Chapter I: Part 1

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COTTAGE BUILDING IN
COB, PISE, CHALK & CLAY

_First Edition, September 1919_
_Second Edition (Revised and Enlarged), July 1920_

COTTAGE BUILDING

in

COB, PISE, CHALK & CLAY

_A Renaissance_

By
CLOUGH WILLIAMS-ELLIS

_With An Introduction_
By
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

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The exhaustion 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 hundred are concerned with Pise.

The other methods of building have their advocates and exponents, but it is clearly Pise that has caught the attention 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 the book as it first appeared.

In our English climate Pise-building is a summer craft, and the small-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.[1]

The fact that Pise-building is essentially a "Dry-earth method" makes necessary the creation of artificial summer conditions under which the experiments may be conducted 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.[2]

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 Pise-building has been aroused in Canada and in Scandinavia, the two countries that we were wont to associate particularly with timber-building.

From both I have received a number of letters complaining 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 anyone dependent on building, that is to everyone, for even a Pise house must still have a roof and floors and joinery.

But to invoke the timber house as our salvation under existing conditions seems to be singularly perverse and unhelpful. Pise, 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.

Pise, even now, is still in its experimental infancy.

It has yet to prove itself in the fields of National Housing and of competitive commercial building schemes on a large scale.

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

CLOUGH WILLIAMS-ELLIS.

22, South Eaton Place,
London, S.W.1.
_May 1920._

[Footnote 1: Certain of these have since been issued and will
be found in Appendix IV. at the end of the book.]

[Footnote 2: See Appendix IV.]

CONTENTS

[Text shown in brackets was taken from headnotes and added here
by the transcriber.]

Page

INTRODUCTION 11
[The Search for Cheap Material -- Experiments with
"Pise" -- Rammed Chalk, "Pise de Craie" -- Pise in
Moulds -- Cob and Chalk -- Pise--a South African
Lead -- The Discovery of the Old]

GENERAL SURVEY 26
[The House Famine -- Local Materials]

I. COB 33
[The Beauty of Cob -- Method of Building --
Implements -- Walls and Roofs -- Protection --
Raleigh's House -- Mr. Baring-Gould -- Old Cob Lore
-- Mr. Fulford's Evidence -- A Champion of Cob]

II. PISE DE TERRE 57
[Method of Building -- The Ramming -- Suitable Soils
-- Experiments -- Preparation of the Earth -- The
Strength of Pise -- A Pise Church -- Indian and
Colonial Practice -- Plastering -- The Right
Quantity of Water -- Pise Buildings at Empandeni --
Pise Buildings for Settlers -- Builders' Aversions
-- Number of Men Required -- Pise in New Zealand --
Pise Shuttering -- If Reason Rule -- The Newlands
Specification -- A Swedish Contribution --
A Pise-Builder's School -- Alternative Shutterings
-- South Africa -- Soils]

III. CHALK 107
[Winter Work Barred -- Garden Walls -- Cost of Three
Cottages -- Expensive Scaffolding Avoided -- Block
Chalk]

IV. UNBURNED CLAY AND EARTH BRICKS 121
[Use for Unskilled Labour -- "Substantial and Cool"]

APPENDIX 127
[Distempers and Limewashes -- Local Materials --
Cost per Foot Cube -- Pise Tests]

INDEX 139

ILLUSTRATIONS

COB HOUSE BUILT BY MR. ERNEST GIMSON,
NEAR BUDLEIGH SALTERTON, DEVON _Frontispiece_

Facing Page
PISE WAGGON-HOUSE AT NEWLANDS CORNER 18
THE NEWLANDS WAGGON-HOUSE (INTERIOR) 18
THE BEGINNING OF A PISE FRUIT-HOUSE 19
THE FRUIT-HOUSE COMPLETED WITH ROOF OF PEAT BLOCKS
ON ROUGH BOARDING 19
MODEL OF A PISE DE TERRE HOUSE TO BE BUILT IN
THREE SUCCESSIVE STAGES 22
WAYSIDE STATION OF PISE AT SIMONDIUM, SOUTH AFRICA,
DESIGNED BY MR. HERBERT BAKER 23
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
COB HOUSE TEMP. ELIZABETH, LEWISHILL 44
ANOTHER DEVONSHIRE (COB) FARMHOUSE, WEEKE BARTON 45
CEILINGS OF MODELLED PLASTER FROM OLD COB HOUSES IN DEVON 46
A COB GARDEN-WALL WITH THATCHED COPING 47
PISE PLANT AND IMPLEMENTS 58
DIAGRAM OF MARK V PISE SHUTTERING 88
MARK V SHUTTERING 89
A SIMPLE MOULD FOR PISE BLOCKS 90
BLOCK-MOULDS, LARGE AND SMALL 90
SKETCH OF A PISE HOUSE IN COURSE OF ERECTION 91
THE NEWLANDS CORNER BUILDING 92
THE COTTAGE FROM THE SOUTH-EAST 93
THE GARDEN COURT 93
THE BACKYARD 94
FRAMING THE ROOF 95
AN INTERIOR, SHOWING FIRE-BRICK HEARTH FIRE 95
DETAILS OF CHALK CONSTRUCTION AT AMESBURY 110
COTTAGES AT COLDHARBOUR, AMESBURY 111
THREE CHALK COTTAGES AT HURSLEY PARK 114
MARSH COURT, HAMPSHIRE 116
BRICK-AND-CHALK VAULTING AT THE DEANERY GARDEN, SONNING 117
ONCE CORN HALL, NOW COUNCIL SCHOOL 122
A ROW OF CLAY-LUMP COTTAGES 122
ENGINEERING WORKSHOPS 123

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 population 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 CHARACTER, 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."--(_Extract from the report
submitted by the Departmental Committee appointed to inquire as to
Buildings for Small Holdings, 1913._)

INTRODUCTION

I

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 like 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 lime 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.

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 like 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 anything 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 dealing with what I can hear old-fashioned master-builders describing as the "bastard" forms of construction. One of these is Pise 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 Valley of the Rhone. 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 pise.

[Headnote: The Search for Cheap Material]

PISE DE TERRE

For me Pise de terre, 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 you must 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 ask 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 all, 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 furrows. 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. "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 like a man lost in underground passages who suddenly sees a tiny square of light 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 Pise 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 Pise 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 Pise, and how to make the necessary shuttering for doing so. It was then, too, that I began to hear of the seventeenth and eighteenth-century buildings of Pise in the Rhone Valley. In fact, everybody but I seemed to know all there was to be known about Pise de terre. For the moment indeed, the situation seemed like that described in _Punch's_ famous picture of the young lady and the German professor. "_What is Volapuk?_" asks the young lady. "_Ze universal language_," says the professor. "_Where is it spoken?_" "_No vairs._" Pise de terre appeared to be the universal system of building, but as far as I could make out, it was practised "no vairs," or at any rate not in Europe.

[Headnote: Experiments with "Pise"]

II

I had got as far as the position described above, when down swept the war upon Europe, and everything had to be postponed in favour of the immediate need of filling the ranks of the nation's army and teaching the men how to fight our enemies. As the war went on, however, the demand for rapid, cheap, and temporary building became very great, and I felt I should be justified in trying some experiments with Pise de terre, even in spite of the difficulty of obtaining labour.

I think I can best illustrate the nature of Pise and what it can do, and I believe will do, if I shortly recount in chronological order these humble pioneer efforts.

In the summer of 1915 I found that it was necessary in the interests of the hospital established in my house to find a place in which to store apples, for the men in blue consumed them in incredible quantities. I thought I would try Pise. Accordingly, I had some shuttering made on the Australian model--not splendid scientific shuttering such as is described in the body of this work, but still shuttering quite sufficient for the purpose. With great rapidity a little fruit-house was put up, roofed with boards, and covered with blocks of compressed peat in order to make a roof which would be both vermin-proof and also keep out the heat and the frost. In my ignorance and my hurry, I now find that I violated every sound rule of Pise construction. I built the walls during a week of rain, when the earth was wet, which was a great mistake; and I did not clear out the stones, which was another error that prevented the walls from being homogeneous. Worst 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 like the bark off a plane tree. Yet in spite of this ignorant mishandling of my material, the little fruit-house is still standing and sheltered till 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.

[Headnote: Rammed Chalk, "Pise de Craie"]

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 builder 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 a quarantes ecus"--it was quite impossible. But the room had got to be built, for the men were there, and built at once, since the out-of-door life of July and August could not continue. There was nothing to do but to fall back upon Pise. I decided to be ambitious and to experiment, not merely in Pise de terre, but in what I then thought--and perhaps rightly--was a new form of Pise, _i.e._ Pise de craie or compressed chalk. My shuttering therefore was put up. A hole not very far off 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 telling us of course that the chalk wall would never stand the frosts in so exposed a position, and that the wall, if made, would certainly explode! Everyone worked at that wall; the nursing 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 purposes 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 wall had no foundations. In Pise 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 exterior. Its weight was of course enormous, 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 Pise wall not only served its purpose, but served it very well. The room proved extraordinarily warm and comfortable, largely owing no doubt to the fact of a solid, very dry, 18-in. wall on the north-east side.

III

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 experiments were tried in the way of introducing hurdles into the shuttering in order to afford a surface to which plaster could easily cling. Suffice it to say that the plain earth, without plaster or any covering, more than justified itself. One part of the wall is very much exposed to the weather, 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 light ochre, upon which a pale green efflorescence of lichen has appeared of late. Anyway, the frost has not touched it.

IV

Next I made some experiments in chalk farmyard walls. Unfortunately, however, one of these, which was not made homogeneous by chalk 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 literally explode in the big frost of 1917-18. Another very pretty chalk wall is, however, standing to this day. But though Chalk Pise will, I think, do well if properly made and properly protected, it is somewhat of a doubtful material for anything except a building with a good overlay of 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 dry, the local road authorities kindly came with their tar spray and sprayed it with hot tar, with most excellent results. The hot tar really entered instead of merely making a skin, with the result that the external walls thus treated resembled a section of tarred road stood up on end.

I may add that I lent my Pise shuttering to a Guildford Volunteer Battalion, who in a ten-hour day, or rather, two days of five hours each, built an excellent hut about 20 ft. square and 10 ft. high, and thus showed that a platoon might house themselves with Pise in a day, provided they had roofing material ready. This building had subsequently to be destroyed, because the ground on which it stood was wanted for another purpose. When it was knocked down the house-breakers 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.

V

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 Pise 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 Australian 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.

[Headnote: Pise in Moulds]

VI

PISE IN MOULDS

There is one thing more to be said about Pise. I believe 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 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-existence of Pise work, the following personal anecdote or footnote to compressed earth may amuse my readers. Happening 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 _Cyclopaedia_ of 1819. I thought it would 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 not in the least as anything 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 construction. My hair rose on my head, for I had just committed 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. Kipling says. Even in our most original moments we only keep on feebly imitating somebody else. The claim to originality is nothing but a muddy mixture of pride and ignorance. What did, however, somewhat amaze me was the calm statement of the _Cyclopaedia_ 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 fallen 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.

[Headnote: Cob and Chalk]

VIII

COB AND CHALK

Of Cob I know little 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 Pise. One is wet, the other dry.

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

IX

A POSTSCRIPT

In the body of this work mention is made of a very successful experiment in Pise de terre made by the officials of a Rhodesian mining company; the outcome, I am proud to think, of my pre-war advocacy of Pise 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 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 Valley, 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.

* * *

[Headnote: Pise--a South African Lead]

"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 'pukka' station-master and, presumably, suitable premises. The department 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 inevitable sheets of galvanised iron and the ever-essential Oregon and Swedish timber. Our 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 live. It was just about this time that I saw in _The Spectator_ a series of articles strongly advocating 'Pise 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 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 under certain conditions, and in reality remains absolutely 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 'Pise 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 lived I, as I say, blind to its potentialities 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 days."

* * *

The supervising architect, Mr. Kendall, who was responsible 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 determined upon was that known as 'Pise 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 the right time, and anchored into the walls by means of long hoop iron ties. These walls, when completed, give a surface almost as hard as burnt brick, but the external angles present a slight point of weakness, 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 10 per cent. cement. The roofs are of thatch with a fairly good overhang at the eaves in order to form a protection for the walls."

* * *

On one point, however, we may reassure Mr. Kendall. I do not think he need be afraid of his walls being destroyed by the weather even if he has no overhang. Part of a Pise wall in my cart-shed, built in a very exposed situation, has no overhang. Further, the wall 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 Pise 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 experiment as that at Simondium before my eyes, I am beginning to feel that I may live to correct my view that this universal system of building is practised "no vairs."

[Headnote: The Discovery of the Old]

X

PLINY ON PISE DE TERRE

Now for something which I have kept as the _bonne bouche_ of my earthy story. At the end of my researches and experiments I found that Pliny 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 life. 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 astonishing 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, ingenuity, and enterprise--all co-ordinated and concentrated on the business of making good a hundred paralysing deficiencies.

[Headnote: The House Famine]

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 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 reform 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 reasonable housing persist as at present.

True, "Housing" is very properly being given considerable 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 little 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 difficult, it is impossible.

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 all, 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 many problems that confront us.

Briefly the problem is this: To provide a maximum of 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-sounding 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 alive 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 living craft in several parts of Great Britain, notably in Devonshire and South Wales, where its merits and advantages have been recognised apparently from the earliest times.

All those indeed who are familiar with this method of construction are fully alive 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, through the shortage or absolute lack of their former materials.

It is not so much a question as to whether a Cob or Pise house is preferable to one of brick or stone or concrete--though there are many who profess a lively preference for the former--but as to whether you will boldly revert to these old and well-tried methods of building, or, in the absence of the ordinary materials, feebly sit down and build nothing at all.

For that will, inevitably, be the alternative for a great many private persons. National and Public-Utility Housing Schemes and public 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 at all, will only do so at a price that is the logical outcome of an unprecedented demand and an ominously inadequate supply.

[Headnote: Local Materials]

Timber, tiles, slates, plaster, and ironmongery he must still 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 employment 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 themselves 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 foolishness 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 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 Pise, 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.

I

_COB_

Sec. I. GENERAL

If ever the counties of England recover their bygone loyalty to their own materials and their old traditions, then cob-building will 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 little. 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 building in cob or "clom."[3]

[Footnote 3: 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.]

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 earlier days were commonly builders too, and often built their own homes in their own way, yet by the guiding light 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.

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 successfully 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--the 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 incompetent is to condemn all materials from wattle and daub to ferro-concrete in the same breath.

Cob, being a humble, amenable, and thoroughly accommodating 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 uncommon.

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 "life-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 fissures resulted from subsidence, and the dwelling presented that appearance 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 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.

[Headnote: The Beauty of Cob]

As to their comeliness 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 buildings 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 plinth standing 18 in. above the ground floor, and built of cobble stones found 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 lintels were used over all openings. The cost of the whole house was 6-1/2d. a cubic foot. Building with cob is soon learnt--of the eight men, only one of them had had any previous experience, and, I believe, he had not built with it for thirty years. This is the only house I have built of cob."

* * *

What is most interesting in this narrative is the workmen'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.

[Headnote: Method of Building]

Sec. 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 typical old cob walling:

* * *