The use of sun-dried bricks for the interior partitions of cob and pisé cottages is worth consideration, as the nature of these materials demands a thickness of wall which is too wasteful of space to be acceptable in mere partitioning.
Of the strength of clay-lump walls, there is no question. It was recently necessary to cut a new doorway in the old clay-lump wall of a large traction-engine garage, and the blocks removed were thrown into a heap upon the ground.
The clay happened to be needed for other purposes, for which it had first to be broken up.
Ordinary hammers proved entirely ineffective, and it was not until heavy sledges were used that the lumps could be smashed.
The tractor-house in question is a large building some 25 ft. by 100 ft., carrying a heavy roof and constantly subjected to vibration by the coming and going of the tractors.
The walls are only 12 in. thick, without piers or reinforcements of any kind, and yet the whole building, which is 26 ft, high at the gables, is as perfect to-day as when first erected some twenty years ago.
Once Corn Hall, now Council School.
Built about a hundred years ago. Still in sound condition and quite dry.
In the same town as this tractor-house, East Harling in Norfolk, is a council school built of clay lump (converted from the old Corn Hall), apparently not a pin the worse for a century of hard wear.