Building Materials
History of Building Materials
Cob Built Houses
- As the chalk or malmstone available on the Sinodun Hills is not resistant to weathering, local buildings were often built of cob - a mixture of clayey soil and straw.
- Examples of cob built houses include a 12th century house found buried under one of the ramparts of Wallingford Castle, and walls built of this material still survive at Dorchester and Brightwell.
Timber Framed Buildings
- Other local buildings tended to be timber framed, often with a thatched roof. The Cruck Cottage in Long Wittenham is believed to be up to 800 years old, the oldest house in South Oxfordshire.
- Nineteenth Century barns at Hill Farm had timber frames (some of the wood appears to have been recycled from older buildings), and were originally roofed with thatch.
Brick Built Buildings
- As transportation improved, more material could be brought from outside. Bricks became used for chimneys but were expensive and were re-used when possible. When a brick hunting lodge (the Round House in Church Meadow built in 1788) was demolished around 1838 the bricks were used to build the 'House with the Crooked Chimney' in Little Wittenham.
- A source of bricks could have been the brickworks on the river bank at Culham which used local Gault Clay.
