at all affect the soUdity and consistency

Suitable Soils 63

of the earth so treated. This experiment is also sufficient
to show the difference between this kind of building and
that vulgar kind called in England ' mud-walling.' "

Rate of Work. — " In one single day three courses of about
3 it. each may be laid one over the other ; so that a wall
of earth of about 8 or 9 ft., or one story high, may be safely
raised in one day. Experience has proved that as soon
as the builders have raised their walls to a proper height
for flooring, the heaviest beams and rafters may without
danger be placed on the walls thus newly made ; and that
the thickest timber of a roof may be laid on the gables
of pis6 the very instant they are completed."

ON EARTH PROPER FOR BUILDING

Suitable Soils. — " ist. All earths in general are fit for that
use, when they have not the lightness of poor lands nor
the stiffness of clay.

"andly. All earths fit for vegetation.

"3rdly. Brick-earths; but these, if they are used alone,
are apt to crack, owing to the quantity of moisture which
they contain. This, however, does not hinder persons who
understand the business from using them to a good purpose.

" 4thly. Strong earths, with a mixture of small gravel,
which for that reason cannot serve for making either bricks,
tiles, or pottery. These gravelly earths are very useful,
and the best pis6 is made of them."

Soil Tests. — "The following appearances indicate that the
earth in which they are found is fit for building : when a
pickaxe, spade, or plough brings up large lumps of earth
at a time; when arable lands lies in clods or lumps;
when field-mice have made themselves subterraneous
passages in the earth ; all these are favourable signs. When
the roads of a village, having been worn away by the water
continually running through them, are lower than the other
lands, and the sides of those roads support themselves

64 Pisi de Terre

almost upright, it is a sure mark that- pis^ may be
executed in that village. One may also discover the fitnes
of the soil by trsdng to break with one's fingers the little
clods of earth in the roads, and finding a difficulty in doing
it ; or by observing the ruts of the road, in which the
cart-wheels make a sort of pis^ by their pressure ; when-
ever there are deep ruts on a road, one may be sure of
finding abundance of proper earth.

" Proper earth is found at the bottom of the slopes of low
lands that are cultivated, because every year the rain
brings down the fat or good earth. It is frequently found
on the banks of the river, but above all, it is found at the
foot of hills, and on aU cultivated lands which have much
slope. In digging trenches and cellars for building, it
generally happens that what comes out of them is fit for
the purpose."

ON THE MIXTURE OF EARTHS

Soil Blending. — "As it may sometimes happen that earth
of a proper quaUty is not to be found on the spot where it
is intended to build, it becomes of importance to attend
to the method of mixing earths; for though the earth
which is near at hand may not of itself be proper, it is
very probable that it may be rendered so by the mixture
of a small quantity of another earth fetched from a distance.
The principle on which a mixture must be made is very
simple ; strong earths must be tempered with light ;
those in which clay predominates, with others that .are
composed more of chalk and sand ; and those of a rich,
glutinous substance, with others of a poor and barren nature.
The degree in which these quaUties of the earths prevail
must determine the proportions of the mixture ; which it
is impossible here to point out for every particular case,
but which may be learnt by a Uttle practice. Some easy
methods will be described, by which any one may make
a trial of the qualities of his earth.

Experiments 65

" It will not be amiss to mix with the earth some small
pebbles, gravel, rubbish of mortar, or in short any small
mineral substances ; but none of the animal or vegetable
kind must be admitted.' Such hard substances bind the
earth firmly between them, and being pressed and pressing
in all directions, contribute very much to the soHdity of
the whole; so that well-worked earth, in which there is
a mixture of gravel, becomes so hard at the end of- two
years that a chisel must be used to break it, as if it was
freestone."

EXPERIMENTS TO ASCERTAIN THE QUALITIES OF ANY EARTH

Trial by Experiment. — "Take a small wooden tub or pail,
without a bottom, dig a hole in the ground of a court or
garden, and at the bottom of that hole fix a piece of stone,
flat and level ; place your tub upon the stone, fiU around
it the earth that has been dug out to make the hole, and
ram it weU, that the tub may be enclosed, to prevent its
bursting. Then ram into the tub the earth you mean to
try ; putting in, at each time, about the thickness of three
or four fingers' breadths : when this is well rammed, add
as much more, and ram it in the same manner, and so the
third and fourth, etc., tiU the earth is raised above the
brim. This superfluous earth must be scraped off extremely
smooth, and rendered as even as the under-part will be,
which lies on the stone. Loosen with a spade the earth
around the tub, and you will then be able to take it out,
and with it the compressed earth that it contains ; then
turn the tub upside down, and if it is wider at the top
than at the bottom, as such vessels usually are, the pis6 will

' "The pis6 does not admit any vegetable or animal substances. In
mud walls they put straw, chopped hay, hair, flocks, wool, etc., to make
the mud adhere to the wood, or laths ; whereas the workmen who build
in pis6 are careful to pick out the least straw or the smallest bit of root
which remains in the earth : in short, the pis6 is a mineral substance
imitating stone, consequently anything that can slake or rot must be
excluded."

66 Pise de Terre

easily come out, but if it should happen to stick, let it dry
in the air about twenty-four hours, and you will then
find that the earth is loose enough to fall out of itself. You
must be careful to cover this lump of pis6 with a little
board ; for though a shower of rain, faUing in an oblique
direction, wiU not injure it, yet it may be k little damaged
if the rain falls perpendicularly, and especially if it remains
upon it. Leave the lump exposed to the air, only covered
with a board or flat stone, and if it continues without
cracking or crumbling, and increases daily in density and
compactness as its natural moisture decreases, you may be
sure that the earth is fit for building. But you must
remember that it is necessary that the earth employed
should be taken from a little below the surface of the
ground, in order that it may be neither too dry nor too
wet ; it must be observed also that if the earth is not well
pressed around the outside of the tub before it is filled,
though the hoops were of iron, they would burst, so great
is the pressure of the beaten earth against the mould, of
whatever size it may be."

The-Earth-ball Test — An Experiment which may he made
at any time. — "Every person in walking on his ground may
make little balls of earth and press them as tight as he can
between his hands. If he brings them home and puts
marks on them, he will by that means know the quality
of every piece of land, and also be a judge of the mixture
it will be necessary to make."

ON THE PREPARATION OF THE EARTH FOR BUILDING

Soil Preparation. — " AU the operations of this art are very
simple and easy ; there is nothing to be done but to dig up
the earth with a pickaxe, break the clods with a shovel, so as
to divide it well, and then lay it in a heap, which is very
necessary, because as the labourers throw it on that heap, the
lumps of earth and large stones roll to the bottom, where
another man may break them or draw them away with a

Preparation of the Earth 67

rake. I must observe that there should be an interval of
about an inch and a quarter between the teeth of the rake,
that the stones and pebbles of the size of a walnut, or
something more, may escape, and that it may draw off
only the largest. If the earth that has been dug has not
the proper quality, which is seldom the case, and it is
necessary to fetch some better from a distance, then the
mixture must be made in this manner : one man must
throw one shovelful of the best sort, while the others throw
five or six of the inferior sort on the heap, and so more or
less according to the proportions which have been previously
ascertained."

Rain. — "No more earth should be prepared than the men
can work in one day, or a little more, that they may not
be in want ; but if rain is expected, you must have at hand
either planks, mats, or old cloths to lay over the heap of
earth, so that the rain may not wet it ; and then as soon
as the rain is over, the men may resume their work, which,
without this precaution, must be delayed ; for it must
be remembered that the earth cannot be used when it is
either too dry or too wet, and therefore if the rain should
wet it after it has been prepared, the men will be obliged
to wait till it has recovered its proper consistency — a delay
which would be equally disadvantageous to them and their
employer. When the earth has been soaked by rain,
instead of suffering compression, it becomes mud in the
mould ; even though it be but a Uttle too moist, it cannot
be worked ; it swells under the blows of the rammer, and
a stroke in one place makes it rise in another. When
this is the case, it is better to stop the work, for the men
find so much difficulty that it is not worth while to proceed.
But there is not the same necessity of discontinuing the
work when the earth is too dry, for it is easy to give it the
necessary degree of moisture ; in such a case it should be
sprinkled with a watering-pot, and afterwards well mixed up
together ; it will then be fit for use."

68 Pi si de Terre

Organic Matter. — " It has already been observed that no
vegetable substances should be left in the earth ; therefore
in digging, as well as in laying the earth in a heap, great
care must be taken to pick out every bit of root, great and
small, all sprigs and herbs, all bits of hay and straw, chips
or shavings of woods, and in general everything that can
rot or suffer a changes in the earth."

ON THE BOND TIMBER TO BE USED IN BUILDINGS OF PISE

Corners. — "To make good walls, it is not sufficient that
the earth be weU beaten, we must also learn to unite them
well together. Here the binders cost very Uttle; they
consist only of thin pieces of wood, a few cramps and nails,
and these are sufficient to give the greatest stability to
buildings of pis6."

Having gone on to explain that the angles of the building
are formed by the successive courses alternately crossing
one another on the corner like the alternating " long and
short " quoins in a stone building, our authority proceeds
to describe how rough boards are laid between the courses
of pis6 so as to cross at the corner and so, entirely encased
in tightly compressed earth, they form effective ties.

"This board must be rough, as the sawyers have left it,
5 or 6 ft. long, something less than i in. thick, and in breadth
about 8, 9 or lo in., so that there may remain on each side
4 or 5 in. of earth, if the wall is i8 in. thick ; by this means
the board will be entirely concealed in the body of the wall.
When thus placed neither the^ air nor damp can reach it,
and of course there is no danger 'of its rotting. This has
been often proved by experience, as in taking down old
houses of pis6 such boards have always been found pre-
fectly sound, and many that had not even lost the colour
of new wood. It is easy to conceive how much this board,
from the pressure of the work raised above it, will help to
bind together the two lengths of waD aod to strengthen
the angle."

The Strength of Pise 69

Bonders. — " It is useful (particularly when the earth is
not of a very good quality) to put ends of planks into the
pis6 after it has been rammed about half the height of
the mould. These ends of planks should only be 10 or
II in. long, to leave as before a few inches of earth on each
side of the wall, if it is 18 in. thick ; they should be laid
crosswise (as the plank before mentioned is laid lengthwise)
over the whole course, at the distance of about 2 ft. from
one another, and will serve to equalise the pressure of the
upper parts of the works on the lower course of the
pis6.

" The boards above mentioned need only be placed at the
angles of the exterior wall, and in those parts where the
courses of the partition walls join to those of the exterior
wall, the same directions that have here been given for the
second course must be observed at each succeeding course,
up to the roof. By these means the reader will perceive
that an innumerable quantity of holders or bondings will
be formed, which sometimes draw to the right, sometimes
to the left of the angles, and which powerfully unite the
front walls with those of the partitions ; the several parts
deriving mutual support from one another, and the whole
being rendered compact and solid."

Strength. — " Hence these houses, made of earth alone, are
able to resist the violence of the highest winds, storms and
tempests. The height that is intended to be given to each
story being known, boards of 3 or 4 ft. in length should
be placed beforehand in the pis^, in those places where
the beams are to be fixed, and as soon as the mould no
longer occupies that place, the beams may be laid on,
though the pis6 be fresh made ; little slips of wood, or
boards, may be introduced under them, in order to fix
them level. The beams thus fixed for each story, the
pis6 may be continued as high as the place on which you
intend to erect the roof."

70 PisS de Terre

ON THE TIME AND LABOUR NECESSARY IN BUILDING A
CERTAIN QUANTITY OF PISfe

Speed of Building. — " Besides the advantages of strength
and cheapness, this method of building possesses that
of speed in the execution. That the reader may know
the time that is required for building a house, or an enclo-
sure, he need only be told that a mason used to the work
can, with the help of his labourer, when the earth lies near,
build in one day 6 ft. square of the pis6."

Rendering. — " To prepare the walls for plastering, indent
them with the point of the hammer, or hatchet, without
being afraid of spoiling the surface left by the mould;
all those little dents must be made as close as possible to
each other, and cut in from top to bottom, so that every
hole may have a little rest in the inferior part, which will
serve to retain and support the plaster.

" If you happen to lay the plaster over them before the
dampness is entirely gone, you must expect that the sweat
of the walls will cast off the plaster."

The wall surface having been duly hammer-chipped, the
work must be scoured with a stiff brush to remove all loose
earth and dust, and to finally prepare it for rough-casting.
Rough-cast consists of a small quantity of mortar, diluted
with water in a tub, to which a trowel of pure lime is added,
so as to make it about the thickness of cream.

One workman and his labourers are sufficient ; the work-
man on the scaffold sprinkles with a brush the wall he has
indented, swept, and prepared ; after that he dips another
brush, made of bits of reed, box, etc., into the tub which
contains the rough-cast, and throws with this brush the
rough-cast against the wall.

" Rough-cast, which is attended with so little trouble
and expense, is notwithstanding the best cover that can
be made for pis6 walls, and for all other constructions ;
it contributes to preserve the buildings. It is the peculiar

A PisS Church 71

advantage of these buildings that all the materials the^y
require are cheap, and all the workmanship simple and
easy."

Local Testimony. — At the end of the article just
summarised, an instructive letter from a former rector of
St. John's, La Rochelle, is quoted :

" Sir,—

"My having been an inhabitant for some time of
the town of Montbrison, capital of the Forets, enables me
to give you some information concerping the mode of build-'
ing houses with earth, etc.

A Pise Church. — " The church was the most remarkable
in this style of building ; it is about 80 ft. long, 40 ft. broad,
and 50 ft. high ; the walls built in pis6, 18 in. thick, and
cr6p6, or rough-cast on the outside, with Ume and sand.
Soon after my arrival, the church, by some accident, was
destroyed by fire, and remained unroofed for about a
twelvemonth, exposed to rains and frost. As it was sus-
pected that the walls had sustained much damage, either
by fire or the inclemency of the season, and might fall
down^ it was determined to throw them down partially,
and leave only the lower parts standing; but even this
was not done without much difficulty, such was the firm-
ness and hardness these walls had acquired, the church
having stood above eighty years; and all the repairs
required were only to give it on the outside, every twelve
or fifteen years, a new coating of rough-cast.

"A house for a single family is generally finished in
about a fortnight. The following is the method I have
seen them practise."

Building Procedure.—" The earth is pounded as much as
possible, in order to crumble any stones therein ; clay is
added thereto in a small quantity, about one-eighth part.
It is all beaten and mixed up together by repeated blows
with a mallet about 10 in. broad, and 10 or 15 in. long,
and 2 in. thick. The earth being thus prepared, and

72 Pise de Terre

slightly wetted, the foundation of the house is dug for;
this is laid vsdth stone, and when it is about i ft. high above
the surface of the ground, planks are arranged on each
side, which are filled with earth intended for the wall;
this is called Pis6 in the dialect of the country. It is
strongly beaten ; and this- method is continued successively
all round the building. The walls have more or less thick-
ness according to the fancy of the owner ; I have seen
them 6 in. and i8 in. thick. If several stories are intended
in such erections, they do not fail to place beams to support
the floors before they build higher. Of such buildings I
never saw any consisting of more than three floors at most ;
generally they have but two. When the building is thus
finished, it is left for some months to dry ; then such as
wish to make the building more soUd and durable, give it
a rough-cast coating on the outside with lime and sand.
This is what I have observed during a residence of three
years in the town of Montbrison. I should be happy if
this detail should afford the slightest_information to the
generous nation which has received us with so much good-
ness.

" I am, etc.,

" Jaucour."

The Virtues of Pise. — "Such is the method of building
which has been practised in the Lyonnese for many cen-
turies. Houses so built are strong, healthy, and very
cheap, they will last a great length of time, for the French
author says he had pulled down some of them which,
from the title-deeds in the possession of the proprietors,
appeared to be 165 years old, though they had been ill
kept in repair. The rich traders of Lyons have no other
way of building their country-houses. An outside covering
of painting in fresco, which is attended with very little
expense, conceals from the eye of the spectator the nature
of the building, and is a handsome ornament to the house.

Indian and Colonial Practice 73

That method of painting has more freshness and brilliancy
than any other, because water does not impair the colours.
No size, oil, or expense is required, manual labour is almost
all it costs, either to the rich or poor. Any person may
make his house look as splendid as he pleases, for a few
pence laid out in red or yellow ochre, or in other mineral
colours.

Strangers who have sailed upon the Rhone probably
never suspected that those beautiful houses, which they
saw rising on the hills around them, were built of nothing
but earth, nay, many persons have dwelt for a consider-
able time in such houses without ever being aware of their
singular construction. Farmers in that country generally
have them simply white-washed, but others, who have a
greater taste for ornament, add pilasters, window-cases,
panels, and decorations of various kinds.

There is every reason for introducing this method of
building into all parts of the kingdom ; whether we con-
sider the honour of the nation as concerned in the neatness
of its villages, the great saving of wood which it will occa-
sion, and the consequent security from fire, or the health
of the inhabitants, to which it will greatly contribute, as
such houses are never liable to the extremes of heat or
cold. It is attended with many other circumstances that
are advantageous to the State as well as to individuals.
It saves both time and labour in building, and the houses
may be inhabited almost immediately after they are
finished ; for which latter purpose the holes made for the
joists should not be closed up directly, as the air, if suffered
to circulate through them, will dry the walls more speedily."

§ IV. Indian and Colonial Practice
A Manual on Earthwork, edited by Colonel Maclagan,

R.E., gives much interesting information as to Pis6-build-

ing and a number of valuable hints :
Shutier-ties.—" Cvoss pieces, as the work proceeds,

74 P/j/ de Terre

become so firmly embedded in the wall, that there is great
difficulty in extracting them, to remedy which iron bars
have been substituted. Even these thin iron bars become
so tightly jammed when surrounded by the compact pis6
earth, that much labour and risk of injury to the work
is incurred in extricating them, and the expedient of setting
them in a bed of sand has been successfully resorted to.
They are then drawn out with care, the sand also is removed,
and the holes which they leave are subsequently filled with
the same eSrth of which the wall is made, and rammed hard.

"The heads of the opposite uprights are held together
by ropes, but in practice in this country ' it has been found
that, under the immense pressure exerted upon the plank
sides by the earth firmly rammed in the interior, the ropes
are so Uable to stretch, and to break, that it is advisable
to use iron rods or bars in this position also. When ropes
are used, the distance between the side planks is measured
by gauge rods, and the ropes tightened when requisite
to preserve the proper breadth of wall. The use of iron
connecting rods renders this unnecessary."

Soil. — "Soil of a medium quality, that is neither very
stiff nor very sandy, is considered best adapted for pis6.
It may be said that that which would make good bricks
will answer well for this description of work.

" When the earth is very dry, a sprinkUng of water will
be necessary."

Foundations. — " It is usjaal to begin the work upon a
foundation of brick or masonry ; but there seems to be no
reason why the pis6 might not be used from the commence-
ment, even for foundations under ground ; being carefully
guarded from aU chance of injury by running water."

The Building. — " The casing being prepared and erected,
and the upper surface of the old work, when above the
first stage, being sprinkled with water, the earth, well mixed
and slightly moistened, is thrown in, and spread in thin

» India.

Plastering 75

layers of 4 or 5 in. These should, when rammed, be reduced
to one-half their original thickness. The rammers should
be of hard wood and very smooth. The successive layers
,are similarly treated, and thus the work proceeds until
the top of the casing is readied. The ends of each portion
should be finished with a slope, to which will be joined the
portion next to be added longitudinally. These joinings
should not, in the successive courses, be above those of
the lower stage, but as in masonry and brickwork, should
' break joint.' The seams are all distinctly perceptible
when the work is complete."

Plastering. — "The wall may have a coating of plaster,
or the surface may be simply smoothed and dressed with
a shovel, or similar implement. When it is to be plastered,
it is necessary that the wall should first be thoroughly dry.
If dry only externally whilst damp within, it has been found
that the moisture is apt subsequently to attack the plaster
and cause it to fall off in flakes. Without plaster, good
Pis6 work is found successfully to withstand exposure to
the weather>. and after the lapse of many years to be so
compact and hard as to be picked down with difficulty."

Protection. — "Where the wall is not that of a roofed
building, it should be provided with a coping, having a
good projection to protect it from rain."

Rods versus Bars. — " The substitution of irori connecting
bars for the wooden ones has been mentioned above. The
evils of the wooden arrangement were found to be : the
starting of the wedges, the fracture of the tenons, the
tight jamming of the bars in the wall, and the injury to
the walls and to the bars themselves from the force requisite
to be applied for extracting them. The lower iron con-
necting bars are made 3^ in. by I in. ; the upper, i in.
by i or i in. each, having holes J in. by J in., with corre-
sponding pins,

"The mode of setting the bars and arranging the work
on each successive elevation of the casing is to cut on the

76 Pi si de Terre

surface of the completed part of the wall a groove i in.
wider than the bar, filling it in, after placing the bar,
with sand, to the level of the wall's surface. The side
boarding being set up, the vacant space left along the bevelled
edge of the previous course is filled up with moist clay to
retain the first layer of the new course. The end pieces
are secured by iron bars or rods, with screws and nuts." '

Ramming. — " Gentle and quick ramming has been found
most effectual."

Report on the Pise-work executed atjhe Etah Jail during
1867-8. By Mr. H. Sprenger, Assistant Engineer

" The boxes in which the pis6-work at the Etah Jail is
being executed consist of two wooden frames 10 ft. long
ai\d 2j ft. broad, made of planks, which are nailed on to
stout battens. They are held together by four pairs of
posts 3 in. by 3 in., which are connected above and below
with tie-bars of flat iron ij in. by J in. The tieJaars have
at each end a certain number of ^ in. holes punched in
them to receive pins for the purpose of preventing the
posts from slipping off. By changing the pins, walls of
any given dimension can be obtained, wedges of hard wood,
with longitudinal slots, are introduced between the posts
and the pins, to adjust the breadth of the boxes to a stan-
dard gauge. After the boxes are fixed and adjusted, they
are secured in their position by ropes passing over them,
and tied to stakes on each side. Any deflection from the
vertical should be corrected at the commencement of the
work, as it is impossible to alter the position of a box after
it is half full. Any earth which is suitable for brick-making
will do for pis6-work. On being dug out it is passed through

• "A convenient arrangement might be : to make the lower and upper
connecting bars alike, to raise the side boarding a few inches above the
upper bars, which, when embedded, might be allowed to remain and
become the lower ones of the next course ; the external apparatus being
shifted by taking out the pins and slipping ofi the stanchions and planks
to be reapplied to the upper bars already in position to receive them."j

The Right ^antity of Water n

a screen with J-in. meshes, and thrown into the boxes in
even layers of 6 in. in depth.

"Generally fresh earth contains sufficient moisture to
ensure good eonsoHdatiori ; but if it is found that it jiunps
up under the rammers, it should, on being thrown into
the boxes, be sprinkled with a little water out of a tin can
with a rose. The watering should be as uniform as possible,
as if it is applied unequally it will liquefy the earth, which
will commence oozing out under the rammers. Pis6-work
executed with too much water is worse than if done with
dry earth, as, on account of the elasticity of the wet earth,
the effect of the ramming is deadened, and the earth remains
unconsoUdated. The men should be prohibited to keep
time in ramming, as it causes vibration, which is injurious
to the stability of the wall. On working over a lower
course, it is as well to let the lower tie-bars about 4 in,
into the same to give the boxes a firm hold on the old work,
thereby the joints become imperceptible, and the upper
edge of the lower course is prevented from chipping off.

"The implements used are three different kinds of
rammers. The earth is first beaten down with a V-shaped
rammer, and then surfaced with one with a flat bottom.
The sides of the boxes are consolidated with a spade-
shaped rammer. When commencing the pis^-work at
Etah, considerable difficulty was experienced in extricating
the lower tie-bars. These were, therefore, suppUed with
holes 3 in. apart throughout their whole length. A pin
was inserted, against which a crow-bar with a long slot
and well bent at the end was made to work. An equal
pressure could thereby be exerted against the tie-bars ; they
were thus extracted with great facility without injuring them
or the face of the waU, which was not the case formerly,"

Supplementary Note by Mr. E. Battle, Executive Engineer,
5th Division ^^ Grand Trunk Road
" The work at Etah has generally been concluded in the

78 " Pise de Terre

following manner : In the morning the boxes were taken
down, and again put up and filled during the day ; they
were left during the night, so that the earth might detach
itself from the sides. It is not advisable to allow a course
to dry thoroughly, as the upper one wiU not bind wdl
into it, but probably show a crack. If the earth is well
rammed, and only the proper quantity of moisture admitted,
a second course can be commenced immediately."

The Jieport of the Rhodesia Munitions and Resources Com-
mittee issued in 1918 containsaninterestingpaperbyMr. John
H jmd on Pis6-building, from which the following is extracted :

"Pise de Terre Buildings

" The Spectator took this matter up some two years ago
and wrote as follows :

" ' Various schemes of land settlement are in the air. . . .
All of them must, however, be concerned with cheap
buildings. That is a sine qua non.' . . .

"The material used for the walls at Empandeni is one-
third sand, one-third ant-heap, and one-third soil, all pul-
verised and put through a sieve. Water is then added.
The mixture must be neither too wet nor too dry, just
sufficiently damp to bind ; a good indication of the correct
consistency being that when squeezed hard by the hand it
shows a tendency to bind. Sufficient of the loose mixture
is thrown into the form to fill it to a depth of about 3 in.,
and this is thoroughly rammed before the next layer is
put in. Most thorough ramming is essential. When the
frame is rammed full, it is taken apart and shifted along
to make another section and so on until the first layer is
complete. The first layer is, as a rule, sufficiently dry to
permit the starting of the next about three hours after
laying. Door and window franies'are put in as the work
proceeds, and must be well braced while ramming. In
the top layer hoop iron or fencing wire is let in for fastening -
down the wall plates. Arsenite of soda or Atlas Compound

Pise Buildings at Empandeni 79

is used in the first layer or two to keep out white ants.
The floor can be made of timber, cement concrete, or rammed
earth, and the roof thatched or covered with corrugated
iron as is most convenient.

"The following Pis6 de terre buildings have been erected
at Empandeni :

" A large schoolroom 75 ft. by 28 ft. by 12 ft. high, walls
r4 in. thick ; seven boys' dormitories, each 30 ft. by 20 ft.
by 12 ft. ; twelve single-room houses, each 16 ft. by 12 ft. ;
six fowl houses, each 20 ft. by 10 ft. ; a large fowl house
250 ft. long, front walls 7 ft. and back walls 5 ft. high.
This building is divided into fifteen compartments.

" From the foregoing description it is quite evident that
cheap and efficient buildings of this nature can be erected
at a very low cost.

"On a farm it is not necessary to employ any skilled
labour, as the doors and windows can be purchased ready-
made, and the frame-work, clamps, etc., put together by
the farmer himself. For a roof of thatch all the necessary
material, except iron ridging, if this is used, can as a rule
be procured on the farm.

" Should a cement concrete floor, which is cheaper than
a wood one, be desired, there would be an extra expendi-
ture for cement, the amount required being about two bags
per twelve square yards. Such a floor should be laid
before the walls of the building are commenced, and it is
essential that the site is thoroughly well rammed and
consoUdated, particularly below where walls will come,
before laying the concrete, to prevent cracks developing
through settlement. The concrete raft should be carried
at least 6 in. beyond the outside waUs of the building,
and if the work is properly done, a special ant-course will
be unnecessary. The concrete can be left rough below
the walls to give a bond, and it might be advisable to lay
some pieces of hoop iron in it which would be left project-
ing to be bedded into the walls.

8o Pise de Terre

"Another good type of floor would probably be that
suggested in The Spectator, viz. road material: laid down
and tarred in the same manner as roads are now made in
many places.

"A number of rooms and houses have been erected on
the Globe and Phoenix Mine on much the same principle
as Pis6 de terre buildings, but the system developed there
is different as regards the mixture, which consists of two
parts ant-heap or ordinary dagga which must not be too
sandy, and three parts ashes or clinker sieved free from
fine dust.

" A very full description of the method employed on this
mine was forwarded by the courtesy of the Manager to the
Committee, and it is interesting to note from this that
the walls are made waterproof by first making them smooth
with dagga plaster, then, when quite dry, giving one good
coat of boiling hot tar. A coat of Hmewash is appHed
three days later. That this is effective is well evidenced
by the fact that the buildings erected have successfully
withstood our last abnormally heavy rainy season.

" The Globe and Phoenix system is the result of a number
of experiments carried out on that mine. Their mixture,
which is stated to be ant-proof, contains more moisture
than Pise de terre, and each course is reinforced with old
wire rope, or other suitable scrap. The material is left
in a heap for one ox two days before being used.

" Circular huts have been built on the mine of the same
material, the forms being made of two rings of corrugated
iron in three or more sections joined up with cleats at the
end laps and held in position with cross bolts and distance
pieces. The inner ring is 9 in. less radius than the outer one.' '

Extracts from a paper on Pise in the " Farmers' Hand-
book," issued by the Department of Agriculture, New
South Wales, 1911
' Pise is a material readily obtainable by the settler,

Pise Buildings for Settlers 8 1

of which cheap and durable buildings can be easily and
substantially erected.

" For the construction of pastoral or agricultural build-
ings, especially in districts remote from railways, or from
towns in which other building materials are cheap or easily
procurable, pis^ is particularly well adapted. In the
country earth is plentiful and readily obtainable ; in the
city or town such is not the case, and this fact, combined
with the very bulky nature of the material, prohibits its
use in such centres of population,

" To the selector or settler, who, like many of our suc-
cessful pioneers, is not burdened with a superfluity of hard
cash, but who possesses an abundant capital of energy,
combined with a certain amount of handiness, pis^ has an
additional advantage (which it shares with slabs, wattle
and daub, etc.) over most other building materials, in that
it affords him an opportunity of erecting his homesteading
largely as the result of his own labour,

"As a building material, pis^ is infinitely superior and
more durable than slabs, galvanised iron, or weather-
boards. In fact it is questionable whether it is not more
suitable for our climate, and therefore to be preferred to
brickwork ; for pis6 buildings, properly protected and
finished, are quite as durable and much cooler than build-
ings constructed with solid brick walls. This statement
may be questioned by some whose knowledge of pis6
is limited to buildings so badly planned that the very
elementary principles of building construction have been
neglected. This neglect, which is all too common, makes
things bad enough, but when to it is added, as is some-
times the case, indifferent workmanship, combined with
the use of unsuitable material, the result does not call
for admiration, and it is not surprising that a bad impres-
sion is created. With no other knowledge of pis6 it is
only natural to condemn it because of such specimens,
but under similar circumstances other better-known
6

82 Pise de Terre

building materials of proved excellence would also be
condemned. Brickwork would just as readily be con-
demned if its building qualities had to be estimated by
the appearance presented by a brick building which had
been constructed of badly-burnt bricks laid by unskilful
tradesmen on an imperfectly thought-out plan. Just as
with other building materials, the possibilities of this
material can only be judged by an examination of properly
planned and constructed examples of the pis6-builder's
art. Such are found here and there throughout the country,
pleasing to look at, affording comfort and satisfaction to
their owners. A properly constructed pis4 building can
be finished to suit the taste of the most fastidious. Even
without plaster the walls can be ' floated ' down and a
' skin ' obtained on them which, when limewashed, resembles
stonework. When plastered inside and out they possess
the advantages of a stone house, and are erected at a
fraction of the cost.

" Some idea may be formed of the durabiUty of pis6 by
the fact that thejre is a stable built of pis6 which has been
in constant use for over sixty years, and which at the present
time is in good order. The good condition of this stable
is the more surprising because the external walls are un-
protected from the weather, and it is generally recognised
that pisS-work, especially if unplastered, should be pro-
tected from the direct action of rain. Pis6 buildings are
said to have a Ufe of a century and a half.

" The stabiUty of pis6 buildings is beyond question, as is
proved by the following instance : — At Lambrigg, a second-
story brick building, with 14-in. walls, and containing
ten rooms, is built upon a lower story of pis6. The brick-
layer who had the contract for erecting the brick portion
of the house refused, as it was built upon pis6, to guarantee
his work. Some time after the completion of the house
he visited it, and after a thorough examination of the
building, declared that it was the most substantial brick

'Builders' Aversions 83

house in the district, as it had not a crack in it, a feature
which was somewhat unusual in that locality. Another
case bearing on the same subject is that of a residence at
Temora. When this building was being constructed the
workmen omitted to leave holes for the bolts which were
to secure the verandah plates to the walls, as it was thought
these could readily be bored out afterwards with an auger.
On attempting to bore out these holes on the completion
of the building, and when the pis^-work had become drier,
the operation of boring proved so difficult as to be prac-
tically impossible, and had to be abandoned,

" The merits of pis^-work have been recognised in France,
India, Mexico, and California for years past, and seeing
its equal suitability for our climate, it is surprising that
these merits have not led to its being more extensively
used. The principal reason for this seems to be because
our builders are averse to undertaking this class of work,
and in consequence the bulk of it is placed in the hands of
untrained men, who, whilst quite fitted to carry out the
pis^-work, are not competent to undertake the other
constructive work of a building. However, they do not
hesitate to do this, as well as to undertake the more im-
portant work (though unrecognised as being so) of planning
out the building. The result is in most cases an improperly
planned and defectively constructed building, which appeals
to no one, but has a tendency to bring pis6 into disrepute.

"The reason for a builder's unwillingness to undertake
pis6-work is not far to seek. For the successful carrying
out of his work a builder relies upon skilled tradesmen ;
our tradesmen are trained in cities and towns, and as pis6
is not a suitable material for such places, tradesmen do
not become familiar with it. A good builder with a repu-
tation to lose shrinks from placing that reputation at the
mercy of a pis6-builder, who is not recognised as a trades-
man, and in whom, in consequence of this, a builder is
likely to have little or no confidence.

84 Pisf de Terre

"The actual erection of pise-work presents so little
difficulty that it can be done by any one who has sufficient
strength to shovel earth and wield a rammer, provided he
will exercise care to see that the moulds or boxes into
which the earth is shovelled are kept plumb and in straight
lines. The average settler, even with no previous know-
ledge of pisd-work or building construction, need have no
hesitation in undertaking the pis6-work of his own build-
ings if he works to a well-thought-out plan drawn up by
somebody competent to do so.

"The necessity of having a plan prepared by some one
who understands the principles and requirements of simple
building construction, before undertaking the erection ot
any building, cannot be too strongly emphasised. This
great need, which is often overlooked by the settler, cannot
be economically dispensed with. The securing of a properly
prepared plan is of the greatest value towards obtaining
a building of the maximum strength and durabUity, com-
bined with the best appearance and greatest convenience,
for the least cost. Even when a settler undertakes the
pisd-work of his own building, it will only be in rare Instances
that he will not have the advantage of trained supervision
during its erection. The services of a tradesman will
invariably be found necessary to make doors and window-
frames, construct the roof, etc. This workman can be
engaged when the building is started, and whilst preparing
the timbers of the roof, in readiness for the time when they
will be required on the completion of the pisd-work, can
supervise the fixing of the door and whidow frames, and
see they are set correctly, and In their proper places.

"Rs6 walls are constructed In sections, the extent of
which is regulated by the supply of casings available.

"Into the moulds formed by the boxes the earth is
shovelled In layers of 4 or 5 In., and then rammed until
thoroughly solid before another layer is put in. On the
completion of the section, t.e. when the mould is full and

Number of Men Required 85

well rammed, the keys or pins are knocked out of the
' bolts,' and the ' boxes ' taken apart and erected on another
portion of the building. The top of that portion of the
pis6-work on which it is proposed to erect another section
should be well moistened and covered with wet bags some
hours before the mould is formed. The bottom of the
mould should overlap the top of the pis^-work by about
6 in. After the ' boxes ' are put together, the top layer
of pis^ should be loosened with a pick so as to form a bond
with the section about to be built, and if this section adjoins
one already built, the ends of the latter should be bevelled
off so as not to form a straight joint.

"Material which is too sandy wdll fret away, and one
containing clay will crack when dry. Soils containing
these defects should be avoided. There is, however, such
a wide range of soils which are suitable that a holding
of any size on which suitable soils fiannot be found will
be the exception. It is possible to remedy the defects
found in one soil by mixing it with -another soil, but very
rarely will such a course be necessary.

"The plant required will depend upon the number of
men to be employed. Three is the least number that can
be economically employed — two attending to the boxes
and ramming, and one carting earth from its location to
the building and assisting generally. The plant required
for this number of men is given below. If more are engaged,
additional plant of the same character will be found advan-
tageous.

"The necessary plant will consist of — 2 wooden rammers,

1 iron shod rammer, 2 straight boxes, 2 angle boxes, 3 casings
for blocking up the ends of boxes, bolts and keys for same,
12 gauge rods, washers— a liberal supply of f-in. washers,

2 shovels, I spade, a horse and dray or other means for
transporting the material to the building (if required)."

The following detailed instructions are taken from the
same authority :

86 Pisi de Terre

SPECIFICATION CLAUSES FOR A PIS^ HOUSE (NEW ZEALAND)

Excavator. — Remove the turf to make footings, but not
deeper at any place than 3 in. Step where required.

Pise-Buildcr

Walls. — Erect the walls as shown on plan, external
walls 18 in., internal walls 15 in., carried up plumb and
true, with all cross walls properly bonded by continuing
the pis^-boxes around all angles; when necessary, this
material for the walls is to be properly tempered with
sufficient water. All sticks and vegetable matter are to be
removed.

Suitable material : to be a pipeclay loam, with a trace of
small gravel evenly distributed through it.' The boxes
to be filled in thin layers of 4 in. at a time, and well rammed
until solid ; the workmen are not to use their rammers in
unison.

The whole of the internal angles, also door and window
jambs, to be neatly splayed.

Floating. — Moisten well the outside and inside walls
before the floors are laid, and float same to even smooth
surface with wooden hand-float, using weak plaster, where
required.

Bolts. — ^To hold down wall-plates, provide and build in
J in. bolts, not less than 15 in. long, and spaced not more
than 6 ft. apart.

Damp-course. — Below all walls lay a three-ply Ruberoid
damp-course the full width of walls, to lap at ends at least

4 ill'

Ventilators. — Insert below floors, where directed, four

9 in. by 6 in. galvanised iron air gratings, in Wooden frames

I J in. thick by full width of walls; also insert at about

18 in. below ceiUng similar air gratings and frames.

Plugs. — Insert plugs 3 ft. apart for skirting, chair ancj

picture-rail, at the heights directed.

* This was specified because it was the best i^aterial near the site.

Pise in New Zealand 87

Frames. — Set all frames plumb and true, and secured in
wall before removing head. Lintels and heads must be
well and solidly bedded in mortar, at proper heights. The
whole of the work to be done in a proper workmanlike
manner.

Fillei. — Finish against intersection of floor and wall
with neat ij in. quarter-round fillet, scribed to wall and
floor and nailed to floors.

The pis6-builder wiU require to build into wall at all
window and door openings 3 in. by 3 in. shaped plugs, ,
spaced not more than 3 ft. apart to secure architraves.

Lintels. — For all door and window openings provide
6 in. by 4 in. well-seasoned pine Untels, to extend 12 in,
into pis6-work on each side of opening.

Skirting. — Provide and fix in all rooms, to plugs about
3 ft. apart, 6-in. skirting, neatly scribed to floors, mitred
at angles as required.

Picture-rail. — Provide 3 in. by I in. picture-rail to all
rooms.

' Plugs. — Prepare and tar for pis6-builder 3 in. by i in.
well-seasoned softwood plugs, 15 in. long, as per detail,
for skirtings, picture- and chair-rail, to be inserted 3 ft.
apart.

STUDDING, WIRE-NETTING, AND Pis6

" This is a modification of Pis6, which provides a settler
in a district where poles and sapUngs are available with a
quick method of providing himself with a comfortable
temporary residence without the expenditure of much cash.
To construct buildings of this character, a framework of
saphngs or poles, at intervals of 3 ft. 6 in. to 3 ft. apart,
is first erected ; this framework is covered on both sides
with ij in. mesh wire-netting, the two sections of netting
are held together, strengthened, and prevented from
stretching and bulging between the posts by means of wire
hooks or loops, which g,re as long as the posts are wide.

88 PisS de Terre

The spaces thus enclosed by the netting and the poles are
then filled with earth, which is well rammed, thus making
a solid wall 4 in. to 6 in. thick. This wall can be plastered,
the plaster forming a key with the wire-netting, which
holds securely. Buildings of this character can be made
to look rather attractive, and, if neatly constructed, are
very much superior, both in appearance and comfort, to
slabs or wattle and daub."

PISf SHUTTERING

That the plant now commonly in use for pis6-building is
but a slight improvement on the anciently accepted model,
may be seen by a comparison of modem examples with old
engravings and descriptions. Pis6-building lay off the great
main stream of constructional activity, and the enterprise
and ingenuity lavished on the perfecting of other building
materials and methods passed Pis6 by, leaving it undisturbed
in its quiet backwater, a primitive system still with its
primitive tackle.

Yet there were a number of very obvious and unnecessary
shortcomings in the accepted shuttering that seemed to
clamour for attention, defects, too, that were in no way
inherent, but merely traditional infehcities reproduced in
succeeding models that remained remarkably true to their
primitive ancestral architype — the Pis6 plant described by
Pliny.

Here seemed to be a very promising field for an ingenious
inventor, a field that is still " To Let."

In the absence of any such inventive genius, the author
has had certain ideas of his own embodied in the " Mark V "
type of shuttering — a type that further experience and
experiment will doubtless modify.

The principle of the building-process remains unaffected.
The improvements, such as they are, are merely improve-
ments of mechanism

Mark V Shuttering.
Showing top cross-braces thrown back and free leg disengaged.

, Mark V Shuttering,

I Showing screw-up securing tackle of exterior corner- piece and

its rounded interior. Also screw-cramp at interior angle of

shuttering.

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Mark V Shuttering.

The angle-iron stay with cross-brace raised, and the blocking-
box showiiig its internal clamping-gear.

[89

PisS Shuttering 89

Scientific research could doubtless, if it would, do much
towards perfecting Pis^-building.

We know very little about the behaviour of different
earths under compression, or of their several reactions to
chemical treatment. Meanwhile, a few trifling mechanical
modifications are all that distinguish our modern plant from
that devised by the ancients. That said, a short description
of the " Mark V " model may be of some interest, pending
the future developments that may now be hoped for

The chief desiderata in designing a satisfactory Pisd plant
appear to be these :

All constituent parts should be reasonably light and easy
to handle. The shutters should be rigid and not liable to
warp, without being expensively constructed. The shutters,
when clamped in position, should be firmly and positively
supported, without deviation from the vertical.

The fairway between the shutters must be as little ob-
structed by the cross-braces as may be, leaving good room
for the men on the wall to tread and ram.

The through-pins by which the shuttering rests upon the
base wall or on a completed course of Pis6, must be easily
withdrawn without injury to the wall.

The shuttering must be easily disengaged and removed
from the wall, one side at a time.

The special comer-piece must have some means of rigid
attachment to the ordinary shutters on the two meeting
walls.

There must be some means of blocking off the shuttering
at any desired point, for the forming of door or window
openings at any level.

The whole apparatus must be as simple and as fool-proof
as possible, and built to stand rough usage and exposure
to the weather.

90 Pisi de Terre

III

The author has attempted to construct a plant embodjdng
these essentials, and the working drawing and photographs
shown will give the reader a tolerable idea of his "Mark V"
model.

The thing has, at the moment of writing, only been ex-
perimentally tested in one of the London parks. These
trials were, however, sufficiently satisfactory to encourage
a belief that the new plant will prove a very considerable
improvement on the old. It has now been despatched to
a site in Surrey, there to undergo the searching and very
practical test of being used for the building of a small-holder's
house and homestead.

To the second edition of this book a postscript must be
added. Since the last paragraph was written, the small-
holder's house has come into actual being at Newlands
Corner, near Guildford, and has attracted a good deal of
attention from the Press, both at home and abroad:\ It
has been inspected by multitudes of people, including a
great number of Colonials and prospective Colonists, and
by many distinguished persons directly or indirectly con-
cerned with the problems of housing.

That " Good wine needs no bush " may be a true saying,
but a novel system of building assuredly needs demonstra-
tion, however great its merits. The success of the experi-
ment at Newlands is admitted by all who have made the
pilgrimage thither. Often would critics come to scoff and
remain to pray. Specially prized amongst the converts is
a foreman-bricklayer once openly scornful in his unbelief.
Of enthusiasm, perhaps, there has been almost over much ;
and it has been difficult to restrain the zed of would-be
pis6-builders until the coming of spring, and the return
of such weather conditions as the craft might reasonably
demand.

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If Reason Rule 91

For pis6 is a " dry-eart];i " method of building, and, as
at present practised, that means it is a summer job, so far,
at any rate, as England is concerned.

The author is the last person to claim that pis^-building
may be successfully and economically carried out in all
places, and at all seasons. He merely suggests that in a
great many parts of the United Kingdom, pis6 offers possi-
biUties of cheap yet permanent building that are very well
worth exploitation.

A wide and thorough trial of the method now seems
assured under a variety of conditions in a sufficient variety
of places. Pis6 is to be given its chance in Housing Schemes,
in Government building demonstrations, on Ducal estates,
and^by ordinary private citizens in need of houses — by the
rich (old and new), and by the poor.

If reason rule, pis6 will make good and all will be well.

If pisfi-building is attempted where the conditions are un-
suitable and in defiance of its physical limitations, the mis
guided enthusiasts responsible must blame only themselves.
But it is not self-reproach alone that they will have to suffer,
for the author and all true friends of pis6 will view their
troubles with as much anger as sorrow.

Nothing could be so well calculated to bring discredit on
a new movement as the failures of a few enthusiastic in-
competents.

THE FIRST DEMONSTRATION PISE DE TERRE HOUSE AT NEW-
LANDS CORNER, NEAR GUILDFORD

With acknowledgments to the " Spectdlof "

Description. — Thp house has six rooms arranged on one
floor, of areas and cubical contents as laid down in their
higher " schedules of accommodation " by the Ministry of
Health and the Board of Agriculture.

The plan is an adaptation of the first type illustrated in
the Board's new manual " designed for the guidance of

92 Pise de Terre

County Councils and their architects " in the matter of
buildings for small-holdings.

The walls are of i8-in. solid pis^-work, the roof of red
Bridgewater tiles, and the chimney breasts and stacks of
brickwork.

The floors are boarded save for the back kitchen, which
is tiled. The inner partitions are of 2-in, breeze blocks,
the ceilings are plastered, and the casement windows are
of steel.

There are two good lofts for storage, one entered from
the bam, which is an extension of the house proper.

The pillars of the barn and the partition wall between
scullery and veranda are of i8 in. by 9 in. by 9 in. rammed
earth blocks ; the angle pillar to the veranda is of shnilar
blocks made from soft chalk.

The rest of the structure is of monolithic pis4, built up
in situ without joints of any kind, either horizontally or
vertically.

Cost. — The total cost of the whole of the outer walling
of the house (in pis6) amounted to less than £20. Had
the walls been built in brickwork the cost would, accord-
ing to estimate, have been about £200.

specification.— The following is an abridged extract
from the specification so far as it affects the pis6-builder :

(i) Excavate to a depth of 9 in. over the site, dumping
the turf and surface humus where directed.

This soil is not to be used for building.

(2) Lay a 6-in. bed of cement and flint concrete 3 ft.
wide under outer walls. Centrally on this, lay two courses
of brickwork in cement, to a width of 18 in., or build up
to the same extent in concrete.

Lay on this an approved damp-proof course ; if of slates,
having a further course of brickwork or concrete above it
to prevent fracture when ramming.

(3) Erect the walls according to the plan on the bases
thus formed, carrying them up plumb and true and properly

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Newlands. The Cottage from the South-east.

Newlands. The Garden Court.

The Newlands Specification 93

^■^ — : .

'ponded by working round the building course by course,
using the special angle-pieces at the corners to keep the
work continuous and homogeneous.

{4) All stones and flints above a walnut size to be removed
by riddling and reserved for concrete.

All sticks, leaves, roots, and other vegetable matter to
; fee eliminated.

(5) The soil immediately on the site to be used without
admixture of any sort and to be thrown direct into the
shutterings.

No water to be added without the express permission of
the architect.

(6) The boxes are to be fiUed in thin layers of not more
than 4 in. at a time, and well rammed until solid. The
workmen are not to use their rammers in unison.

(7) Rammed earth at box ends to be shaved down to a
45 degrees slope so as to splice in with new span of pis6
adjoining it.

Where door and window openings occur, the special
" stops " to be adjusted and firmly secured so as to with-
stand hard ramming. Two 4 in. by 2 in. by 9 in. plugs to
be built in to each window jamb for the securing of the
frames and three to each door jamb.

Special care to be taken in the thorough ramming at
the corners and along the box edges.

(8) Insert below floor level, where directed, 24 3-in. field
drainage pipes to act as ventilators through the thick-
ness of the wall. Insert wire mesh stops to exclude
vermin.

(9) Set all frames square and plumb, and where in outer
walls, flush with finished exterior plaster-face, the joint
being covered by a 2-in. by f-in. fillet.

- Where lintels occur, they are to be tailed in at least 9 in.
on each side the opening.

Provide plain picture-rail round all rooms at window-
head level, providing plugs for fixing where necessary.

Pisi de Terre

Secure to floor round all boarded rooms a 2-in. by ij-in.
angle fillet as skirting.

(lo) The smooth surface of the pis6 walling to be hammer-
chipped to give good key to the plaster.

Before rendering or plastering walls, any loose earth or
dust to be removed with a stiff brush and the wall surface
evenly wetted.

The rendering to be carried evenly round the walls — the

NEWLANDS CORNER Pisi HOUSE. THE PLAN.

minor square angles being roughly chipped down first so
as to obviate sharp corners. The main corners of the-
house are ready-rounded off to a g-in. radius by the special
' corner mould.

(ii) Bond brick and slab work to pis6 waUs^by driving
iron spikes into the latter every few courses at joint level
and bedding in.

(12) Colour-wash walls with tallow lime-whiting tinted
with ochre. Provide 2 ft. skirting of pitch, applied hot,
to form base-course round exterior of building.

<
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a

a
o

a
a

O M

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iz;

A Svpedish Contribution 95

N.B. — ^The exterior of the walls of the Newlands Corner
house have been finished in several different ways with a
view to determining the most durable and economical
form of epidermis.

A trial pis6-building adjoining has stood for four years
without any external protection whatever. It has suffered
no damage and grows continually harder. For the sake
of appearances, hoWever, and for the better preservation
of the wall from chance injury whilst still " green," a
coating of some sort may be deemed necessary.

THE THEORY OF VlSt

The Swedish scientist, Mr. Karl Ellington, of Nossebro,
who is basing a book on pis6 (in his own tongue) upon the
frail foundation of the present volume, has, in the course
of a letter to the author, made some exceedingly sugges-
tive " guesses at the truth."

" I am very interested to hear that you are proposing
to use an hydrauUc rammer for making blocks. I have
thoui^t a good deal about this pressure business. I am
trying to ^cjctttinise the thing from ' the inside,' so to speak.
I am trjong to trace out how Nature makes rock. That
helps us to imderstand pis^. Nature made all the stratified
rocks out of what was once fine loose earth and mud. Rivers
carried the mud out to sea. Waves pounded and gnawed
the shores and got down some more stuff. The tides went
forth and back and shovelled and levelled at the sea-
bottom. Some more mud on top of that, and a few
hundred or thousand feet of ^he heavy water on top of
that — and Nature's pis6 was in its making. But why do
these mud particles stick together for ever even after that
stratirai is raised up high above the sea and the pres-
sure is discontinued ? That is the counterpoint of the

96 Pise de Terre

whole problem. What is gravitation ? Is it some form
of magnetic or electric energy ? We don't know. Do
particles of mud grip and hold each other if they are forced
together close enough to be united by some sort of magnetic
or electric energy ? Or do the particles only get a ' mechani-
cal ' grip on each other ? However that may be, we seem
to know now that we can make them grip by bringing them
closely together. It would seem important, then, that we
must bring as much of particle surfaces together within
any given cubic space as we possibly can ; that is, we must
have as little of ' holes,' ' empty spaces,' pores and channels
as possible in the mass, in the pressed wall. This, then,
would in turn make it important that plenty of very fine
(small) particles must be present in the mass — and so well
distributed among the coarser particles as to be on hand
close by wherever there can be one more chance for a small
particle to fill a little chamber that the coarser particles
would like to bridge ovor. We can think of how well
Nature was fitted for this work of shujffling over all the
particles at the sea-bottom and under great water pressure
till she got every particle into the niche where it would
exactly fit. She used waves, tides, and gulf streams as
shovels and mixers and packers, and the water above as
' hydrauUc rammer.' Looking at the pis6 n."j,tter in :this
way, it would appear that both the mixing and the shuffling
are of vital importance. And by ' shuffling ' I mean in
this connection only that the smaller and larger particles
get a chance to shift over a Uttle during the process of
pressing the earth together to hardness, so that the pressure
may not work only and exclusively in a straight downward
direction, but in a sort of wavy zigzag direction as well —
much as when a street-roller is working the macadam and
gravel a little forth and back at the same time as down-
ward. ^ I have a great respect for old tools which are the
outcome of long-time experience and handed-down wisdom.
I suspect the presence of some of that sort of experience

A Pist-builders School 97

in the rammer described in your book, p. 59. That tool
would do the necessary shifting while attending to its main
intention : hammering the mass solidly together down-
wards. Now for your hydraulic rammer — is it advisable
to njake it blow or press only in a straight line downward ?
Maybe there ought to be two or three kinds of strokes
alternating — one stroke with a rifled or wavy surface under
the rammer — and the next stroke with a plane surface. . . .
What sort of witchcraft enters into the effect of high fre-
quency blows as compared with blows with a little longer
intervals between ? Do the strokes create also some ' mag-
netic ' effect in the poimded earth-mass which helps to
fasten the particles to each other ? And does this magnetic
charge or friction heat, or whatever it is, act more promptly
if one keeps on ' striking the iron while hot,' instead of
letting the charge ' evaporate ' and sneak away between
strokes ? Two or three of my hairs are turning grey over
these questions alone. You compliment me by insinuating
that I might stumble across some fruitfiil idea for the forms
or boxes if I specxilate a little more on the key-problem.
Well, the thing won't leave me alone, so I have thought
out several fooUsh variations and rejected them too. But
the last one seems to have a little more vitality, so if it
wiU live till I write my next letter I will teU you about it.
One is so apt to foUow the temptation of ' perfecting ' an
apparatus — at the cost of getting away from keeping it
cheap, simple — and ' fool-proof.' By this time the idea
has grown ripe in my mind,, so that I ought to write out a
little book on the pis^ problem in Swedish and have it
printed before springtime. Something ought to be done.
... I have to ask you kindly to permit me to make use of
the data contained In your book. To this I will have to
add what special precautions we must observe as to founda-
tions in a climate like ours. I intend to treat only the pis6
method. Cob and chalk methods are not applicable here,
as we have such materials only in a few tmimportant spots."
7

98 Pise de Terre

Mr. Ellington has long been an admirer and a firm friend
of England, and he is good enough to regard his comitry
as indebted to ours for the introduction of pis6-building :

" Let me tell you that the help you are giving me now —
not me, but my nation — will work as an additional bond
that draws us more closely towards each other. . . . Some
of our people here have always looked too much towards
the South and too little towards the West."

PIS£, PRACTICE AND PLANT

Now that so many able architects and enterprising
bodies are seriously taking up pis6-building, the improve-
ment in plant and technique should be both rapid and
considerable. The School of Pis6 Building estabUshed at
Homchurch in Essex, by the Imperial Ex-service Associa-
tion, should alone provide us with much new and valuable
knowledge of a highly practical kind.

It is there, for instance, that various types of shuttering
and rammers are being experimentally tested side by side,
and their relative efficiency under var5dng conditions ascer-
tained. Under some conditions it is probable that the
floor and roof timbers (destined for use in the house under
construction) will be found the most economical and satis-
factory form of temporary " shuttering " for the making of
the earth walls.

The pis6 " Test-House," built by Messrs. Alban Richards
at their Ashstead works, was built in this way, and proved
highly satisfactory.

Another effective and more generally applicable form of
shuttering (designed and manufactured by the same firm)
is illustrated in the diagram reproduced below. It should
be observed that wedges intervene between the movable
shutters and the uprights.

The method of employment of the " Mark V " shuttering

Alternative Shutter in gs

is well illustrated by the bird's-eye view showing the New-
lands cottage under construction.

In this matter of shuttering there is still, however, great
scope for improvement, and it may be hoped that soon
ingenuity and experience will jointly produce a complete
pis6 plant perfectly fulfilling all the many conditions
enimierated earUer in the book.

Shuttering made by riveting plain galvanised sheet iron
to one side of a corrugated sheet has the qualities of light-
ness, smoothness, cheapness, and rigidity, and the claims
of the inventor and patentee are now being put to the test
in actual building.

PATENT SHUTTERING- FOR PISE DE TERRB
By W. Albgn BiehatOs and Co.

100 PisS de Terre

There now seems little doubt but that pis6 blocks will be
largely used for partitions and chimney stacks where the
soil is good enough, and experiments are being made with
a view to discovering the best and cheapest way of making
earth slabs similar to those of coke-breeze and concrete.

The size aimed at is i8 in. by i8 in. by 3 In., the edges to
be tongued and grooved.

Certain " concrete " machines seem to lend themselves
to adaptation for the making of earth blocks, but it is neces-
sary to remember that sharp blows are required rather than
a steady pressure, and also that we are working with a dry
material. The ordinary primitive way of making pise
blocks is indicated below.

The hand-rammers are undoubtedly worth study and
careful design. A set of three seems to meet all ordinary
requirements, and those shown on p. loi may be taken as
t57pical. They should be of hard-wood, smoothly finished,
and provided with long handles. They should be 9 in. to
la in, long, and about 5 in. by 4 in. at maximum cross
section.

In the sketch they are shown " narrow-ways-on." No. i
is used for preliminary pounding and final finishing. No. 2
for general consoUdating, and No. 3 for working along the
edges, against window stops, ^ and under cross-ties.

A South African correspondent. Major Baylay, makes
interesting comment as regards rammers and local pis4
practice :

" My experience of all black labour is, that they won't
put any ' guts ' into it. They therefore want fairly heavy
rammers, which they can lift and drop, say a toot, and
which will do the rest for them. The heat of the sun and
extreme drjmess of atmosphere out here make it advisable
to cover up completed courses at once with sacking, moist
for choice, otherwise it is liable to dry out too quickly
and crack. It dries out uncovered at night very well,
when there is no rain.

South Africa

lOI

" The red loams of South Africa, where not too sandy,
make excellent pisfi. They or their equivalent are found
almost everywhere. In the dry state they set so hard
that moisture added Just before ramming Is useless. A
large heap must be made, well damped and covered over
with moist sacking, and left until the moisture is distributed
throughout the mass. When about four or five days old,
in ordinary weather, the earth is ready to use — viz., just
wet enough to bind when gripped in the hand. It should
be passed through a sieve. I use a sort of ' chicken run,'
8 ft. long, and throw the earth on to it before using. Six

PISE BAMO RAMMERS

feet of it is i-ln. mesh, and 2 ft. i-in. mesh ; the reason for
this is that, If the earth is a little too dry, it does not always
bind weU with the previous layer. Therefore, put a few
petrol tins of the fine earth into the shuttering first in order
to ensure good bond, and throw the coarser stuff in
after."

Secmi Note by Major Baylay, Peter Maritzburg, Natal,
South Africa

" I have completed a small building, and though weather
conditions have been as bad as possible, it is sound and
very satisfactory.

" In my opinion, pis^-building should not be attempted
in the rainy season in Africa. Earth contains too much

102 Pise de Terre

moisture, and the power of the sun dries it out too quickly
and causes cracks.

"Re plastering. I covered the outside and inside with a
mixture of 6 earth, 2 sand, i blue (Hyd.) lime, the earth
being the red, rather ' fat ' earth found ever57where, and
the same stuff the house is built of. It is put on thin with
a trowel, after damping the wall. When it dries and
cracks, rub all over with a sacking pad covered with the
plaster mixture, but wetted to a thin cream consistency.
It may sound an odd method, but the natives do this work
well, and the result is as good as one can wish for. You
can put tar or any wash (No. 6) on this."

SOILS

Were it not for the fact (often somewhat embarrassing)
that soil quite incapable of making good pis^ wiU none the
less produce enthusiastic pis^-buUders, a warning as to the
vital importance of the earth being really suitable might
seem superfluous.

The author has found some of the staunchest champions
of pis^-building living on and valiantly struggling with
stiff glutinous clay and almost pure sand.

Even the most vigorous optimism can achieve little under
such adverse conditions unless soil-blending be resorted -to,
and even so, pis6-building begins to lose points in the
matter of economy directly complications of this sort are
introduced.

Fortunately, however, England is well off in the matter
of pis6 soils, the red marls being amongst the very best.

A study of the country, or, faihng that, of the geological
maps, will reveal a great tract of this earth extending
diagonally right across England, from Yorkshire down into
Devonshire, where it ends conspicuously in the beautiful
red cliffs about Torquay.

Soils 103

There is a large area of the stuff in the Midlands, notably
in Warwickshire, with lesser patches here and there about
the country.

Second only to the red marls come the brick earths, which,
fortunately, are also widely distributed,

" Brick earth " is merely clay that has been well weathered
and disintegrated imder the action of wind, rain, frost, and
organic agents, the sulphides having become oxides, and
what was a cold intractable slithery mass having become
merely a " strong " and binding earth.

It is probable that even stiff clay, if dug in the summer
or autumn, and left exposed for a winter, would prove
sufficiently reformed to be quite amenable for pis6 building
in the spring.

After the marls and the brick earths there is an endless
variety of soUs that will serve well for pis6-building — some,
of course, better than others, but aU, save the extremes (the
excessively Hght and the excessively clayey), capable of giving
good results under proper treatment.

Before putting pis6 construction actually in hand, however,
the intending builder will do weU to submit samples of his
earth to some competent authority; that they may receive
his blessing.

A fistful taken from a depth of 9 in., and another from
say 2 ft. below the surface, should give sufficient evidence
as to the soil's suitability or the reverse.

■r^-:

CHALK

Ill

CHALK

§ I. General

Chalk, as a source of lime, has always been of high import-
ance to builders, and, until improved transport brought
aUen materials into its old preserves, chalk was in general
use for walling in the form of roughly squared blocks.

Chalk again forms the basis of a compost that, used in
the form of a stiff paste, has been largely employed for
building from the earUest times down to the present.

"Pis6 de Craie," or chalk consolidated by ramming
within a casing, is a form of building that has been long
held in high repute in France and elsewhere, but which
has only recently been given a serious trial in England.

Chalk in all these forms, if fairly dealt with and reason-
ably protected from the weather, is a most amenable and
satisfactory material to build with.

The last-named method particularly seems to promise
results that should satisfy the most exacting critics of the
unconventional, as it assuredly does those who inhabit the
cottages so constructed.

The several systems of chalk construction are fuUy^dealt
with in the pages that follow.

Chalk Compost : Historical. — At the Ancient British village
on West Down, Chilbolton, some five miles south of Andover,
delving archaeologists have brought to Ught undeniable
fragments of chaBc " Daub," with the wattle marks still
clearly showing upon them.

This discovery is chiefly of academic interest, though

107

io8 Chalk

it is' a pretty refutation to those who regard any building
material save brick and stone as " new-fangled," and it
should also serve to hearten the doubters and the timid
amongst us who seek historic sanction for any departure
from current building practice.

Composition and Uses.-r~Ia the Andover district Chalk
Compost or " Chalk Mud," as it is called locally, Is prepared
and used as follows :

The chalk is dug out in the autumn, and the frost allowed
to play on it during the winter. In the spring building
starts, and the weathered chalk is spread all around the
outside of the walls. Straw is sprinkled on it and it Is then
well trodden, usually by the workers, but sometimes by
horses. Sometimes chopped straw is added, sometimes
unchopped straw is sprinkled on. The quality of the walls
depends very largely on the preparation — that is, in getting
the mud to the right consistency — and the old hands know
by experience when it is ready.

The compost is lifted on the wall by a fork and another
man stands on the wall and treads it in. It is then chopped
down straight with a spade. Some of the naked walls at
Andover show traces of the courses, which are usually
something under 2 ft. in height.

Where a course has to be left unfinished it should be
ended with a diagonal ramp so as to splice in with the work
that follows.

Some of the old builders seem to have been somewhat
catholic in their conceptions as to what constituted " chalk,"
and vague patches of earth, loose flints and other stray
substances not infrequently mar their work and sometimes
seriously reduce its strength.

As a general rule, the finer the chalk the stronger and
more durable is the walling.

What is aimed at is a conglomerate of small chalk knobs
cemented together by a matrix of plastic chalk and straw,
the whole forming as dense a mass as possible.

Winter Work Barred 109

Grinding in a mortar-mill would probably reduce all the
chalk to an amorphous powder, which would not be desirable,
and in any case such mechanical mixing is quite unnecessary.

Building by ramming the moist compost between timber
shutterings does not appear to have been practised in the
past, though there is nothing against the method except
its tendency to delay the dr57ing out.

The drsdng of each course takes several days, depending
on the weather. A course Is usually laid right round the
building. It must be covered up at night in case of rain,
and when it is hard another course is laid on, and so on till
completion. The aim is to build during the summer and
autumn, and when the moisture has dried out, to render the
exterior.

Where brickwork is used with chalk compost it is gener-
ally bonded In in the ordinary way, but block-bonding the
depth of a chalk course is a better way of doing It.

The exterior comers of chalk buildings are the vulnerable
points, and these should therefore be well rounded off.

Timber. — In the old work nothing seems to have been
done to prevent woodwork built in to the compost from
decaying, though in many cases it has survived surprisiiigly.
In any new work, however, proper ventilg.ted air-spaces
should be contrived or the timber ends treated with some
preservative.

The door and window frames are fixed to fairly large
pieces of wood built in across the thickness of wall, and other
-woodwork is fixed to wood blocks built in in a similar way.

Picture-rails should be provided in all rooms, as chalk
walls are apt to flake and chip if nails are driven into them.

Lintels are usually of wood, and when plastering is
carried down over these some form of key must of course
be provided to hold it.

Froii. — New work must not be exposed to frost or there
will be danger of collapse, and winter work is barred out
for this reason.

Chalk

Repairs. — Chalk compost walls are not easily repaired in
that material, and bricks are generally used, well bonded in.

Chimneys. — Chimneys, too, are usually of brick, though
there would seem no reason against the flues being carried
up in chalk, especially if clay pipe Unings were used.

The chimney-stacks above the roof might well be built
in flint, the corners being rounded off in deference to the
peculiarities of the material.

External Rendering. — It is of the first importance that a
good weather-tight skin be maintained, and many old
buildings have suffered through neglect of this precaution.

The rendering was often of the poorest quality, more
mud than Ume, and the constant repairs that the indifferent
materials necessitated has resulted in many of the old
cottages becoming patchworks of variegated plaster blotches,
when not whitewashed over, which give an impression of
dilapidation by no means warranted by the facts.

Rendering. — Given a good skin, however, of cement or
cement and lime, a chalk conglomerate wall will last in-
definitely. So vital is the skin that it is as well to put it on
in two good coats — rounding off all the corners and finishing
it either with slap-dash or rough from the wooden float.

Also, to ensure its proper adhesion throughout, wire-
netting may be used as reinforcement — being secured to
the face of the chalk wall by means of cross netting or wires
laid on the wall as the building rises.

If the netting be of a fine mesh it also serves as an absolute
barrier to vermin, though pounded glass incorporated in
the base of the wall is equally effective.

Strength. — Provided the wall has dried out thoroughly,
any of the ordinary loads occurring in a two-storied house
can be borne with ease.

Chalk conglomerate walUng, however, has no great lateral
strength, and it should not be asked to stand up to thrusts.

The roof, therefore, must be well tied, and should sit
on the building merely as a lid.

,-\ AT TfiE^voN Hotel-,

^.,. ^MESBUQY.

I b^^ noULDCD

coPiriu

JDCJ/Ofi
T/iPOUOM
/7BCn

crMcriT

Dm/L5 orCmLK COmmucflOHaraMEjBU^.

TILE mo BRICK COPING.

'>•' ■ >X ^LriX)Um RltXJtTILE.

iiyjri.wnq;
JBcr/on

MJion.

A..-*., '.

JWZZ wm TH^TCtim

copina

Details of Chalk Construction at Amesbury.

(From a sketch by W. R. Jaggaid, F.R.I.B.A., the copyiight of the Depattmeut c£ Ecientif c
and Industrial Research.)

no]

8a O

Garden Walls

III

Roof. — ^Though thatch is the traditional roofing material
of chalk cottages, any other wiU serve that is permanent
and good of its kind.

The only special demand that chalk walls make is that
the eaves shall be generously overhung for their better
protection from the weather.

Where, in later years, the boldly projecting thatch has been
thoughtlessly replaced by a slate roof with meagre eaves,
or with none at aU, the walls have suffered accordingly.

Garden Walls. — A chalk garden wall must be afforded just
as much protection as the wall of a house and on both sides.

The hat with which it is provided is of the highest
importance to the health and longevity of the walling.

Examples of garden wall copings are given in the sketches
shown below.

■TuKfcN

hQM.9

e.tMta>.>wnv men,

unm.

QfcMP eouft&e;

WALL COPINGS.

112

Chalk

House Walls. — Chalk conglomerate walls rarely exceed
i8 in. in thickness, and are usually the same upstairs as
down.

A plinth of the same thickness as the chalk wall it sup-
ports is usually carried up 6 in, to i8 in. above the ground
level in rubble-work, flint, or brick, being known as the
" Underpin Course." Any of the stock damp-courses are
suitable, but they must be well and truly laid^as damp
feet are nearly as deleterious to a chalk wall as a leaky or
inadequate hat.

No special tools are required for this method of building,
an ordinary farm fork for lifting and a spade for the final
chopping down of the wall faces being all that are necessary.

A house built during the summer is usually fit for occu-
pation the same autumn.

Old Examples. — ^Those who may wish to see buildings in
chalk conglomerate, both old and new, would do well to
visit some such typical chalk district as that lying about
Andover in Wiltshire.

It should, however, be constantly borne in mind that
most of the old cottages were somewhat unscientifically
erected by their original jack-of-all-trades occupiers, that
damp-courses and Portland cement were unknown, and
that the advantages of proper ventilation and the causes
of dry-rot were discoveries yet to be made.

Secondly, a large number of these cottages have been
sadly neglected either recently or in the past, and they bear
the disfiguring marks of their ill-treatment upon them
now.

But a chalk cottage that is well found in the beginning,
and that is reasonably well cared for subsequently, has
nothing to fear from comparison with cottages built in the
most approved manner of the more fashionable materials.

Mr. James Thorold gives the following particulars of a
block of three chalk cottages recently built for Sir George
Cooper on his estate at Hursley, near Winchester :

Cost of Three Cottages 113

" The chalk walling was done by Messrs. A. Annett and
Son, of Winterslow, near Salisbury, where this method of
building has been kept alive from olden days. It consists
of working up the soft upper strata of the chalk by putting
a bed of It 4 ft. 6 in. thick on the ground, watering and
treading it to a sticky consistency with the feet, working
in shortish straw at the same time. When thoroughly
mixed by the builder's mate, he Ufts up a forkful to the
builder working on the wall immediately above him, the
latter catches the chalk, dumps it down on the top of the
waD, building an 18 in. course all round. As soon as the
weather has dried this sufficiently he goes round with a
sharp spade squaring up both sides of the wall. As this
work is greatly dependent on the weather it is well if the
men have other work to fall back on, and that bxiilding
operations should be commenced in the spring or early
summer. The wall is"' built 18 in. thick to the first floor
joists and 14 in. above. Chalk in itself being very absorb-
ent of moisture, the usual plan is to render the outside of
the wall with a lime mortar, which, however, requires
renewal every few years. To obviate this we fixed with
long staples x\ in. mesh wire-netting over the outside
surface of the wall to give a reinforcement for a rendering
of hair mortar arid cement gauged in proportion of i to 2
respectively, and left rough from the trowel. This render-
ing was done at a cost of 3s, 3^^. per square yard, which
is a substantial addition to the cost of the walling, but
so far there is no sign of a crack or hollow place behind
it, and the cottages have kept very dry. The walls were
finished off with a limewash contaiiiing Russian tallow and
copperas.*

" As regards the cost of this block of three cottages, the
result is obscured by the fact that tall chimney-stacks
with ornamental bricks and appropriate foundations were
built and reinforced leaded lights were used in the windows

» See recipes for Whitewash in Appendix (I).
8

114

Chalk

to keep the building in character with the other cottages
on the estate, but at the time we estimated that the chalk
walling saved a sum of £54 as against the amount we should
have had to have spent in canying out the building with
bricks made on the estate, and this had to include lodging
money and profit, the builders being independent men.
The ornamental- chimney-stacks were put in for the sake
of appearance, flues built up in the chalk being entirely
satisfactory and fireproof. The foundations are either
flint or brick with a slate damp-course.

" I consider that for a chalk country this method of
building has many advantages.
" (i) It saves cartage.

" (2) It can be carried out by a skilled labourer who
can be otherwise employed during unsuitable
weather.
" (3) No fuel is required as in burning bricks.
" (4) If a suitable rendering is employed to keep it
weatherproof, and a good damp-course on the
foundations, the cottages are nice and dry and
keep an equable temperature, chalk being a
good non-conductor.
" Sir George wonders if any method could be devised by
chemical means to harden the chalk and make it weather-
proof ; if this could be done it might save the expense of
the cement rendering."

CHALK CONGLOMERATE

From Country Life, February 23rd, 1901 :

" Soft chalk is practically mud, yet Dr. Poore, one
leading authority on rural hygiene, had his model hygienic
cottage built with it at Andover, just outside the bound-
aries, in order to escape the tyranny of the bye-laws. In
several other places this material has been used time out
of mind.

X ^' ^

Expensive Scaffolding Avoided 115

"The white cottages on the Wiltshire Downs are as
-good as any in England."

THE WINTERSLOW COTTAGES

From Country Life, April 6th, 1901 :

" The white chalk cottages of the scattered straggling
village are found in every sort of position. They must
not be confoimded with the cottages of rock chalk at
Medmenham. You might almost call them mud cottages.

" The house is generally both planned and constructed
by the owner.

"... The soil is only a few inches deep, soft chalk lies
close to the surface and can be dug out with a spade. This
is a very suitable material in the district and costs nothing
but the labour of digging. . . .

" On the downs there is a constant lack of water ; that
which falls in the shape of rain is therefore very precious,
and in some cases is indeed the only kind available. But
a large tank or artificial well is needed to contain it, and
the pit from which the chalk is dug out can be made to
serve the purpose. . . . One was made watertight by
means of a lining of concrete, and held enough water to
keep the family going through all the dry season.

" In another house . . . the chalk-pit had been utilised
to form a large and convenient cellar. . . .

" Most of them (the cottages) ... are on two floors, with
parlour, kitchen, back kitchen and so forth on one, and
the bedrooms on the other. In the preparation of the
chalk, the method followed Is that of treading it Into a
kind of rubble, and adding a proportion of straw and a
small quantity of lime.

" There is a local builder who wiU run up the shell of a
house for a matter of ;£ioo, more or less, according to its
size. . . . Most of the cottages are literally hand-made.
A skilful architect who visited the Winterslow cottages

ii6 Chalk

felt sure that boards must be used to keep the walls
straight, but he was'wrong. The chalk is shovelled up
and the walls are kept straight without line or plununet.
No expensive scaffolding or machinery is employed. Yet
the walls come out beautifully in the end, the colour being
an exquisite soft white. They are about i8 in, thick,
and the slowness of their construction has one good effect,
it gives them time to dry. No point is of more importance
than this. It is advisable not to put on any rough-cast,
plaster, or paper for at least twelve months, as doing so
will prevent the moisture from exuding. One or two of
the little cottages were slightly damp, but the majority
were as dry as tinder. The thickness of the walls helps
to render the cottage more comfortable, to make it cool in
summer and dry in winter.

" One word should be added In regard to soft chalk as a
building material. Where it can be obtained in the garden
at a few inches depth, and especially where the cottager is
his own architect and builder, it can be most heartily
recommended, but there are obvious objections to its
transportation to districts where it is foreign.

" The village itself is a very homely and irregular one
without a single dwelling of any pretence. The country
lying adjacent to Salisbury Plain consists of broken,
sparsely peopled downland, and very ornate or finished
cottages would be out of keeping, but they would not look
so well copied in a very rich, heavily timbered country,"

RATS AND CHALK

l^ote. — Conglomerate chalk is, like cob, vuhierable to
the attacks of a really determined rat.

The outer defences provided by the exterior rendering
can be backed up by the mixing in of broken glass or sharp
flints with the substance of the wall, where such attacks
are likely.

Block Chalk II J

BLOCK CHALK

" Chalk " is a term somewhat loosely used to denote
the soft white limestone — the " Creta Scriptoria " — that is
cousin to Marl on one side and to Ragstone on the other.

In its purest form chalk consists of over 95 per cent.
of carbonate of lime in the~form of fine granular particles
held together by a calcareous cement, its organic origin
bdng clearly traced in the remains of the minute sea crea-
tures with which it abounds.

Hewn blocks of chalk have been used for walling and
vaulting from Immemorial times, and, where not exposed
to direct erosion by the weather, remain to this day as
clean-cut as when they were first quarried and a very great
deal harder.

The filling in of the great vaults at Salisbury Cathedral
and in the Bishop's Palace are of chalk, whilst innumerable
lesser buildings of more or less antiquity still remain to
us as monuments to the excellence and durabiUty of this
stone.

Chalk, too, was often used in combination with iiint
or brick to build the engaging chequer-work walls that
embellish so many downland villages.

At Medmenham there are cottages both old and new of
hewn rock chalk, and both the Berks and Bucks banks of
the Thames have many buildings to show of this beautiful
material.

Amongst present-day architects Sir Edwin Lutyens was
the first to give hewn chalk an opportunity of showing its
quality In serious architecture. Marsh Court in Hampshire
being an instance of more than local celebrity.

In the great walls at the Bishop of Winchester's palace,
Famham Castle in Surrey, the old builders appear to
have used bricks, limestone and chalk proper, according as
the several materials were delivered, quite indifferently,
and with results altogether delightful.

ii8 Chalk

Not all chalk is suitable for building, that near the surface
being often far gone in decay and much too friable for
such a purpose.

Even when apparently sound blocks have been gotten
they are not infrequently found to be crossed in all direc-
tions by planes of weakness along which they are apt to
fall to pieces in the handling.

From this cause the " waste " is sometimes considerable.

The well-known building " stones " from the quarries
of Beer, Sutton, and Tottenhoe in Devonshire are really
chalk, but in a form not readily distinguishable from
ordinary free-stone.

The longer that chalk blocks are kept to dry before
building-in the better, and the sun and wind of at least a
year should be allowed free play upon them to dry out
their natural sap and render them " frost-proof."

During the drying-out process the chalk should, if possible,
be protected from the rain.

For years after being built into the walls of a house,
chalk will continue to dry and harden.

But it is essentially a somewhat porous material, and
will quickly revenge itself on those neglecting its just
demands for a sound roof and a proper damp-course.

In exposed situations new chalk walling is Uable to
allow the penetration of moisture under the pressure of
the wind unless a cavity is provided or unless the surface
is treated with a silicate or other " vitrifjdng " fluid.

Chalk, however, has one shining virtue in common with
its great antithesis — it improves mightily with keeping.

Chalk walls sometimes have youthful vices in the way of
porosity that entirely disappear with advancing years
through the closing up of the surface -pores, which eventually
makes a cavity and inner hning superfluous.

IV
UN BURNED CLAY AND EARTH BRICKS

UNBURNED CLAY AND EARTH BRICKS

Sun-dried Bricks
The use of sun-dried bricks in this country, is, for no very
apparent reason, almost entirely restricted to East Anglia.
There it has been used for generations with entirely satis-
factory results.
Mr. Skipper of Norwich writes of the material as follows :

" Who, travdling from Norfolk to London, whether by
the Ipswich or Cambridge line, has not noticed the numerous
colour-washed or black (tarred) cottage, farmhouse and
agricultural buildings scattered practically all along the
countryside ? Some of these are of studwork and plaster,
some of wattle and daub, but many are built of clay made
up Into lumps, sun-dried, and built into the walls with a
soft clay-mixture as mortar. No lime need be used, though
sometimes it is mixed with the clay mortar. The prepara-
,tion, digging, exposure and mixing with short straw are
similar to the Devonshire ' cob ' work, but in these parts
the worked clay is thrown into moulds, and lumps are
formed of, say, 18 in. by 12 in, by 6 ln„ or 18 in, by 9 in.
by 6 in. for large sizes, and for inside walling or backing
to brick-faced walls, 18 in. by 6 in. by 6 in. The walls,
naturally, are rough in texture and the joints are generally -
stopped up and besmeared with a thin coating or ahuost
a wash of clay. This coating sometimes has lime mixed
with it, but it is not necessary. This is all that' is needed
to complete the walling, and there la a building — a malting,

121

122 Unburned Clay and Earth Bricks

that any one can see at Tivetshall Station on the Ipswich
line, about 200 ft. long, 45 ft. or 50 ft. wide and three
floors high, built of lumps 18 in. by 12 in. by 6 in. — that
has stood the weather and weight of its roof for forty years
built in this way ; 12 in. is the thickness of its walls. A
further stage in finish is to give the walls two or three
coats of coal tar, but it is not essential, though desirable
where stock are kept, as cattle are rather fond of licking
the clay, and they do not use their horns much when walls
are tarred. The highest finish in this work is to cast sand
on the last coating of tar before it is quite dry, and then
to colour or whitewash on this. This accounts for the
variety of colourings seen in these buildings, some even
of a kind of pink or red ; while some yellow or buff, beside
the white and the black or tarred buildings, and aU huddled
together or standing apart, whether covered with thatch
or red pan or flat tUes, look remarkably in harmony with
their surroundings. These lump walls are, of course,
built on a base of brickwork, about 18 in. or 2 ft. high,
to keep them free from damp. This kind of walling can
be built for at hast 15 per cent, or 20 per cent, dteaper
than ordinary 9 in, brickwork. Thin as these walls are
compared with those of ' cob ' houses, they are noted for
being warm in winter and cool in summer. When suitable
clay is procurable a local builder alipost invariably uses clay
lumps when building a house for himself, though to gratify
a whim perhaps, he will case the outside walls — especially
the front next the street or road — with brickwork. But
clay limips he carefully reserves for inside walls and weight-
carrying linings to the outside walls, bonding the two
together very much in the same way as two 4 J in. ' cavity
walls ' are bonded. I am not suggesting that this waUing
is as interesting artistically as ' cob,' but I do suggest
it is a practical, sensible and dry walling, and if properly
done it will ' last for ever,' as a local builder repeatedly
said to me when speaking of it. One can easily see why

Oncb Corn Hall, now Council School.

Built about a hundred years ago. Still in sound condition and

quite dry.

A Row OF Clay-lump Cottages. ^

The front has been plastered and panelled out. In the upper

part of the stable building, seen in the foreground, the clay-lumps

are shown exposed.

122]

Open ^//ard

f3 inch oafer^ajts
9 inc h division 'f^affj'

Simc/i&ric/tffflUr

7racf/o/i 6hff/ne-^epo/rS/!op 'JXirksbop (Mirkshop

iTpc/io/?

Engineering Workshops.

Built twenty years ago. The walls are thoroughly sound, despite

constant vibration, and are perfectly dry, except the brick face,

which was added for effect.

[123

Use for Unskilled Labour 123

the cost Is light — the sun and the winds do the drying in
the spring months, and no coals are required, and also
the clay is often found on the building site, hence no
cartage. Actual building work naturally goes quickly,
as the lumps are large. There is another important point
to notice. One may see a building complete with its roof
on and occupied by its tenant while still awaiting an out-
side casing of brickwork to be built round it, either with
a view to greater protection or for the mere vanity of the
owner, for while thus left unprotected the lump walls take no
harm from even winter exposure. Now to be quite practical
in these extremely practical days, I venture to suggest
that the use of clay lumps at least for inside walls and
linings of outside walls would be an immense boon to
the numerous cottage-building schemes now being pro-
jected. We must not forget that comparatively few bricks
will be available this year, while the cottages are wanted
at once. Can these few bricks be better used than by
forming foundations and chimneys for the clay-lmnp walls
of these cottages ? I think not. The cottages could, of
course, be occupied in the late smnmer or autumn of this
year, and next year when bricks will be more plentiful
perhaps the brick casings could be added, if brickwork
must complete them. I make this strictly utiUtarian
suggestion solely to meet a very urgent and deep national
need. Personally, I prefer the sight of a cottage built and
finished in the old-established method of the locaUty.
Unskilled labour only is required, working under intelli-
gent supervision, hence immediate emplojrment for a great
number of men would be provided."

The use of sun-dried bricks for the interior partitions
of cob and pis6 cottages is worth consideration, as the
nature of these materials demands a thickness of wall
which is too Wasteful of space to be acceptable in mere
partitioning.

124 Unburned Clay and Earth Bricks

Of the strength of clay-lump walls, there is no question.
It was recently necessary to cut a new doorway in the old
clay-lump wall of a large traction-engine garage, and the
blocks removed were thrown into a heap upon the ground.

The clay happened to be needed for other purposes, for
which it had first to be broken up.

Ordinary hammers proved entirely ineffective, and it was
not imtil heavy sledges were used that the lumps could
be smashed.

The tractor-house in question is a large building some
25 ft. by 100 ft., canning a heavy roof and constantly
subjected to vibration by the coming and going of the
tractors.

The walls are only la in. thick, without piers or rein-
forcements of any kind, and yet the whole building, which
is 26 ft. high at the gables, is as perfect to-day as when
first erected some twenty years ago.

In the same town as this tractor-house, East HarUng in
Norfolk, is a council school built of clay lump (converted
from the old Corn Hall), apparently not a pin the worse
for a century of hard wear.

Near by there are a number of private houses built of
the same material, some of them reputed to be upwards
of 200 years old and certain of them having considerable
architectural merit.

{^Extract from " The Farmers' Handbook," issued by the

Department of Agriculture, New South Wales, 1911)

" Adobe," or Sun-dried Bricks

" As their name implies, these buildings are constructed

of sun-dried, but unburnt bricks, For buildings of this

character, material like clay, which is unsuitable for pis^-

work, can be used. The bricks are made in a wooden

mould, and are 16 in. long, 8 in. wide, and 6 in. thick. A

man can mould about 100 per day. They are laid in a

'-''Substantial and CooV^ 125

similar manner to other bricks, the mortar used being wet
loam, or even the material of which the bricks are made.
The cost of making and la3dng is estimated at about 15s.
per 100. Buildings constructed of these bricks are sub-
stantial and cool, and very similar in character to pis6
buildings.

"A school-house built of these bricks eighteen years ago
by Mr. Nixon, of Reef ton, is still in an excellent state of pres-
ervation J in fact, little, if any, the worse for wear, despite
the fact that walls are unprotected by verandahs or over-
hanging eaves. During its existence it has had, first one
coat of oil-paint, and later a coat of coloured limewash."

" Clay lump," then, is one of the many good old build-
ing methods that needs no proving, but only revival and
perhaps Improvement.

APPENDIX

WHITEWASH

Whitewashing has been frequently referred to in the foregoing
pages as the most suitable treatment for the exterior of chalk
and earth buildings.

There is, however, a certain prejudice against lime- whiting
amongst both owners and occupiers, owing to the frequent re-
newal that its adoption usually implies.

With a view to removing this drawback from a treatment
otherwise so effective, the following recipes are suggested as
improvements on the usual practice.

Ordinary whitewash is made by slacking about lo lbs. of quick-
lime with two gallons of water.

The following recipes are taken from " White Paints and
Painting" (Scott), and are rehable :

(i) " Factory " Whitewash (interiors), for Walls, Ceilings,
Posts, etc. :

{a) 6a lbs. (i bushel) quicklime, slake with 15 gallons water.
Keep barrel covered tiU steam ceases to arise. Stir
occasionally to prevent scorching.

(b) 2\ lbs. rye-flour, beat up in ^ gallon of cold water, then

add 2 gallons boiling water.

water.

Mix (6) and (c), then pour Into («), and stir imtil all is well mixed.
This is the whitewash used in the large implement factories, and
recommended by the insurance companies. The above formula
gives a product of perfect brush consistency.

127

128 Appendix

(2) "Weathtrproof" Whitewash (exteriors), for Buildings, Fmces,
etc. :

(a) 62 lbs, {i bushel) quicklime, slake with 12 gallons of
hot water.

(6) 2 lbs. common table salt, i lb. sulphate of zinc, dis-
solved in a gallon of boiling water.

(3) " I-ight House " Whitewash :

{a) 62 lbs. (i bushel) quicklime, slake with 12 gallons of

hot water.
(6) 12 gallons rock-salt, dissolve in 6 gallons of boiling water,
(c) 6 lbs. of Portland cement.
Pour [b) into (a), and then add (c).

Note. — ^Alum added to a jllme whitewash prevents it rubbing
off. An ounce to the gallon is sufficient.

Flour paste answers the same purpose, but needs zinc sulphate
as a preservative.

The following are from "1,000 More Paint Questions
Answered":

(4) Durable Whitewash for Outside Use.-— A whitewash that
will not rub off or wash off In rainy weather can be made by
mixing one half-pint of flour to a batter with cold water, then
stirring into this boiling water until it becomes a thick paste.

While still hot it is poured into a pailful of ready-made lime
whitewash and well stirred in.

(5) Another simple method Is to add to 2 gallons of ready-
made lime whitewash one half-pint each of molasses and table
salt. Must be stirred frequently while being used.

Whitewash for Exterior Surfaces. — A formula for a durable
whitewash for out-buildings of rough lumber. The following is
reprinted from " Popular Mechanics " :

(6) Place I bushel good fresh lime in a barrel virith 20 lbs.
beef tallow ; slake with hot water and cover with Sackcloth to
keep in steam. When the lime Is slaked, the tallow will have
disappeared, having formed a chemical compound with the lime.
Dry colours may be added to produce any tint desired.*

1 Expeiriraents and tests carried out for the author by the DepattHient of
Scientific and Industrial Research place this receipt at the head of the list.

Distempers and Limewashes 129

It is better to add colour before slaking the lime, but if this
is not feasible mix the colour with alcohol aaid add it to the
strained whitewash. Thin to easy flowing consistency with clear
water.

Cold Water Paint that will stand the Weather. — ^A formula for
making a white outside coating that will resist the action of the
weather and remain hard even under the influence of moisture
and rain. Experiments with different brands of cold water
paints have proved failures.

A really effective cold water paint, in order to resist the
elements and remain white, should contain a white pigment of
good body and some oil in addition to the water, and with this
purpose in view the following is suggested :

(7) To make loo lbs. of such paint, mix lo lbs, white, pure in
oil, with 10 lbs. bolted whiting, 8 lbs. raw linseed oil, 6 lbs. soft
soap (made with potash), and 26 lbs. soft water.

One quart of pale copal varnish will improve the preparation.
The formula given is of the right consistency to apply on dressed
lumber with the brush. For application on rough lumber or
with the spraying machine it requires more thinning with water
and varnish.

The following is taken from Pearce's " Painting and Decora-
ting":^,.

(8) A London recipe for distemper has the following propor-
tions : 4 " balls " whiting, 2 lbs. Young's patent size, and
suf&dent water to cover the whiting.

(9) A Scotch distemper is described as : 12 lbs. whiting, size
as given previously, 2 ozs. alum, 2 ozs. soft soap. It is very
fast, for passages, schools, etc. Tinting colours for limewash
should be restricted to ochres, umbers, lime blue, lime greens,
charcoal or lamp black, and earthy reds (as Venetian).

(10) External limewash for farm buildings, etc., may be made
as follows : Lime, | bushel, slaked with i gallon of milk and
remainder of water, i lb. salt and | lb. sulphate of zinc to make
it withstand the weather.

Experiments with and practical tests of thes^' and other kinds
of whitewash are being carried out, and the author hopes that
he may find opportunity at some later date of announcing the
results obtained.

1 30 Appendix

THE IMPORTANCE OF USING LOCAL MATERIALS
{Extract from " Country Life," November gth, 1918)

300,000 Cottages would entail the Transport of
60iOoo,ooo tons of Material

In carrying out any considerable scheme of house building
two difficulties will have to be met. The first arises from the
scarcity of building material ; the other from the cost and
difficulty of transport. These, to son^e extent, can be obviated"
by the use of local material, which is to be conmiended on other
grounds as well. Local material fits into the character of the
neighbourhood in which it is found and meuntains its traditions.

Very few people realise the bulk of materials, and in order
to help them the following statement has been prepared to
show the materials needed for each cottage and the total for
300,000 cottages :

Materials. Weight.

Pel One Cottage. Per 300,0001
Tons. Cwts. Qrs. (Tons.)

Ballast, sand, gravel 78 17 o 23,655,000

Lime . . . . . . . . 5 18 o 1,770,000

Cement . . . . . . . 12 8 o 3,720,000

Bricks . . .~ . . . . 85 o a 25,500,000

Slates lor D.P.C. . . . . . o 10 2 157,50°

Chimney-pots . . . . . .003 ".25?

Tiles . . . . . . . .722 2,137,500

Carcassing timber . . . . ..700 2,100,000

Complete joinery timber . . . . i 12 o 480,000

Cast-iron rain-water goods and sundries . 090 135,000

Stoves, copper, ash-bin, etc. . . . 052 82,500

Nails, screws, etc 012 22,500

Hair lor plaster 010 15,000

I/ead flashings, etc. . . . . . 021 33,750'

Sink, waste pipes, draining boards, etc. . 021 33,75°

Sanitary goods . . . . . .010 15,000

Whitening, distemper and paint . . . 031 4^,75°

Total . . . 199 14 2 59.917.500

It wiU be seen that to carry out the scheme for 300,000 cottages
a total of dose on 6o,opo,ooo tons of material wiU have to be
shifted. In addition to that, it must be remembered that the

Local Materials

131

cost of material is very small in comparison with that of building.
This will be apparent from an analysis of the items employed
for actual cost and the percentage which that cost bears to the
total cost.

Cottages erected 1912 (semi-detached) : total, interior area
of cottage, 772 ft. super, (parlour, kitchen, scullery and three
bedrooms, coal and W.C.) :

Item.

Sundries ...

Foundations

External and party walls (a)

Windows and doors (6)
Internal partitions
Ground floor
Upper floor

Roof and rain-water goods
Chimney and fireplaces .
g. Sanitary fittings, water

drainage

10. Staircases .

11. Fittings

supply

and

Per House.

Actual Cost.

Per cent, of
Total Cost.

266

5-28

25-41

• 36

7-59
11-83

18
22

5-94
7-26

1-22

9.90

6-27
363
1-98

Total

;£300

These facts help to clarify the problem. The weight of the
building materials required for an ordinary cottage with living-
room, parlour, scullery, three bedrooms, etc., the house contain-
ing cubic contents of about 11,500 ft., would come approxi-
mately to ZQO tons per cottage ; and even assuming that there
is only an average transport of fifty miles, this would give
10,000 ton-miles per rural cottage, which is taking it at a very
low average. In each cottage the weight of the brickwork
represents about 42 per cent, of the total weight. It is, there-
fore, apparent that every effort should be made to lessen the
transit of materials required for the external walling. If, on
the other hand, local materials are employed, this carriage
would be saved and a great economy effected. Even if this
utiUtarian consideration were not so important as it is, the
desirability of making all possible use of local materials is very
great from other points of view. It would stimulate local
interest in building and, in addition to retaining the traditions

132 Appendix

of the district, give greater hope of retaining and maintaining
the proper architectural aspect of our villages. .

It is scarcely necessary to sxunmarise the advantages that
may fairly be expected to flow from this endeavour to make
a real start at finding a solution for the housing difficulty. First
and foremost must be placed the saving in transport. A casual
readej- may easily imagine that the difficulties of carriage will
vanish with the end of the war, but that is not so in reality.
Any one who has travelled in France must have noticed engines
bearing such names as Liverpool Street, King's Cross, Euston,
Birmingham, and so on. The meaning of that is that a great
deal of our rolling stock was sent over to France, and at the
best will not be available here for a long time to come. Even
the ordinary work of upkeep and repair has necessarily been
neglected owing to the scarcity of men and other causes inci-
dental to war-time. Transport difficulties are bound to last
for a very considerable period after the peace settlement, and
it would not be at all advisable to delay the construction of
houses so long. The returned soldiers will make us vividly
conscious of the shortage. Nothing could be imagined more
likely to make them look for chances of going abroad than to
learn that there is not sufficient housing accommodation for
them in the village in which they lived before the war, and to
which they hoped to return on its conclusion.

Ill

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF
COUNTRY LIFE, JULY 27TH, 1918

" Shortly bfefore the war I had occasion to demolish some very
old cottages at Clovelly for the reconstruction of the New Inn.
I was so much struck with the stability of these (althoi^gh by
no means first-class samples of cob work) that I collected some
facts and notes on the subject from different parts of the
county of Devon. Where bye-laws have been adopted, cob is no
longer being used. It is difficult, therefore, to give an accurate
comparison of costs, but after careful investigation I did cirrive
at the following results for North Devon and Scotland. The
prices were in 1913, and in both cases for a five-roomed cottage

Cost per Foot Cube 133

(assuming four to be built at the same time, including internal
water supply, but omitting any special work necessary to procure
supply, and omitting fencing).

Cost per foot cube

cob at 2 It. 6 in.

thick.

Cost per foot

cube II in.

hoUow brick.

North Devon

. 6irf.

5\d.

Scotland

. U.

6d.

These prices assumed suitable material on or near site, and
allowed something for the difficulty of getting at least one
experienced cob-worker to instruct the unskilled men. Since
1913 the cost of brick has risen so much that cob would now
be much cheaper, probably as much as xd. or i\d. foot cube
in both cases, and this is likely to be the case for many years.
Suitable material exists in many parts of the country. If reed
straw caimot be had, other reinforcements can be used. I have
seen various materials in use, of which heather was perhaps the
best and most easily procured. I can endorse from experience
the comfort of these old buildings, and the affection of Devon
people for them. The thick walls give all that a house should —
protection from heat in summer and cold in winter. For the
contrast, visit the new Garden City at Ros3ih. Many of the
houses are attractive, but their thin brick walls, tile and slate
hanging are not suitable to the north and east coasts. Ask the
opinion of the occupants of these new houses. Many of them are
Devon bom and bred, and imported from the dockyards of the
three towns. They nearly all complain of the cold, and their
views form an interesting comment on modern construction."

IV
PISE TESTS

[With acknowledgements to " The Spectator ")

Through the courtesy of Messrs. Alban Richards & Co. we
are able to pubUsh the results of certain very instructive tests
that have been carried out on Pis6 during the past winter.
Messrs. Richard's experience and Report bring out two points
with especial clearness, (i) That Pis6 work, though not impossi-
ble under winter conditions, is not ordinarily desirable unless
some means of artificially drying the earth be resorted to. (2)
That th« strength of Pis6 increases with surprising rapidity as

134 appendix

the work dries out. It should be remarked that none of the
samples tested were made from really good Pis6 soil, such for
instance as the red marls or brick earths. With such materials
or anything approaching them, the results would have been
even better, as the Report points out : —

" In conjunction with Mr. WiUiams-EUis, we have made certain
tests with a view to satisfying ourselves as to the practicability
of j>is& de terre for house construction. In order to obtain what
we might term the minimum or ' worst ' tests, we decided to erect
walls for this piupose in the winter. This we have done for the
last three months, which has been a very wet period, and the
following is a short description of the tests we have made : —

" 1. Two walls were erected measuring 14 ft. long, 9 ft.

high and 18 in. thick, spaced 20 ft. apart, with short return

ends to each w£ill. Wall plates were placed centrally along

the top of each wall, on which were placed 9 in. by 3 in. wood

joists, at 16 in. centres, across the 20 ft. span. In order to

obtain the minimum results we allowed the shutters to

remain until the test was ready to be appKed, so that walls

did not have an opportunity of drying or hardening. This

condition was thought necessary, as it is quite reasonable to

~^ expect that if pis6 de terre cottages are erected, considerable

weightmight be placed on thewalls immediatelytheshuttering

is struck. We then proceeded to test the walls to destruction.

The floor space provided for by the joists referred to above

measmre 220 super, feet, the load was then appUed gradually.

The load apphed totalled x6\ tons, which is equivalent of 168

lbs. persuper^foot of fioorspace,underwhichthewallcollapsed,

which, in our opinion, provides a factor of safety of three to

the normal load which a cottage floor would have to bear.

" We are convinced that very much better results can be

obtained in this method of construction with walls which were

first dried before the load was appUed. Further experiments

are to be made to procure further data on this subject. In

addition to the above tests, we have submitted to the National

Physical Laboratory, blocks made of pise de terre, from poor to

mediimi soil, for testing purposes, and the following are the

results which have been obtained : —

" The following Report shows results of Tests made by the
National Physical Laboratory,

"Report on Tests of Building Blocks of Pis£ de Terre

SENT for test BY MESSRS. W. AlBAN RiCHARDS & Co., LTD.
" Tests made on January 14, 1920.
" First set of three blocks sent in November 1919.
" These blocks were composed of a fine gravel containing very

Pise Tests

13s

TABLE

Harks.

Dimensions
in inches.

Age

days.

Ana

in
sq. ft.

Den-
sity
lbs.
per
eft.

X/otn.

No.

in tons

In tons

per
sq. ft.

Kbuases.

UTi

UT2
UT3

I
2

9x9x9

8-9x8-9X8-9
8-95X8-95X8-95

9
16

•562

•550,
•556

I'3I
117

070
104

4'27

2-31

4-23

1-66
2-47

10-50

5-57

IO'20

Cracked
Collapsed

Collapsed

Small
cracks
appeared

'ABI

.E II

Harks.

Dimensions
in inches.

Age

in
days.

Area

in
sq.ft.

Den-
sity
lbs.
per
c.ft.

tx>a>.

Ko.

in tons.

in tons
per
sq.ft.

RBUMtKS.

VWi

I
dry

8-9X9X8-5

•555

106

0-45
0-5I

o-8i
0-92

Cracked at
on e corner
Collapsed

VW2

2
dry

9x9x9

•562

105

2-15

3-84

CoUapsed-
Material
quite dry
in interior

VW3

3
wet

9-1x9-1x8-9

•570

134

0-55

0-96

Collapsed

VW4

4
wet

8-8x8-8x8-9

•546

110

3-20

5-86

CoUapsed-
Material
quite dry
in interior

VW5

5
medium

9x8-9x9

•558

126

o-6o
0-69

I -08
1-24

Bulged and

cracked
Collapsed '

VW6

6
medium

8-5x8-8x7

•546

109

3-33

6-IO

Collapsed.
Material
slightlyi
damp in

the interior

* Age after arrival at laboratory.

Seal of
NATIONAL PHYSICAL LABORATORY Signature of Director

136 Appendix

few and very small stones. The material was said to be similar
to that used at Merrow Down, near Guildford, Surrey. It-
appeared to be very similar to Famham gravel.

" The blocks were tested in compression, one within twenty-
four hours of arrival at the laboratory, and the others after drying
for a time in the laboratoryv For results of tests see Table I.

" Second set of blocks sent in December 1919.

" This set consisted of six blocks in three pairs, each pair
having been rammed with a different quantity of water.

" One of each pair was. tested within twenty-four hours of
arrival at the laboratory, and the others after drying in the
laboratory for twenty-six days.

" The material used was not homogeneous, and the mixture
consisted of a very clayey loam, a fibrous loam, sand and large
stones. The clayey material gave rise to siuiace cracks as the
blocks dried.

" For results of tests see Table II.

" From the second set of blocks it would appear that it is better
to ram with too much moisture than with too little. It will be
noted that the density of the wet block was 30 per cent, more than
that of the dry block, so that a wall could be carried higher with
the dry material than with the wet, although such a wall woijld
never gdn the strength which a wet one would upon drying.

Conclusions

" We are of opinion, having regard to the fact that the house
at Newlands Comer (Guildford foiu- miles) has weathered the
winter, without showing any signs of dampness, that pish de
terre will make a thoroughly dry house.

" We consider that the tests made are satisfactory, and prove
that this form of cpnstruction is of a sufficiently sound nature
to be employed in' the building of houses. With really suit-
able material, such as a light brick-earth or marl, it is considered
that the results already obtained might well be 100 per cent,
better."

We are informed that additional tests are now proceeding
with regard to the water-proof and weather-resisting qualities
of Pis6, the results of which will be duly pubUshed.

INDEX

INTRODOCIION :

Chalk walls, i8

Cheap materials, the search for,

Pis6 de craie, 16, 17, 107

Fis6, experiments with, 15 ; in

moulds, 19, 20 ; in South Africa,

22, 23
Pliny on Pise de terre, 25
Rammed chalk, 16, 17, 107

General Survey :
Building materials, shortage of,

26
" Ersatz " products introduced

during the War, 26
House famine, the, 27
Local materials, use of, to avoid

transport, 29
Lutyens, Sir Edwin, and Mr.

Alban Scott, cottage by, 30
Rural housing, suitability of cob

and pis£ for, 28

I— Cob :
Allen, Mr. C. B., his reference to

Devon cob, quoted, 47
Baring-Gould, Rev. S., on cob,

quoted, 47
'Beauty of. cob, 35
Bernard, Mr. Charles, his account

of Sir Walter Raleigh's cob

house, 45, 46
Booh of the West, The, by Rev. S.

Barbig-Gould, reference to cob
- in, quoted, 47
BnUding, 37, 38, 39
Caqientry and joinery, 41, 4*
Chimneys, 44
Cob tradition; 52
Composition, 36
Cost, 35, 50

CoB — continued 1

Cottage-Building, reference to cob

in, quoted, 47
Country Life, letter to, relating to

cob work, quoted, 115, 116
Design, 44, 45
Devon cob, 47
Drying, 39
Elizabethan cob houses still

existing, 34
Former conditions returned, 52
Foundations and base, 40 ; result

of bad, 34
Fruit walls, of cob, 47, 48
Fulford, Mr., of Great Fulford,

on cob, 50-32
Gimson, Mr., his description of

building cob, quoted, 35
Hayes Barton, Sir Walter Ra-
leigh's house at, 45, 46
Hipped roofs, 41
Joinery, 41, 42, 43
Masonry and carpentry, 41, 42
Method of building, 36-45 ^
Mixing, 37
Northcote, Lady Rosalind, her

description of Sir Walter

Raleigh's house, 46
Primitive methods, 47
Protection, 43
Protective wash, 51
Raleigh, Sir Walter, his cob house

at Hayes Barton, 45, 46
Rats, 44-
Reed thatch, 46
Rendering, 51
Roofing, 51
Shuttering, 51
Str^igtfa, 44
Thickness of walls, 40
Traditional building material in

Devon and Wessex, 33
Training of ex-soldiers, 52

139

140

Index

II— Pise :

Bolts, 86

Bonders, 69

Building procedure, 71, 72, 74, 75

Capabilities, 57, 58

Comers, 68

Cyclop tedia, or Universal Diction-
ary of Arts, Sciences, and
Literature, on pise, quoted,

59-71
Damp-course, 86
Definition of Pise de terre, 57,

59
Durability, 82
Earthwork, A Manual on, quoted,

73-76
Empandeni, pis£ work executed

at, 78, 79, 80
Excavation, 86
Etah Jail, pis6 work executed at,

76, 77. 78
FiUet, 87
Floating, 86
Foundations, 74
Frames, 87
France, introduction of pis6 into,

57
Gordon, Monsieur, reference to

his treatise on pis6, 57
History, 57
Indian and Colonial practice, 73-

88
Introduced into France by the

Romans, 57
Journal de Physique, by the Abb6

Rozier, quoted, 58
Lintels, 87
Locale, 58

Method of building, 58-62
Method of working, 60, 61, 62
New South Wales, pis6 work in,

81-88
Origin, 58
Picture-rail, 87
Plant required, 85, 89, 90
Plastering, 75
Pliny, references to his account of

pis6, 25, 57
Plugs, 86, 87
Protection, 75
. Rain, 67
Rammer, the, 59, 60
Ramming, 62, 76
Rate of work, 63
Rendering, 70
Rods versus bars, 75, 76

Pis^ — continued /
Rozier, the Abb6, his Journal de

Physique, quoted, 58
Shuttering, 59, 88, 89
Shutter ties, 73
Skirting, 87
Soil blending, 64 ; preparation of,

66, 67 ; suitable, 63, 74, 86 ;

tests, 63 ; to ascertain quality

of, 65
Speed of building, 70
Stability, 82
Strength, 69
Studding, 87, 88
Theory and science of pis6, tke,

62-73
Ventilators, 86
Virtues of pisfe, 72
Wire netting, use of, 87, 88

III— Chalk :

Block chalk, 117, 118
Chalk compost, historical, 10.7;
composition and uses, 108, 109
Chalk conglomerate, 114
Chimneys, no
External rendering, no
Frost, 109
Garden walls, in
House walls, 112
Old and modem examples, ii2-

Rats and chalk, ir6
Rendering, no
Repairs, no
Roof, III
Strength, no
Timber, 109

Winterslow cottages, the, 115,
n6

IV — Unbuhned Clay and Eakth
Bricks :

" Adobe," use of, in New @outh
Wales, 124

Age of clay-lump buildings, 124

East Anglia, use of sun-dried
bricks in, 121

Method of making, 121

New South Wales, use of sun-
dried bricks in, 124

Skipper, Mr., on sun-dried bricks,
quoted, 121

Strength of clay-lump walls, 124

Index

141

Unburked Clay and Earth
Bricks — continued i
Thickness of clay-lump walls,
122-124

Appendix :
Cold-water paint, recipe for, 129
Cost, an analysis cd building,
131

Appendix — continued 1

Country Life, letter to, relating to

cob work, quoted, 132, 133
Distempers, recipes for, 129
Local materials, importance of

using, 130, 131
Weight of building materials,

table of, 130
Whitewash, recipes for, 127, 128

HAZBLL, WATSON AHD VINB7, U>.,
lANSON ilHD ATUSBURT,

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