Clough Williams-Ellis

“ 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. ”

“ One may see a building complete with its roof on and occupied by its tenant while still awaiting an outside 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 projected. ”

“ 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 life into a cold grave. ”

“ 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 ‘Pisé 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. ”

“ 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 Italians 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 earth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 pisé-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 pisé 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. ”

“ 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 Rosyth. 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 born 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. ”

“ There is every reason for introducing this method of building into all parts of the kingdom; whether we consider the honour of the nation as concerned in the neatness of its villages, the great saving of wood which it will occasion, 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. ”

“ The actual erection of pisé-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 knowledge of pisé-work or building construction, need have no hesitation in undertaking the pisé-work of his own buildings if he works to a well-thought-out plan drawn up by somebody competent to do so. ”

“ The merits of pisé-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 pisé-work, are not competent to undertake the other constructive work of a building. ”

“ As a building material, pisé 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 pisé buildings, properly protected and finished, are quite as durable and much cooler than buildings constructed with solid brick walls. This statement may be questioned by some whose knowledge of pisé is limited to buildings so badly planned that the very elementary principles of building construction have been neglected. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And by ‘shuffling’ I mean in this connection only that the smaller and larger particles get a chance to shift over a little 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 downward. I have a great respect for old tools which are the outcome of long-time experience and handed-down wisdom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One may also discover the fitness of the soil by trying 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 pisé by their pressure; whenever 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the earth has been soaked by rain, instead of suffering compression, it becomes mud in the mould; even though it be but a little 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 ”

“ 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 Rhône 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 considerable time in such houses without ever being aware of their singular construction. ”

“ Pisé-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 unconsolidated. 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. ”

“ Soil Blending.—“As it may sometimes happen that earth of a proper quality 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 ”

“ Rate of Work.—“In one single day three courses of about 3 ft. 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 pisé the very instant they are completed.” ”

“ In our English climate Pisé-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 Pisé and of what is not. ”

“ One is so apt to follow 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 pisé problem in Swedish and have it printed before springtime. ”

“ Pisé-building, in Rural Economy, the name of a method of building with loamy or other earthy matters, which 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. ”