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Showing posts from November, 2015

EMESS MEETING: 10TH NOVEMBER 2015

LOCATION: Field Cottage, Moorby. PRESENT : Jill Cousins, Alison Cousins, Ben Gadsby, Julian Millhouse, Tony Bonham, Nicholas Sherratt, Kelly Scott, Mike Summer, Richard Sivill. Stella Sivill, Derek Lane, Neil Cook, Eleanor Harris, Trevor Oliver, Marcin Kolakowski, Catherine Wilson, Graham Beaumont, Bernard Martin, Ann Marecombe, Robin Brittain, Erica Mallory-Blythe, Andrew Mallory-Blythe and David Glew. APOLOGIES: John Hurd, Arthur Fox, Jane Pow, Chris Healy and Robert Walker. ABSENT FRIEND: This was the first EMESS meeting since the sudden death of the chairman Rodney Cousins. The location was at the cottage where Rodney had been arranging a meeting which had to be cancelled because of his sudden illness. This was an opportunity for members to reflect on Rodney's contribution to the current knowledge of earthen buildings. David started by remembering that Rodney had provided the location for the first EMESS meeting, at the Museum of Lincolnshire Life, 21 years previous, wh

EULOGY FROM EMESS FOR RODNEY COUSINS, 1944-2015

In 1994, while he was at the Museum of Lincolnshire Life, Rodney held the first meeting for the founding of the East Midlands Earth Structure Society. This is a group of conservationists, architects, builders and house holders who are interested in buildings made from earth. These structures include Lincolnshire's mud-and-stud cottages. It is appropriate that the short name for a society which enjoys working with wet, sticky mud, is EMESS - in other words ...ee-mess! Rodney wrote a unique and informative book about mud-and-stud buildings in Lincolnshire. This followed his project to move an unwanted mud-and-stud cottage from the village of Withern to the Church Farm Museum in Skegness. With EMESS members, he attended the international conference on earthen buildings called Tera 2000 in Torquay, and sold lots of copies of his book there! Over the years since, in EMESS and as its chairman, Rodney gave talks himself and organised talks by others. He organised walkabouts around vil