Part 2 (2/2)

Despite the so na , recently revived through stress of circumstances The rude technique has happily been kept alive and preserved for us in out-of-the-way corners of the Continent and in our Colonies Wherever there is a sufficiency of sunshi+ne to effect the necessary drying, there have earth buildings arisen and prospered

”Cob” building needs less introduction, as it is still well understood and a living craft in several parts of Great Britain, notably in Devonshi+re and South Wales, where its nised apparently from the earliest times

All those indeed who are familiar with this method of construction are fully alive to its virtues, and the sa, both in chalk and earth, and also of clay-lump

This book, however, is addressed to those who have in the past built only with stone, brick, concrete, ti a reversion to the h the shortage or absolute lack of their former materials

[Illustration: +Front and Back Elevations of Cottage designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and Mr Alban Scott+ This Cottage can be built in Cob, Pise, Concrete, Stone, or Brick]

[Illustration: +Plan of Cottage designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and Mr Alban Scott+]

It is not so much a question as to whether a Cob or Pise house is preferable to one of brick or stone or concrete--though there are many who profess a lively preference for the former--but as to whether you will boldly revert to these old and well-tried , or, in the absence of the ordinaryat all

For that will, inevitably, be the alternative for a greatSchemes and public and industrial works of all sorts will naturally and properly clai materials--and the private individual, so far as he can secure such ical outcome of an unprecedented demand and an ominously inadequate supply

[Headnote: Local Materials]

Tiery he must still purchase and transport as best he may--but the shell of his house, its outer walls at least, could and should be raised from the soil of the site itself by the eear and a small amount of unskilled local labour

So acute indeed is the transport problem, and so small is the hope of any substantial i to ease matters in this respect is worthy of the h freights will of themselves tend to check the often senseless and unnecessary in to a district, which in the past was the despair of architects of the ”traditional” school

It was a wasteful practice that had gone far to obliterate all but theconventions of rural England

Formerly, he ilfully carried bricks into Merioneth or the Cotswolds, or slates into Kent or ragstone-rubble into Middlesex, was guilty of no more than foolishness and an aesthetic solecism

Under present conditions such action should render him liable to prosecution and conviction on so the shrunken resources of his country in a tireat scarcity,in that he did wantonly transportthe walls of a house by rail and road from A to B when suitable and sufficient her cost existed, and was readily accessible hard by the site at B”

That indeed is our one chance of salvation, the existence and use of ”the materials of another sort hard by the site”

These naturalwill be considered in the following pages

The Lutyens-Scott cottage, of which illustrations are given, is designed with a special view to the use of such local h it could also be constructed without appreciable modification in stone or brick

It is thus a , too, accommodation such as is certain to be deeneration that it is the aim of the country to produce

I