LAND SETTLEMENT AND PISS DE TERRE.
VARIOUS schemes of land settlement are in the air, some national and some Imperial, some official, some amateur. All of them, however, must be concerned with cheap building. That is the sine qva non, and that is the matter with which we propose to deal in this article. But before we turn to economic construction we desire to say how deeply to he regretted is the strain of jealousy which seems to inspire a section, though we feel sure a very minute section, of those who are dealing with land settle- ment. Some people actually talk as if a strong endeavour ought to be made to prevent those home-returning soldiers who desire to go to the Colonies from fulfilling their intent. Every effort, it is suggested, is to be made to keep them at home. Such efforts would of course in any case be futile, bid the spirit behind the proposition is bad. The Empire is one and indivisible, as the war has shown us, and a man gives as much support to the Empire, and so to the Mother Country, by settling in Saskatchewan or the back-blocks of Australia or New Zealand, or in any part of the South African Union or Rhodesia, as he does in going back to the land in Berkshire or Wiltshire, Norfolk or Suffolk. Talk about the danger of our being bled to death and becoming. a land of women and dotards is nonsense. It will not happen if we see to it, as we shall, that our women go oversea in proper proportion to our men. There are plenty of young. Englishmen who have come to feel that they need an ampler air and a larger field for their activities. These adventurous youths are not going to be satisfied with the tameness of home life. They want fresh fields to conquer, and love the thought of a giant struggle with Nature in the wilderness. They will never settle down at home, and it is our business to ensure that their first choice shall be one of the British oversea Dominions. They will not of course be driven from the Mother Country if they wish to stay at home, as many—perhaps the majority—will want to do. They will have a free choice. There ought to be, and will be, a good deal of land. settlement here. But we must never forget that a great, many men, and for that matter a great many, women also, in whom the war has wakened the vision of a bigger and._ more exciting life, will now never be satisfied till they have. fared oversea.
The particular point with which we want to deal to-day is the cheap construction of houses and farm buildings. it is not too much to say that all schemes of home land settlement are in danger of being wrecked by the unsolved: problem of how to provide the necessary buildings. If. they are not provided, there can be no home settlement, for there are no houses available in the country. If they are provided under the existing system of building, they will either ruin the settlers by the need of paying interest on their cost, or they will require free gifts from Govern- ment on so vast a scale as to inflict an intolerable burden on the rest of the population. All turns on cheap con- struction. In view of this fact, we desire to recommend to the most serious attention of the Government the system of building in rammed earth, or pisj de terre, which we have already described on several occasions. in these columns—a system in itself very old and in frequent operation in Australia, New Zealand, and other parts of the Empire. The task of adapting the system to the British climate offers some difficulties, but we are certain that they are not insurmountable and that careful experiments will easily overcome them. The great advantage of pise de terre work, granted that it will not succumb to the British rain and frost, is its low cost. Houses or sheds built in this way have to pay little or no tribute to the transport trades—i.e., the whole of the material for the walls is found on the spot. It is taken from the field in which the house or farm buildings are to stand. Next, for this kind of wall-building only unskilled labour is required. This means that the greater part of the house can be built by those who are going to live in it. This proposition sounds strange to most English cars; but in all new countries, and indeed in most other parts of the world but England, rural buildings—that is, isolated farms, cottages, and agricultural buildings—are erected by the men who are to live in and use them. Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand settlers, at any rate, always begin by building their own houses. Building in pisj de terre, if it could be introduced into this country, would restore to us the power of the tiller of the soil to house himself. It would be specially useful in any scheme of what we may call communal settlement. If a group of, say, twenty men were to take over a farm of a hundred acres, and to cut it up into twenty holdings of four or five acres each, operations might be begun by those twenty men join- ing to build the walls of each other's houses and farm buildings.
A striking example of the rapidity with which a building of pise de terre can be made was given the other day at Guildford by members of the local Volunteer battalion. Au honorary officer of the corps (the writer of these words) was anxious to show how quickly a building for military purposes could be constructed in pise de terre, and the members of the corps, though the work was outside what might be supposed to be their regular duties, most kindly undertook to help. Mr. Gilbert Swayne,. Adjutant of the battalion, as good luck has it, is an architect, and an architect who does not despise experiments. To, him. the success of the experiment is largely to be attributed. The following is a condensed account of the hut., taken from a Guildford paper, the Surrey Weekly Press :- " In the new but which they have built in the grounds of Allen House,. the members of the Guildford V.T.C. have introduced the pise de terre form of construction : that is, walls of rammed earth. An officer of the corps has been instrumental in bringing to the notice of English people this very- cheap and substantial form of building which is used with great success on Australian farms. The method of working is delightfully simple, and although tho result would probably fail to meet the requirements of municipal building bye laws, it has certain practical and important advantages. The but which has been erected in the grounds of Allen House may be taken as a typical example of what is possible by the system. The interior of the building is twenty-three feet square, and the walls are formed of mother-earth eighteen inches thick. No founda- tions arc needed, but on a fairly level piece of ground temporary wooden casings are first erected. These are made in sections, and can be used over and over again. Inside the woodwork the earth is shovelled and beaten down tight and solid by means of wooden rammers. The result is a wall of surprisingly firm earth, and it is conceivable that when exposed to a fierce sun it would become baked to the strength of masonry. The roof is formed of corrugated iron laid on wooden rafters. No special skill is required to make the walls, anybody capable of handling a spade or raising a rammer being able to assist in the work. . . . A speaker at the opening ceremony pointed out that
• the walls were built by fifty-two men in ten hours. They were by no means expert, and there was no doubt that after constructing three or four similar places they would get one finished in an even shorter time. If the walls had been erected by ordinary unskilled labour paid at sixpence per hour they would have cost twelve pounds. .Mr. Gilbert Swaync, who had rendered most valuable aid as architect, supervisor, and designer of the shuttering, stated that in brick- work the walls would have cost eighty pounds. A platoon of men skilled in the work could build huts capable of housing a battalion in a week. Subsequently several of the members of the V.T.C. seized spades and rammers and built a section of wall."
To supplement this description it may be noted. that the floor of the but consists of rammed earth. The platoon trampled and rammed for an hour, till at last not an inch super of it was further compressible. In the case of a farmhouse or cottage a wooden floor would of course be necessary, and in the case of a cowshed or stable or barn some harder substance would have to be used. Possibly it may prove practicable to lay the floor with road material and then tar it, just as our roads are tarred, and so prevent the damp from rising. If the tar were given time to set, we do not think that even the heat of a house would melt it, any more than does the hot sun a well-tarred road. As soon as the inside walls have dried, not a very long affair if they are built in the summer, ordinary whitewash could be applied, or, again, the walls could. be sized and papered. In climates with a hot sun, like that of Australia, the outside of a pig de terre house soon becomes, we are told, so hard that it is impopsible to drive in a nail ; but that does not happen here. The British sun will not turn earth into earthenware. Therefore some waterproofing material would have to be applied to the outside. In all probability gas-tar would prove the best material, as it does in the case of wooden buildings. The trouble here, however, is that tar can only be satisfactorily applied, as our roadmakers know, when the surface is dry. This means only spring or summer building, and that is not business. The walls of the Guildford but have only been standing about a month, and though they seem quite stable now, that of course is not a sufficiently Tong test. It should be noted, however, that they were built under conditions most unfavourable to the system. To begin with, they were built during very wet weather, and there- fore when the earth was sodden. Next, they were built from the earth of an old kitchen garden, which, as was pointed out by a local critic, chiefly consisted of "leaf- mould and manure." The earth of an ordinary ploughed field containing marl, loam, and gravel would have made a far heavier, • harder, and therefore more tenacious wall. Though the present writer believes that coal-tar properly applied will do all that is necessary for the exterior, experi- ments ought to be tried with various materials. It is quite possible that Science has in her bosom some yet unthought-of material which will be just suitable. At Guildford two patent materials, one called Ironite and the other Petrite, were applied to the walls after they were built and while still damp, apparently with success. There has not, however, yet been time to show whether either of them will prove permanently satisfactory, though both are materials well spoken of for curing dampness in ordinary brick or stone walls.
Any one desiring to see the building and gauge its possibilities can do so by applying, in the first place by letter, to Mr. Gilbert Swayne (Danesholm, Guildford), and making an appointment for the purpose. It is hoped, however, that with the kind aid of the workers of the Guildford V.T.C. another experiment will be made of pise de terre construction, and we should' advise those of. our readers who are interested in the matter to wait till that experiment has been completed, as it will probably offer a better opportunity for judging the work. We have already given drawings of the shuttering between which the earth is rammed. Those drawings were taken from the Farmers' Handbook issued by the Government of New South Wales. We hope before long, probably next week, to give drawings of an improved and stronger shuttering designed by Mr. Swayne for the Guildford hut. Two things may be said in conclusion. One is that though the earth walls seem quite strong enough to support a heavy roof (the Guildford walls support one weighing over a ton), there is no reason why in buildings of a bigger span and with heavier roofs pise de terre walls should not be used to fill in the sides and ends of a building the roof of which is upheld by an iron or wooden frame. Secondly, exceedingly strong walls, which also require no foundations and nothing but unskilled. labour, can be made out of rammed chalk, or pis de craie. This development was described in an article in this paper en November 13th of last year. The writer of the article in question described how the walls of a dining-room for the patients in the Newlands Corner Auxiliary Hospital were rapidly con- structed of this rammed chalk. The walls have stood the wet and frost of the present winter with complete success. It was feared that they would first of all absorb a great deal of moisture, and that then the frost would cause them to flake, or, as one critic put it, actually to " explode." Happily nothing of the kind has occurred, though no doubt such violent flaking does take place when frost gets hold of a heap of chalk, or even of walls made out of blocks of chalk which have not been carefully weathered. That the chalk has behaved well and not badly may possibly be due to the fact that the outside was covered with a water- proof material termed " Metallic Liquid." No doubt that was a help, but in the opinion of the present writer it is to the compression of the chalk caused by hard ramming that the absence of flaking is chiefly due. Rammed chalk becomes for building purposes a very different material from unrammed. To begin with, its bulk is greatly reduced by the process. Rammed chalk, which, remember, needs no cement to bind it, has, we are convinced, a great future.
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