[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 Pisé 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 Pisé 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 Pisé 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 Pisé 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.
Pisé in Moulds
[VI]
Pisé in Moulds
There is one thing more to be said about Pisé. 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 Pisé 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 Cyclopædia of 1819. I thought it would be amusing to see whether there was any mention of Pisé 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 Cyclopædia 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.