Wattle and Daub
- Iain Collins
- Jul 1, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 29
Quite a few of the houses I see have some element of wattle and daub construction within them and so I thought I'd write a little bit about it. A recent project I completed involved stabilising a wattle and daub ceiling, which had detached from the lathes in places, and reapplying lime plaster over the top.
Wattle and daub is just one example of how earth has been used to build houses in the UK for millennia. The walls of some houses are constructed entirely by it (e.g. cob) whilst others use it in combination with a wooden frame to provide additional support. Wattle and daub has been used to infill timber framed walls since Roman times and was the principal form of wall construction until the end of the 1600s.
Wattle and daub panels are made from an interwoven mesh of wood (e.g. hazel or willow whips, lathes) around vertical or horizontal supports, called staves. These staves are themselves supported in notches made in adjacent structural timber posts and beams. The result resembles a flat basket. The daub (which is a mix of clay, straw and sharp sand) is then pressed into the spaces in the frame. Once dried, the surface is most often finished with lime render or plaster.
If wattle and daub panels are kept dry, they can easily last largely intact for hundreds of years. Movement in the house over time, shrinkage, rodent damage, moisture and accompanying timber rot and insect infestation can all cause significant deterioration. A decayed wattle framework will no longer provide the necessary support for the panel and it will begin to collapse. Even the best kept daub will lose its strength over time simply because of the cycling of temperature and moisture over a longer period of time.
Fortunately, repairing wattle and daub panels is quite straightforward. Historic daub can be reused (often in combination with new daub to provide extra strength) and often wattle frames only need modest repair to return their strength. For such a simple construction, they have proved their longevity. If you have a repair you would like to have done in your home, please drop me a line.
There are plenty of published articles on this topic but here are a couple I found to be most useful, which you might wish to visit if you want to learn more:
Infill Panels - a useful article outlining some of the features of wattle and daub infill panels.
Wattle and Daub - a more in-depth look at this form of construction and their repair.
Comments