Introduction of Cement Rendering

[Pixie]

Greetings All,

 

When building all the terraced houses for Roath, I had based my masters/moulds on a house I was living in (in Cathays) which featured stone-faced walls at the front and rear. As per...

 

 

However, whilst having a ponder outside my windows today I noticed that all of the houses which back onto my new places (now in Roath itself) feature cement rendering on the rears whilst have the stone walling on the front. A quick loop of the surrounding area shows that every house features this combination too. So, my question is would these terraced houses been likely to built with stone fronting and cement rendered backs or would the rendering would of been applied later on? If the latter, is it likely to have been applied before '71?

 

Above: Rendering as fas as the eye can see!

 

Above:Some of the houses near me had brick built corners which makes me think that they might have been built with the rendering, but I'm not sure.

 

If it is likely that the houses would have been rendered in '71 means a lot of undone work on the layout, I think it'd be a lot easier to paint them compared the bare stone fronting. A real boon when I've got circa 20' of terraced houses to paint!

 

Thanks in antisipation...

 

Pix

[buffalo]

It's not unusual to find houses of this period built with a stone frontage to give the impression of a higher quality of building. The side and rear walls were often built using cheaper bricks. In your case, this idea was probably taken a stage further by using a low-quality, relatively soft, brick (one not suitable for long-term exposure to the weather) and rendering over the top of these. Although the quoins may have used a harder brick, the majority of the wall would probably have been built using the softer bricks that were also used for the inner skin of cavity walls.

 

Nick

[Jamie]

(Nick's post has appeared as I slowly typed this with my two typing fingers)

 

Pix, I can't speak with any knowledge of that area, but it was common in general for house fronts to be constructed from a higher grade of material, particularly when stone, than the sides and rear. My family's home is smooth, fine-grained sandstone fronted, whilst the sides and rear are what could be termed rubble-walling. Similarly Glasgow's tenements can be fine-finished sandstone to the front, with assorted cheaper rough stone or even brick rears.

 

I suspect that under the render is not your coarse stone but either brick or rubble-walling

[The Fatadder]

Like the 'straight' line above the window in the last photo,

strangely enough if you modelled that accurately how long would it take for someone to tell you to use a ruler when cutting components......

[Guest stuartp]

If it was done piecemeal as the brickwork started to decay over the years, rather than being an 'as built' feature, it might be worth searching out a local builder with a long memory.

[Fat Controller]

If it was done piecemeal as the brickwork started to decay over the years, rather than being an 'as built' feature, it might be worth searching out a local builder with a long memory.

The old photos I've seen of places like Bryn Terrace, Llanelli, show rendering like this at least as far back as the 1930s. It seems to be common throughout coastal areas- similar styles can be seen from Cornwall to the north of Scotland. I suspect the original idea would have been to avoid the periodic need to repoint the joints- where there were still bare-brick or stone walls, the pointing would have to be replace every decade or so. If you didn't repoint, you got water ingress, which would lead both to damp (in the short term) and a failure of structural integrity in the longer term.

Most areas painted the render with Snowcem ('Other brands of luridly coloured masonary finish are available'), but if you were posh (crachach), the builder would cover the wall with pebble-dash before the render set. You used to be able to tell when people had come into money, as they'd get cement render replaced by imitation stone cladding- if this wasn't done properly you'd get lots of problems with damp.

The idea of covering up lower-quality masonry with a cosmetic/protective layer has been around since Adam was a boy. 'Cob' walls, often to be seen in the West Country, relied on the limewash to stop the weather making them fall apart, whilst almost all the large town houses of the Georgian period used the technique to some extent- they even scribed the render to represent coursed stone.

[Etched Pixels]

It's also in the old photos of Swansea. Anywhere you've got brick and the sea near one another is going to have a lot of rendered buildings. It's a traditional process originally using lime and sand but nowdays using a cement/lime mix.

 

Certainly as old as the railways.

[Bruciethefish]

Its also worth noting that mortar in seaside buildings weathers fastest on the side facing the prevailing wind, being eroded by the salt & sand particles in the air. Left unrepaired, chimneys will tend to eventually lean into the wind, for instance.. Cement rendering was often employed by builders to weatherproof walls that were already suffering in this way, particularly where it would be less apparent at the rear, leaving just the 'posh' frontage to be maintained....

[Guest stuartp]

Fair comments, I'd forgotten Roath was coastal, sorry. Most of the cheap brick terrace I lived in in York in the 90s was still cheap brick, there were only a couple of rendered ones, hence the suggestion.

[Pixie]

Thank you for the replies gents - they're most informative. As I said before, it's a bit of a set back but should ultimatley speed up the process as it'll be a damn sight easier to paint them all.

 

Now, does anyone need 20' worth of bare stone terraced houses backs?

 

Pix

[Enterprisingwestern]

Were all of these houses even built with these extensions, they are of differing sizes, which leads me to think maybe they were added on in the 50's and 60's to provide inside toilets and bathrooms?

I don't know the specifics of South Wales, but this happened around a lot of the country as clean air acts, social improvements and grant aided improvements were all the rage.

[DonB]

My late Faather-in-law's house, built about 1937/8 as part of a Midlands Council estate had facing-brick front walls the rest of the house was "Pebble-dashed", small pebbles set into a wet cement render over a low grade brick. As far as I know, the whole street of houses were built this way.

[hayfield]

My parents house in the 50's was an end of terrace, the end wall was pebbledashed before I was born, the house accross the road (end of terrace) also had its end wall pebble dashed. The house next door is detached, it had some of the walls cement rendered deffenatly by the 60's if not earlier to weather proof them. For some reason it was the end walls that got treated.

[Fat Controller]

Were all of these houses even built with these extensions, they are of differing sizes, which leads me to think maybe they were added on in the 50's and 60's to provide inside toilets and bathrooms?

I don't know the specifics of South Wales, but this happened around a lot of the country as clean air acts, social improvements and grant aided improvements were all the rage.

Pretty certain these extensions were built a bit before the 1950s, as there is evidence of chimney breasts. I was down in the Cardiff area this week, and had a look at the way the design works. The larger extensions serves two houses, providing a kitchen downstairs and third bedroom upstairs. A lot of the ones I saw had evidence of chimney breasts serving both kitchen downstairs and bedroom upstairs. Bathrooms had been added later, often as a further, single storey, extension built on to the gable wall of the original 'extension'.

[Pixie]

Thanks for the further replies gents - most useful.

 

Were all of these houses even built with these extensions, they are of differing sizes, which leads me to think maybe they were added on in the 50's and 60's to provide inside toilets and bathrooms?

 

The photo I showed with the varying sizes is of a block of shops and different pattern houses that have been hacked around a lot. The rest of the street are very uniform in comparison so I assume they were all build as they are now. As mentioned by Brian, some still have chimney stacks in place (my house does).

 

On a side note, does anyone know when painting houses different colours came into fashion?

 

Pix

[petethemole]

Thanks for the further replies gents - most useful.

 

 

 

The photo I showed with the varying sizes is of a block of shops and different pattern houses that have been hacked around a lot. The rest of the street are very uniform in comparison so I assume they were all build as they are now. As mentioned by Brian, some still have chimney stacks in place (my house does).

 

On a side note, does anyone know when painting houses different colours came into fashion?

 

Pix

 

Up to WW2 most terraced houses and a lot of semi-detached were built for rent by speculative builders and developers who would build anything fom a single pair to entire blocks of several streets, then selling them on in batches to private landlords. When built, painting them all the same was economical in materials and time and also gave the street, row or whatever a coherent appearance. Private landlords would usually have their houses all redecorated together on the same basis. Even 1930s estates of houses built for sale would often start life all painted the same. After WW2 the rapid expansion of owner occupation led to people wanting to express their individuality on their houses.

 

The protective effect provided by rendering was often achieved by cladding walls with vertically hung slates. This was common in Southampton and Portsmouth, where the south and west walls of the rear extensions were treated this way before cavity walls became compulsory in the local building regs. Single skin walls of softish local bricks and lime mortar were very vulnerable to weather.

 

I recently visited a house in Splott, Cardiff which was similar to those above. The brick corners are usually a clue that the rest of the wall is of stone rubble; the brick corners stabilize the structure and for the rear are cheaper than stone blocks. The lopside window lintel is probably a shallow brick arch that has sagged, a common fault in older brick houses, even quite substantial ones!

Pete

[Fat Controller]

Thanks for the further replies gents - most useful.

 

 

 

The photo I showed with the varying sizes is of a block of shops and different pattern houses that have been hacked around a lot. The rest of the street are very uniform in comparison so I assume they were all build as they are now. As mentioned by Brian, some still have chimney stacks in place (my house does).

 

On a side note, does anyone know when painting houses different colours came into fashion?

 

Pix

Limewashing would have originally been done in plain white every few years- it seems to have been popular to add pigment to the lime wash for at least a century. Originally, it would have been on houses in coastal communities, to help fishermen find their way home- this wasn't just a British or North European idea, as a visit to Burano (in the Venetian archipelago) shows. The colours there make somewhere like Aberaeron appear subfusc- from a bright chrome yellow to deep purple.