So, its finally begun! After months of planning, preparing, organising and waiting the time has finally come for the walls of our Romano-British building to start going up. The low stone walls are now covered and shooting skyward with over 3 foot of cob. Cob is an amazing, versatile and incredibly ancient building material- a mixture of the right kind of sub-soil, heavily mixed with straw.
The process of building is simple; get your mud, fluff up some straw, mix the stuff together with a bit of water, pile it on the walls to a height of 3 foot, wait a day, pair it down with a spade, wait another week, repeat.
After an initial frustrating start, owing to torrential rain and incorrect/ late deliveries of soil, yesterday we cracked on with the second lift, and what an incredible result- as one observer remarked, ‘like an army of fluorescent yellow ants’. Apt I thought.
Avalon Archaeology 'Hands on Heritage' 