Mud is building material of the future

Construction Building Materials Mud, mud glorious mud, there’s nothing quite like it forcooling the blood,” sang Flanders and Swann. An apposite consideration of the needs of a hippopotamus — but not arealistic recommendation, you might think, when it comes to humanhabitation. Yet a school of thought is emerging that compacted and dried-outsoil could be a building material of the future. The Scottish executive commissioned a report in 2000 on thepossible reintroduction of mud as a fabrication component, andscientists at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales havebeen assessing its benefits for the past 30 years, with positivereactions. Many countries have a tradition of mud building: adobestructures are familiar in the Middle East, Spain and LatinAmerica. About 100,000 mud buildings exist in the UK, many of which havebeen upright for centuries. People who live in such buildings arecertainly positive about the experience. Janette Anderson, 61, and her husband Francis, 64, brought up theirfour children in their mud cottage in Luthermuir village inKincardineshire. Local historians have placed the construction dateat about 250 years ago. “It’s a bit of a family heirloom,” says JanetteAnderson. “It has always been a very comfortable home. Ioften wonder what these modern houses will look like in 250years’ time.” Her great grandfather bought the property in 1904 for ￡50.Parting with his cash, he couldn’t have imagined theconnection his family would forge with the unusual house. “My grandmother got married in it. My mother Charlotte wasborn in it in 1912 and I was born in this house in 1947,”says Anderson. “But there was some stigma attached to it.When my son went to school, people used to say he was the kid fromthe mud hut home, but we always just knew it as a clay house. Thereare lots of them in Luthermuir, but, because of the harling, if youlooked at it, you would never know it was clay.” One of the advantages Anderson points to is energy efficiency. Mudbuildings have high thermal mass and can store heat and release itslowly to balance indoor climate. In Germany, builders are beingtaught to work with mud again. The UK’s housing stock uses upthree-and-a-half times the energy of homes in Germany and Denmark.Clearly, there are advantages, even if we are slower to recognisethem in Scotland. “Earth or clay buildings were actually traditional forthousands of years in Scotland,” says Tom Morton ofFife-based Arc Architects, author of Earth Masonry: Design andConstruction Guidelines. “They still survive in Devon and areknown as cobs.” Despite being associated today with Third World countries, there isrenewed appreciation of earth as an ecological, energy-efficientbuilding material. It is free, biodegradable, produces about 5% ofthe carbon of concrete and is proven to protect inhabitants fromasthma and allergies because of its ability to regulate internalhumidity. Much of the stigma attached to mud buildings comes more fromchanges in building fashion rather than any assessment of itsmerits. The event about which mud fans are most excited, however, is aboutto be unveiled in a quiet corner of Angus. When the local authoritygranted permission to the guardians of Logie Estate to build on thesite of an abandoned schoolhouse, it could not have known that thewrecking ball was about to flatten one of the best examples of alate vernacular mud wall building still standing in Scotland.Fortunately, an eagle-eyed neighbour with a knowledge of buildingheritage realised the error before the demolition team was calledin.Logie Schoolhouse was constructed almost entirely from mud.Around the red clay fields of Angus and Kincardineshire, the areafictionalised by author Lewis Grassic Gibbon as Kinraddie in SunsetSong, such buildings were once common, but the tradition died outin the 19th Century. Thanks to a ￡400,000 renovation, Logie Schoolhouse,constructed 178 years ago, will go on the rental market this summeras a one-bedroom home. At its prime, the classroom echoed with the chatter of 40 localschoolchildren, before being reincarnated in 1920 as a communitychurch for the local hamlet, which nestles between Montrose andLaurencekirk. The reason for the partial collapse of one outer wall was more todo with leaking gutters and 18 years of neglect than anyfundamental construction deficiency. The building was finallyabandoned in 1990. The National Trust for Scotland’s Little Houses ImprovementScheme (LHIS) secured the schoolhouse for a nominal fee, althoughaccess was initially impossible because of the overgrowth of briarand foliage. “We couldn’t get in, but we knew it was a charmingbuilding, even if it was in a sad and unkempt state,” saysSian Loftus, the LHIS manager. “It had incrediblepotential.” “Basically, there was a clay subsoil — there was lotsof this in Scotland — and to make the mud walls they wouldhave mixed it with straw and built it into the wall using hands orforks; somewhat akin to pottery, but on a huge scale,” saysMorton, whose practice worked on the restoration. “People didthis because it was cheap and easy,” he says. “It wasalso a local material, so you didn’t need to transportit.” To preserve as much of the original structure as possible, ArcArchitects and Little and Davie Construction dried out theschoolhouse and created earth bricks for any rebuilding using soilfrom the local farm. “It is an attractive rural location,” says Loftus.“There is a nice view. It will appeal to someone who likesquirkiness and a building with lots of character. We have been verysensitive in adapting it, because we didn’t want to lose thelong classroom or split it in any way.” The good news for prospective tenants is that, under the terms ofthe Historic Scotland and Communities Scotland grants, the housemust have a first tenure of six years and be priced withinaffordable housing guidelines. Notwithstanding its rare materials, it also enjoys many unusualoriginal features. What would have served as the classroom is now akitchen, dining and living space with a historic fireplace. Thehead teacher’s quarters is now a bedroom and bathroom area. Aporch, added at a later date, provides an entrance hall andcloakroom. In the rear garden stands the ruin of a 1736 manse. The crowningglory will be the original school bell, lost for 18 years. But then perhaps the real glory will be that an ancient form ofbuilding becomes popular once again as a way of helping theenvironment. “The use of earth is moving from the eco nicheinto mainstream construction now,” says Morton. “It isdefinitely going to happen.” For more information on the Logie Schoolhouse project, contact theNational Trust for Scotland www.nts.org.uk