Wattle and daub

Wattle and daub is a composite building material used for making walls, in which a
woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle is daubed with a sticky material usually
made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung and straw. Wattle
and daub has been used for at least 6,000 years and is still an important construction
material in many parts of the world. Many historic buildings include wattle and daub
construction, and the technique is becoming popular again in more developed areas
as a low-impact sustainable building technique.

Contents
Wattle and daub in wooden frames
Construction
History
Styles of infill panels
Close-studding
Square panels
Applications
Pug and pine
Mud and stud
Pierrotage, columage
Bajarreque
Jacal
See also
Notes
References
External links

Construction
The wattle is made by weaving thin branches (either whole, or more usually split) or slats
between upright stakes. The wattle may be made as loose panels, slotted between timber
framing to make infill panels, or made in place to form the whole of a wall. In different
regions, the material of wattle can be different. For example, in Mitchell Site on the northern
outskirts of the city of Mitchell, South Dakota, willow has been found as the wattle material
of the walls of the house.[1] Reeds and vines can also be used as wattle material.[2][3] The
origin of the term wattle describing a group of acacias in Australia, is derived from the
[4]
common use of acacias as wattle in early Australian European settlements.

Daub is usually created from a mixture of ingredients from three categories: binders,
aggregates and reinforcement. Binders hold the mix together and can include clay, lime,
chalk dust and limestone dust. Aggregates give the mix its bulk and dimensional stability
through materials such as earth, sand, crushed chalk and crushed stone. Reinforcement is
provided by straw, hair, hay or other fibrous materials, and helps to hold the mix together as
Wattle in construction
.[5] The daub may be mixed by hand, or by
well as to control shrinkage and provide flexibility
treading – either by humans orlivestock. It is then applied to the wattle and allowed to dry
, and often then whitewashed to increase its
resistance to rain. Sometimes there can be more than one layer of daub. Still in Mitchell Site, the anterior of the house had double
layers of burned daub.[6]

This process has been replaced in modern architecture by lath and plaster, a common building material for wall and ceiling surfaces,
in which a series of nailed wooden strips are covered with plaster smoothed into a flat surface. In many regions this building method
has itself been overtaken bydrywall construction using plasterboard sheets

History
The wattle and daub technique was used already in the Neolithic period. It was common for
houses of a Linear pottery and Rössen cultures of Central Europe, but is also found in
Western Asia (Çatalhöyük, Shillourokambos) as well as in North America (Mississippian
culture) and South America (Brazil). In Africa it is common in the architecture of traditional
houses such as those of the Ashanti people. Its usage dates back at least 6000 years. There
are suggestions that construction techniques such as lath and plaster and even cob may have
evolved from wattle and daub. Fragments from prehistoric wattle and daub buildings have A wattle and daub house as
been found in Africa, Europe, Mesoamerica and North America.[7] A review of English used by Native Americans
architecture especially reveals that the sophistication of this craft is dependent on the various during the Mississippian
styles of timber frame housing.[8] period

Styles of infill panels

As discussed earlier, there were two popular choices for wattle and daub infill
paneling: close-studded paneling and square paneling.

A woven wattle gate keeps animals
out of the 15th century cabbage
patch (Tacuinum Sanitatis, Rouen)
cm) width. Gaps allow keyformation for
Close-studding
Close-studding panels create a much more narrow space between the timbers:
anywhere from 7 to 16 inches (18 to 40 cm). For this style of panel, weaving is too
difficult, so the wattles run horizontally and are known as ledgers. The ledgers are
sprung into each upright timber (stud) through a system of augered holes on one side
and short chiseled grooves along the other. The holes (along with holes of square
paneling) are drilled at a slight angle towards the outer face of each stud. This allows
room for upright hazels to be tied to ledgers from the inside of the building. The
horizontal ledgers are placed every two to three feet (0.6 to 0.9 metres) with whole
hazel rods positioned upright top to bottom and lashed to the ledgers. These hazel
rods are generally tied a finger widths apart with 6–8 rods each with a 16-inch (40
drying.[9]

Square panels
Square panels are large, wide panels typical of some later timber frame houses. These panels
may be square in shape, or sometimes triangular to accommodate arched or decorative
bracing. This style does require wattles to be woven for better support of the daub.

To insert wattles in a square panel several steps are required. First, a series of evenly spaced
holes are drilled along the middle of the inner face of each upper timber. Next, a continuous
groove is cut along the middle of each inner face of the lower timber in each panel. Vertical
Wattle panel
slender timbers, known as staves, are then inserted and these hold the whole panel within the timber frame. The staves are positioned
into the holes and then sprung into the grooves. They must be placed with suf
ficient gaps to weave the flexible horizontal wattles.

Applications
In some places or cultures, the technique of wattle and daub were used with different materials thus has different names, including
pug and pine, mud and stud (stud and mud), hourdis, rab (rad) and dab, pierrotage/bousillage (bouzillage) and columage. Bajarreque
and jacal are examples of structure built with the technique of wattle and daub.

Pug and pine

In the early days of the colonisation of South Australia, in areas where substantial timber was unavailable, pioneers' cottages and
other small buildings were frequently constructed with light vertical timbers, which may have been "native pine" (Callitris or
Casuarina spp.), driven into the ground, the gaps being stopped with pug (kneaded clay and grass mixture). Another term for this
construction is palisade and pug.[10]

Mud and stud

"Mud and stud" is a similar process to wattle and daub, with a simple frame
consisting only of upright studs joined by cross rails at the tops and bottoms. Thin
staves of ash were attached, then daubed with a mixture of mud, straw, hair and
dung. The style of building was once common inLincolnshire.[11]

Pierrotage, columage
Pierrotage is the infilling material used in French Vernacular architecture of the
A mud and stud wall inTumby
Southern United States to infill between half-timbering with diagonal braces, which
Woodside, Lincolnshire
is similar with daub. It is usually made of lime mortar clay mixed with small stones.
It is also called bousillage or bouzillage, especially in French eVrnacular architecture
of Louisiana of the early 1700s. The materials of bousillage are Spanish moss or clay and grass. Bousillage also refers to the type of
brick molded with the same materials and used as infilling between posts. Columbage refers to the timber-framed construction with
[12]
diagonal bracing of the framework. Pierratage or bousillage is the material filled into the structural timbers.

Bajarreque
Bajarreque is a wall constructed with the technique of wattle and daub. The wattle
here is made of bagasse, and the daub is the mix of clay and straw.[13]

Jacal
Jacal can refer to a type of crude house whose wall is built with wattle and daub in
southwestern America. Closely spaced upright sticks or poles driven into the ground
with small branches (wattle) interwoven between them make the structural frame of
the wall. Mud or an adobe clay (daub) is covered outside. To provide additional Example of pierrotage construction in
weather protection, the wall is usually plastered.[14] Ste. Geneviève, Missouri.

See also
Lath and plaster
Earthen plaster
 Quincha
Mudbrick
Adobe
Cob (building)
Rammed earth
Timber frame
Ceramic houses
Clay panel

Notes
1. Alex 1973.
2. Harris, Cyril M.. "Dictionary of architecture and construction, fourth edition." 2006
[1] (https://www.pdfdrive.net/diction
ary-of-architecture-and-construction-e8247264.html)
3. Allen, Edward, & Iano, Joseph. "Fundamentals of building construction: materials & methods, fifth edition"
4. "Australia's Wattle Day – Parliament of Australia" (http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departme
nts/Parliamentary_Library/Publications_Archive/CIB/cib9596/96cib1) . Aph.gov.au. Retrieved 2016-10-24.
5. Pritchett, Ian. The Building Conservation Directory, 2001: "Wattle and Daub". Accessed 2 February 2007(http://www.
buildingconservation.com/articles/wattleanddaub)
6. Alex 1973, p. 151.
7. Shaffer, Gary D. (Spring 1993). "An Archaeomagnetic Study of a Wattle and Daub Building Collapse".Journal of
Field Archaeology. 20 (1): 59–75. JSTOR 530354 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/530354).
8. Graham, A.H.D. "Wattle and Daub: Craft, Conservation and Wiltshire Case Study" (Dissertation), 2004.Accessed 26
October 2012 (http://www.tonygraham.co.uk/conservation_articles.htm)
9. Sunshine, Paula. Wattle and Daub. Buckinghamshire: Shire Publications Ltd 2006.
10. "Archived copy" (https://web.archive.org/web/20120112040417/http://mileslewis.net/australian-building/pdf/04-hybrid
-types/hybrid-types-palisade-pug.pdf)(PDF). Archived from the original (http://mileslewis.net/australian-building/pdf/0
4-hybrid-types/hybrid-types-palisade-pug.pdf)(PDF) on 12 January 2012. Retrieved 19 September 2011.
11. Aslet, Clive (15 August 2011)."Villages of Britain: The Five Hundred Villages that Made the Countryside"(https://boo
ks.google.co.uk/books?id=wZvjPhec6M8C&pg=PT376) . Bloomsbury Publishing USA. Retrieved 20 March 2018 –
via Google Books.
12. Harris 2006, p. 231, p. 725.
13. Harris 2006, p. 77.
14. Harris 2006, p. 551.

References
Robert, Alex (1973). "Architectural features of houses at the Mitchell Site (39DV2), Eastern South Dakota".
Plains
Anthropologist. 18 (60). JSTOR 25667144.

External links
Media related to Wattle and daub at Wikimedia Commons

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