[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 Pisé de terre, even in spite of the difficulty of obtaining labour.
I think I can best illustrate the nature of Pisé 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 Pisé. 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 Pisé 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.
The Beginning of a Pisé Fruit-house.
The Fruit-house Completed With Roof of Peat Blocks on Rough Boarding.