My Culture
"Cob Cottages"
by Year 4 (11) (11)

My culture and traditions Verwood, Dorset Cob Cottages by Zoe and Carla. A hundred years ago a lot of the people in Verwood built themselves cob cottages to live in. This was how they built them. To make the cob walls they would use horse hair, cow dung, chalk and chopped heather. After the messy cob was all sticky they would get two wooden boards they would put the mixture in and wait until it dried. At the bottom the wall it was wide and when it got taller it got narrower. When the part of cob was dry they would take the wooden boards off and do it all over again. This is called rising. They left spaces for doors, windows and wooden frames. They left spaces for sunlight as it would be dark in the cottage. After the walls were high enough they would put the rafters on these would hold the thatch and straw. The rafters looked a bit like sticks with a bit of metal in the middle. They made brick chimneys because if they made a cob chimney it would crumble away because of the heat. They made a long chimney with a wide fire to make the cloths dry and to make the people nice and warm also in the kitchen there was a fire to cook food. They would use bricks to support the house. Before the house was painted it looked like a horrible brown muddy colour. So people would colour the house if people were going to buy it .There was no electricity so oil lamps gave most of the light in the dark winter nights. In the kitchen there was a big fire so the food could be cooked boiled or heated up. If you go upstairs in some of the cob cottages now, you will find that the floor slopes. The wall on the south has dried out more in the sun and that wall is lower than the wall on the north. Most of the cob cottages had no running water. They had to dig a well in the garden and get their water for drinking and washing from it. They didn't have an inside toilet either. They had a privy at the end of the garden. So on winter nights a visit to the toilet could be very cold and wet. They would have a potty under the bed just in case.