Building My Curved Wattle and Daub Wall

9 Pictures of How the Wall Evolved.
I have to be honest—my curving wattled wall was a determination demanding labour of love. It also became the central feature of my barn, and I felt a huge sense of accomplishment when it was complete. Here’s the picture story of how it evolved from a couple of posts, to the clay painted show-stealer below.

Show-stealer.

First I screwed some upright posts in place as support for the wattles. Then I grabbed my secateurs and headed for the hazel copse next door to forage for hazel whips. I really don’t want to think about how many days this took, but despite the time and effort involved, it was beautiful to connect with the woodland in this way.

Extra Tip: It pays to collect a few whips at a time, and then weave them into the wall, otherwise they harden as they dry out and become trickier to manipulate.

The beginnings of the wall.

The wattle weaving begins. At the same time in the lower right gap, I began the foundations of my bottle wall. This was made just out of cob and bottles.

Here’s how the woven wattles look from above. The whole structure becomes incredibly tough, like an enormous woven basket. I didn’t need nails or screws. The wattles are wedged in by themselves.

About half way through summer, I was getting to the stage where I thought this effing wall would never be finished. But finally, as with everything in life, the day arrived when I wove the last wattle in place, and the whole process drew to a happy conclusion.

Will it ever end?

Next job was to complete the bottle wall feature on the lower right. This was such a pleasant job. I used a cob mixture to embed the bottles.

Bottle wall on the right.

Once you're wattled up to the hilt, the first layer of daub goes on. Don't panic if it looks a right mess, because the first layer is supposed to. Clay, straw, sand, and manure went into this mixture. I remember people coming by and looking rather alarmed when they saw this. Inside I simply whispered, “I’ll show you, you wait!” The dust bin lid was screwed in there to create a truth window.

The first layer is always messy.

Using a Japanese trowel, I began smoothing the subsequent layers of daub. In total there were three layers on my wall.

Eventually I began sculpting the edging of the wattle wall and adding a few other sculpture details.

Finally I created some clay paint from a beautiful reddish clay I found. I used pigments for the flowers. All in all I felt pretty pleased with the outcome.

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Related Links
To get the best out of wattle and daub, you need to know how to make gorgeous earthen plaster. Here's an introduction.

• For those who are serious or want to learn all kinds of plastering techniques, I recommend enrolling in my comprehensive Perfect Earth Plaster Course.
  
• If you want to read more about how to make wattle and daub structures, take a look at the Wattle and Daub hub. There are many, many different ways to go about wattle and daub. Usually wattles are laid horizontally, but for my bathroom I wattled vertically. Personally I didn’t see that it made a jot of difference.
  
• Wattle and daub is an amazingly durable natural building technique, and one I highly recommend, especially for lone builders. If you want to compare it with other mud building methods, read my overview.
  

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