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Abstract
Earth mortars, and significantly, earth mortared stone construction has been largely overlooked in the archaeological and historic building record in the United Kingdom and Ireland to date. The use of earth mortared stone construction is proven in primary building accounts in England dating to the later medieval period. Wider research across Britain and Ireland has shown that it represents a vernacular building technique present from prehistory to the post medieval period. It is noted in high status and lower status buildings and it is evident in all buildings categories such as ecclesiastical, domestic, agricultural, defensive, industrial, infrastructural and public. However, the descriptive terms used in the recording of earth mortar in published and unpublished literature, dating from the early nineteenth through to the twenty first centuries in Ireland and Britain, negatively portrays its presence indicating its poor acceptance, interpretation and recognition. This factor is persistently hindering its understanding as a durable material of construction and masking its wider acknowledgement as a historic construction technique in resulting building interpretations. This paper highlights the use of negative terminologies characterising the use of earth mortars in stone construction in Britain which has resulted in its presence being overlooked and alternative methods of construction being prescribed. This has resulted in the consistent lack of recognition of earth mortared stone construction as a ubiquitous and significant historic building technique. This paper demonstrates that earth, much like lime, was equally used as a mortar in stone construction through history.
Keywords
Earth Mortar, Stone Construction, Building Technique, Prehistory, Medieval.
Introduction
A reappraisal of 107 published and unpublished accounts (England 63, Scotland 36 and Wales 8) dating from the early nineteenth century up to 2016 was undertaken in Britain comprising archaeological excavation reports documenting the survival of structural remains as well as standing building survey records. Essentially, the review of published sources demonstrates that earth mortars, while recorded as a building material in both standing structures and in surviving below ground archaeological structural remains, its presence is often overlooked, mistaken, misclassified, neglected through omission and in some instances fully ignored. Significantly, not only is the material fabric not recognised in many instances but there is a pervasive tendency and hesitancy on behalf of recorders to define earth as a "mortar" used...