It is scarcely necessary to summarise the advantages that may fairly be expected to flow from this endeavour to make a real start at finding a solution for the housing difficulty. First and foremost must be placed the saving in transport. A casual reader may easily imagine that the difficulties of carriage will vanish with the end of the war, but that is not so in reality. Any one who has travelled in France must have noticed engines bearing such names as Liverpool Street, King’s Cross, Euston, Birmingham, and so on. The meaning of that is that a great deal of our rolling stock was sent over to France, and at the best will not be available here for a long time to come. Even the ordinary work of upkeep and repair has necessarily been neglected owing to the scarcity of men and other causes incidental to war-time. Transport difficulties are bound to last for a very considerable period after the peace settlement, and it would not be at all advisable to delay the construction of houses so long. The returned soldiers will make us vividly conscious of the shortage. Nothing could be imagined more likely to make them look for chances of going abroad than to learn that there is not sufficient housing accommodation for them in the village in which they lived before the war, and to which they hoped to return on its conclusion.
Cost per Foot Cube
[III]
EXTRACT FROM A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF COUNTRY LIFE, JULY 27th, 1918
“Shortly before the war I had occasion to demolish some very old cottages at Clovelly for the reconstruction of the New Inn. I was so much struck with the stability of these (although by no means first-class samples of cob work) that I collected some facts and notes on the subject from different parts of the county of Devon. Where bye-laws have been adopted, cob is no longer being used. It is difficult, therefore, to give an accurate comparison of costs, but after careful investigation I did arrive at the following results for North Devon and Scotland. The prices were in 1913, and in both cases for a five-roomed cottage (assuming four to be built at the same time, including internal water supply, but omitting any special work necessary to procure supply, and omitting fencing).
| Cost per foot cube cob at 2 ft. 6 in. thick. | Cost per foot cube 11 in. hollow brick. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Devon | 6½d. | 5⅞d. | ||
| Scotland | 6d. | 6d. |
These prices assumed suitable material on or near site, and allowed something for the difficulty of getting at least one experienced cob-worker to instruct the unskilled men. Since 1913 the cost of brick has risen so much that cob would now be much cheaper, probably as much as 1d. or 1¼d. foot cube in both cases, and this is likely to be the case for many years. Suitable material exists in many parts of the country. If reed straw cannot be had, other reinforcements can be used. I have seen various materials in use, of which heather was perhaps the best and most easily procured. I can endorse from experience the comfort of these old buildings, and the affection of Devon people for them. 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.”
[IV]
PISÉ TESTS
(With acknowledgements to “The Spectator”)
Through the courtesy of Messrs. Alban Richards & Co. we are able to publish the results of certain very instructive tests that have been carried out on Pisé during the past winter. Messrs. Richard’s experience and Report bring out two points with especial clearness, (1) That Pisé work, though not impossible under winter conditions, is not ordinarily desirable unless some means of artificially drying the earth be resorted to. (2) That the strength of Pisé increases with surprising rapidity as the work dries out. It should be remarked that none of the samples tested were made from really good Pisé soil, such for instance as the red marls or brick earths. With such materials or anything approaching them, the results would have been even better, as the Report points out:—
“In conjunction with Mr. Williams-Ellis, we have made certain tests with a view to satisfying ourselves as to the practicability of pisé de terre for house construction. In order to obtain what we might term the minimum or ‘worst’ tests, we decided to erect walls for this purpose in the winter. This we have done for the last three months, which has been a very wet period, and the following is a short description of the tests we have made:—