EMESS

The following description of building with mud comes from the book “Hawks of the Hadhramaut” by PS Allfree, published by Robert Hale Ltd in 1967.  Mr Allfree had a military career before going to the East Aden Protectorate in what is now South Yemen.  On p 145 he described the method of building with mud which he had seen between 1955 and 1957, as follows :  “Take several dozen donkey-loads of dry earth : a camel-back or two of straw.  Add water. Knead well with the feet to make a porridgy paste, spread paste two inches thick on the ground, slice it with a wooden board into twelve-inch squares and leave to dry.  The result : bricks.    Meanwhile the ground-plan, sketched by the client on a rough scrap of paper, has been transferred to the building site by means of pegs and stretched string.  Two-foot trenches are hacked between the guide-lines by men with mattocks, and filled in with chips of stone bound with cement.    When ...

Withern Cottage, Skegness, Lincs, newly re-thatched in 2012.  The building is a mud-and-stud cottage which was moved from nearby Withern and rebuilt at the open-air museum (known as The Village) in 1980-1982.  It was the first mud-and-stud building to be properly repaired.  (Photo by Rodney Cousins)

In order to introduce EMESS via this new blog, the record of the meetings from the past two years (2012 and 2013) are being added to the site.   The events included the first two of the annual lectures held at the University of Lincoln, plus hands-on training days to carry out the repair of real buildings in Lincolnshire.  2012, MEETING 1 Minutes of EMESS Meeting, at School of Architecture, University of Lincoln Date : 7.00 – 10.00pm, Thursday 1 March 2012 Present : 12 EMESS members and 14 University members             Apologies : Bernard Martin, Kath Thomas and Simon Chesters Welcome : The University members of Article 25 welcomed the EMESS membership to the School of Architecture.   The two groups have the common interest of sustainable building construction, and so the students looked forward to the talks to be given that evening. The University tutor wh...