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.
Another view of the Cob House built by Mr. Ernest Gimson,
near Budleigh Salterton, Devon.
[See Frontispiece