Country matters

Clive Aslet was the long-time editor of Country Life, and now, as its ‘Editor at Large’, is released into the environment.

Clive Aslet was the long-time editor of Country Life, and now, as its ‘Editor at Large’, is released into the environment. It obviously suits him. He writes wonderfully in Villages of Britain about building materials such as mud and stud, wattle and daub, and cob, which is where our oldest houses meet African mud huts. Cob is just earth ‘that has been sieved to a fine tilth and laid over straw; water is put on it to make it sticky, and more straw laid on top’, with a seasoning of dung and twigs. Then great lumps of it are piled up into a deep, thick wall. If cob gets wet it just dissolves into mud, so ‘old builders would stand cob houses on a plinth of stone, then plaster and limewash the walls and have them overhung by deep eaves.’