STANDING THE TEST OF TIME

Ned James was “passionately fond of beer, clean and tidy, full of tricks to get money and an endless teller of yarns.” He also built cob cottages and his handiwork stands today in the likes of Acheron Accommodation House (1862), Tarndale (1874), Molesworth Homestead (1885), Tophouse (1887), and Rainbow (1893).

Although Ned James is often regarded as the premier cob builder of early New Zealand, many cob cottages were built by colonial settlers who simply needed a house to live in. As a building material, cob was particularly useful in areas without an abundance of timber. A cob mix was made from damp earth, tussock or straw, and horse and/or cow dung, then the walls were finished with a breathable plaster.

Bentley Coton, a labourer from Yorkshire, built his cottage at Hororata in 1864 as a wedding present for his wife Sarah Jane. As the couple had no children, the five-room dwelling was remarkably spacious for a small-holder at the time. Their cottage served as a venue for church services for the first decade until the district’s Anglican Church was built in 1875.

Left: Ned James at work on a cob building (Credit: Nelson Provincial Museum). Right: Acheron Accommodation House on Molesworth Station, 1909 (Credit: Department of Conservation). Previous page: Coton’s Cottage, Hororata (Credit: Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga).

Coton’s Cottage is now owned by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, with day-to-day care in the hands of the Hororata Historical Society. The building suffered extensive damage during the earthquake on 4 September, 2010 and it is being repaired by Mike Jackson, a native of Dorset. Mike had been a conventional plasterer until a chance meeting over a drink.

“A friend of mine down the local pub had just bought a cob house and he came up to me and said, ‘I need to have this place re-plastered in traditional materials.’ So, I went over and had a look,” he recalls. Mike went the extra 150 miles to obtain the correct lime and started learning his trade from the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.

Through the winter this year, Mike and his small team have stripped the previous render and re-plastered all walls of Coton’s Cottage, inside and out, as well as digging out and replacing the earth floor. Mike draws on the expertise of Rose of Jericho, a specialist company which has analysed the composition of lime, mortar and paint on some key heritage buildings in New Zealand to identify the appropriate materials for repairs.

Treated properly, cob will last, Mike says, who has worked on English buildings that have survived for 500 years. When the work is complete, the Hororata Historical Society will once again open Coton’s Cottage and nearby museum for the public to visit on fine Sunday afternoons.

Cob is just one of a number of earth building techniques used in New Zealand, including adobe, rammed earth, poured earth, pressed earth, and straw bale construction. The country’s oldest rammed-earth building, the two-storey Pompallier Mission and Printery in the Bay of Islands, was built in 1842. The 1920s homestead and outbuildings at Hayes Engineering Works, Oturehua, next to the Central Otago Rail Trail, is an accessible example of mudbrick construction. Both properties are open to the public through Heritage New Zealand.

Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga will be at the NZ Agricultural Show, Wigram, 13 to 15 November.

heritage.org.nz