Architecture Du Jour: The English Cob House

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Cob is an earth-base building material comprising subsoil, clay, sand, and gravel, which is mixed with straw and water to a stiff but malleable mass and used to build the walls of a house and numerous items within it, including shelves, benches, floors, and ovens.

…

Cob building has many advantages: the cob walls, when dry, are extremely hard and will last for centuries; they can be shaped to any required form using a sharp spade or mattock; cob is load-bearing, so cob houses need no wood framework. The only disadvantage is that because the building process involves various stages, the total construction time may be as much as fifteen months.

– Building Without Architects: A Global Guide to Everyday Architecture