Cottage Building in Cob Pise Chalk and Clay Part 2

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. x.x.xV, 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 subst.i.tutes 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.ses 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 circ.u.mstances. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: +Front and Back Elevations of Cottage designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and Mr. Alban Scott.+ This Cottage can be built in Cob, Pise, Concrete, Stone, or Brick.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: +Plan of Cottage designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and Mr. Alban Scott.+]

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 sh.e.l.l 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 Middles.e.x, 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 ill.u.s.trations 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