It's a beautiful and
inspirational space. The low environmental impact development used
local timber floors and walkways; an oak shake roof; clay and lime
plasters; highly efficient glazing and sheep’s wool insulation.
Hundreds of people lent a hand in its construction and hundreds
more visited the building site on an organised event to learn
about natural building. It was built by Amazon Nails (below left), now Straw
Build (Bee Rowan) and
Straw Works (Barbara
Jones). The interior wall which divides the open
space from a small kitchen and store is built from traditional cob
on the lower courses and then less commonly with cob blocks. The
cob was a made from clay cleared from the site mixed with straw by
a digger. Cob blocks, similar to adobe bricks but larger, were
tamped and stamped into preset forms (below right) carefully
tipped out to dry on racks. Over 1500 bricks were made this way
with a further 600 cob blocks bought from a supplier in Devon,
England's cob building heart. |