COB, "WATTLE AND DAB," AND " SLAB " BUILDING.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") Sin,—I have been much interested in the description of cob building by your correspondent in the Spectator of February 26th. I re- member a house being built in the Waikato district, New Zealand, by a family who could afford neither the timber (the usual material used in that part of the world) nor the mbour to build a wooden house. The father, a 'Varsity man, made a mould of packing. cases, and placed it upon the levelled ground. The mould con- sisted of two sides, like those used for building concrete cellars under banks, and into it were pushed sods from the fields around. They were crushed down and water added at intervals, the mould being moved as each portion of the wall was completed. The frames for windows and doors were inserted during the process, and the roof built upon rafters laid on top of the walls. When all the walls were up the inside and out were coated with soft clay laid on with a trowel and smoothed with a board. Last of all, the out- side was limewashed. The house was of the bungalow type, and very roomy and comfortable when finished and papered nicely. This style of house was first introduced, I think, from India, in the early days of the Dominion, by the officers in regiments stationed in the Waikato during the Maori War. There were a good many of them, but this was the only one I saw built.
When I went to West Australia, there were a good numbor of houses still existing of the "wattle and dab" order. The walls of these were very irregular, but the houses were warm and comfortable. The walls consisted of rough uprights, into which branches of trees were worked in a rough sort of basket-work. The trees of West Australia are not very pliant, hence the irregular line of the walls. When the " wattle " was completed the inside and outside of the whole were covered with a thick plaster made of clay and wood- ashes. The roof was built on rafters, fixed on to the uprights, and then shingled. The ceiling was composed of boards, and the walls were papered as soon as the clay was dry, while the outside was lime- washed, some dripping being added to the lime before it was slacked to make the wash waterproof. These houses apparently defied all sorts of weather, for I spent many months in one which was so old that no one knew when it had been built. It was perfectly water-tight, and although the floor was an earthen one, no damp ever crept up the walls. The floors, however, are usually boarded as in an average house, the boards being nailed down to "scantlings" laid on the ground after the house was built " Slab " houses are built of largo rough boards, often the waste of the sawmills, driven into the ground and nailed to a rough frame- work. The roof consists of bark or of other slabs. These houses are often seen "out back" in the bush, but are draughty, hot, and un- comfortable. We built one. The slab part was easy enough, but when it came to the chimney we could not manage at all. Stones and plaster made of clay and ashes proved imkind Sometimes our chimney fell down out of sheer perversity, at other times we pulled it down and almost wept At last we built three straight walls, appropriated the " iron " shoulders and top of a chimney from a deserted shanty, fixed it up on top of our walls, and declared that never again would we try to build a chimney. Frankly, chimneys had proved too much for us !—I am, Sir, &e., L. B. TNONUEN-CLAEXE.
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