How did people make foundations for wattle and daub houses? How are the vertical posts attached?

This year, I get to teach medieval history for my kids homeschool co-op. I'm seriously excited!

What I'd like to do is teach them how buildings were made with the materials and skills in each area during the medieval period. For a multi-week project, I'd like to guide them through making their own wattle and daub houses, in dollhouse scale.

This is the sort of house I'm thinking of:

mideaval wattle and daub house

Depending on my skill level and the interest of the kids, I might give them the options of making something like the above wattle and daub house, as well as something like these





I'm thinking we'll build these on top of carboard bases...but how do we attach the support posts to the cardboard? I was thinking of using paper clay (you can see a castle I made out of paper clay here on permies). I know that's not a historical material, but it should look like a stone foundation....but DID they use stone foundations for wattle and daub houses??! And if they did, how did they attach the wattle and daub part to it. I'd like to show the kids a video of that, but I'm not sure where to find a video like that.

If anyone could find resources on how these buildings were built historically, I would be super grateful! If you have input/ideas on how to teach the kids how to build these house in miniature scale, I'd love that, too!

So far, this is what I have planned for the project itself (we meet once a week. And for history I'll have 45 minutes of instructional/craft time):

Week	Instruction	Activity
Week 1: Foundation	Talk about medieval houses in Europe. Show pictures of early, middle and late medieval houses in Europe. Round celtic houses, dug-out houses in colder regions, wattle and daub. Wattle and daub mixed with stone	Using paper clay on a cardboard foundation, lay out the shape of the house with paper clay, putting a stick upright every few inches. Can make a round, square, or rectangle house
Week 2: Wattling	Watch videos about wattling	Wattle the house (weave thin, fresh sticks around the upright posts to form the wall)
Week 3: Daubing	Learn about daubing (daub, like cob, means a roundish blob…like the blob of clay/sand/straw) you blob onto your wattle. Watch a video on daubing	Daub the house! Kids mix their daub/cob in the aluminum foil trays (use clay and sand/soil and maybe wool or flax roving—straw will likely be too coarse) and then apply to their house!
Week 4: Interior	Learn about what was inside these medieval houses, and the foods eaten. Talk about why pot holes are called pot holes (because clay was harvested there to make pots!). Maybe watch BBC farm video on clay pots and threshed floors.	Thresh the floor with chopped up straw/grass. Make a fire ring in the middle with stones. Make a clay pot with clay
Week 5: Roofing	Learn about how roofs were thatched! Watch BBC farm video on thatching	Make half of the roof and thatch it! If kids have extra time, they can continue to decorate their house, make doors and shutters from popsicle sticks, etc

The type of foundation used for a wattle and daub house would depend on the era, and on the prosperity of the people building it.  If in a hurry, or poor, they would have planted the posts in holes in the ground (often in archaeological excavations, they can determine where the houses were by finding the filled-in post holes, which look different than the dirt surrounding them).  If they weren't in a hurry, and had either a ready source of stone or the wherewithal to purchase stone, they would have built a stone foundation, mostly because the posts will last MUCH longer if they aren't in contact with the ground.  When they did put the posts in the ground, they most likely charred them first, in an attempt to make them last longer, and/or used the most rot-resistant wood available.  

For your purposes, the post-in-the-ground will work fine, and if you use corrugated cardboard, you may just be able to stab the sticks you use for posts down into the cardboard.  (Using two or three layers of cardboard would help stabilize the posts better.)

Your curriculum looks good.  Any chance of being able to give them some hands-on experience with making cob?  Maybe outside of school hours....

I have no idea what's authentic, but in keeping with this site's (Paul's) preferences, you/they could build tiny little rock-jacks to support the uprights.

Also, cool project!

Howdy,

Lloyd Kahn, and his large format book Shelter, shows traditional building styles around the world. A good section on stacked stone foundation, post and beam(hand hewn), wattle and daub, and thatched roofs, etc.

Another book, dealing with local building styles, native materials and regions, is Drew and Louise  Langsners book "Handmade, Vanishing Cultures of Europe and the Near East".  Full of very good photos, rural, off the beaten path, traditional lifestyles.

randal cranor wrote:Howdy,

Lloyd Kahn, and his large format book Shelter, shows traditional building styles around the world. A good section on stacked stone foundation, post and beam(hand hewn), wattle and daub, and thatched roofs, etc.

Another book, dealing with local building styles, native materials and regions, is Drew and Louise  Langsners book "Handmade, Vanishing Cultures of Europe and the Near East".  Full of very good photos, rural, off the beaten path, traditional lifestyles.

Also, there are YouTube videos of people building with wattle and daub -- you'd have to do a search.

I never did get around to updating this thread!

In the end, we went with paper clay. This ended up being a really good choice. For 30 kids, we used up one gallon of Elmer's glue and probably 15 rolls of toilet paper. We also added shredded paper for more structural stability. To make the clay, I added just enough water to the TP to make it fall apart. Then I added in the ripped paper--probably 1/4th ripped paper and 3/4  TP. Then I added glue until it turned into a playdough consistancy. If it was too runny, I added more TP and mixed until it squished nicely between my fingers.

The paper clay wasn't perfect--it was a little to soft to easily hold up the sticks. So the kids needed a bit. And as it dried, sometimes it shrank away from the sticks and they fell out. So, for those we had to add more glue or just weave the wattle really carefully around those sticks. But, the advantage to the paper clay is that it stuck to the cardboard base!

The paper clay foundation with the upright sticks stick stuck into it

I did end up making a few houses using cob/daub instead to hold the sticks together. The cob worked better at holding the sticks, and was easier to work with. BUT! It didn't stick to the cardboard. So the houses ended up sliding around on their cardboard ground. But, if you don't care about the house being attached to the "ground," then using cob worked great.

Here are the houses with their walls wattled and daubed. Some are painted with milkpaint, too

Well you got it done. Good on you.
I was going to suggest you go on youtube and watch Time team they have some great info on how this was done.

This community is reconstruction of a Medieval community, it may be helpful.

Guédelon castle is amazing! Through the whole house-building weeks, I showed many different videos from BBC's Secrets of the Castle, which takes place at Guédelon castle. The first episode even has Ruth Goodman showing the inside of a medieval cottage, how pots were made, what a grain ark was used for, how people cooked, where food was stored, how grain was ground, etc.

Most of my classes started off with me showing a slideshow with videos and pictures about the stage of building we were doing, and then the kids going at it. All in all, I think these were all the stages:

(1) Make the paper clay foundation with wooden stick posts
(2) Because our wattle material was delayed: Make small clay pots (which we fired in the kiln
(3) Because our wattle material was delayed: needle felt blankets in naturally dyed and undyed wool.
(4) Weave the walls
(5) Daub the walls
(6) Paint the walls with lime milk paint
(7) Build our roofs
(8) Thatch the roofs (we used dried grass from my yard, because I couldn't find local straw long enough)
(9) Write about our houses, thresh the floor with straw, put in firepits with rocks, put our blankets and pots in the house, and make any additional things we want from air-dry clay (some of the things they made were ovens, blacksmith anvils, chickens, loaves of bread, sheep, doors, and brooms)

It was a seriously intensive project, with huge messes made every day. And there was a lot of prepwork in sourcing all the materials, doing the research, and making the slideshows for the instruction. But, both the kids and I learned so much. It was very much worth it!

John C Daley wrote:

This community is reconstruction of a Medieval community, it may be helpful.

We watched the documentary series about the castle as part of our homeschool history this past year. It's so amazing and how it was started, not by an official organization, but by a group of people who are just really passionate about learning about these historical skills.

My kids were already determined to build themselves a cob house in the backyard and have spent some time testing different cob mixture this winter. I'm hoping to talk then into building me a pizza oven first. 😁

Building a miniature cob house is a fun way to start and try out the process. Even in medieval times, they made models of their buildings before building the large-scale one.

My kids want to build a cob house outside, too. Sadly, we're lacking in clay!

I'd love to see pictures of your kids' house, Jenny!

Nicole Alderman wrote:Building a miniature cob house is a fun way to start and try out the process. Even in medieval times, they made models of their buildings before building the large-scale one.

Oh that's a good idea to have them make a miniature model of the house they want to build. I don't know why it didn't occur to me. 🤦 They have drawn up paper plans. The tests with cob they have been doing they have been making into different brick forms.

Very cool Nicole. Thank you for sharing. I like to use 1" thick "cookie" log slices for the bases of cob fairy houses we build with the kids. They look great and hold up to the abuse and are easy to reuse. You can also drill holes to hold your posts.

Chris McClellan wrote:Very cool Nicole. Thank you for sharing. I like to use 1" thick "cookie" log slices for the bases of cob fairy houses we build with the kids. They look great and hold up to the abuse and are easy to reuse. You can also drill holes to hold your posts.

Thank you, Uncle Mud! I actually watched a few of your videos when trying to figure out how to mix the cob. This one was really helpful:



It was tricky trying to get a fine enough mixture to go on the wattle walls. In the end, I think we did about 2/5 sand, 2/5 clay, and then about 1/5 ripped up jute twine (I wasn't really measuring--I just scooped 2 cups of clay and then 2 cups of sand. They mixed that, and then I had them add in at least a handful of jute fiber). It worked quite nicely, especially if the kids mixed it well. I really appreciated your video saying to keep adding fiber. We did just that, and it helped a lot!

I think a log slice would have been a much nicer foundation for the houses, but I just didn't have access to that much wood, and didn't want things cracking. In the end, the cardboard base and paper clay mixture wasn't perfect, but it did the job (and was stuff we could get for free at the school). I'm honestly wondering if I could make paper clay without the Elmer's glue, and just use gelatin. I think it'd be a fun experiment!

For full size wattle walls I use chopped straw bedding and clay soil. For models use a kitchen aid with a dough hook and sifted clay soil. Beat in the water and let the clay hydrate then slowly add fine short shredded paper giving the paper time to hydrate too.

Ooooh, I hadn't realized that shredded paper would work for the fiber, but it makes sense!

We sadly don't really have clay soils here (the glaciers scrapped it away). I do have access to pottery clay. If I were to do it again, should I add sand or sandy soils (we have sandy loam soil here) to the clay, and then add the paper?

Don't bother with the sand just get your clay really wet and sticky and beat in the shredded paper mechanically. Fill it with microfibers. Without sand you need a lot more fiber. Clay is just glue. It has little compressive strength and tends to expand and contract so much with humidity changes thst it csn turn itself to dust without structure (aggregate) to stick to. Fiber or sand will work as aggregate. For daube fine fiber is better than sand as aggregate.

Chris McClellan wrote:Don't bother with the sand just get your clay really wet and sticky and beat in the shredded paper mechanically. Fill it with microfibers. Without sand you need a lot more fiber. Clay is just glue. It has little compressive strength and tends to expand and contract so much with humidity changes thst it csn turn itself to dust without structure (aggregate) to stick to. Fiber or sand will work as aggregate. For daube fine fiber is better than sand as aggregate.

On our land in southern Utah, I've been making daub using the soil (very fine sand mixed with clay), cow dung for fiber, and straw depending on the gap size of the wattle. Works well.

Go Randy! Cow dung is great plaster. Horse dung also.

I wonder if they could have used a vertical version of dry stacking stones? It could be easier than his vertical dry stack Moon Gate but using the same technique. Any size stone surrounded by other smaller stones and dirt would be pretty sturdy and support the weight of a natural structure.