Gable end, Pear Tree Cottage, Braydon

Image: © Brian Robert Marshall Taken: 24 Mar 2009

This is a closer view of the gable end seen in this image http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1221846 The wall has been re-pointed as part of the renovation but it is still a 'brick on edge' or 'rat-trap' bond wall. This technique was used in years past to save money on both time and bricks. Instead of being laid flat the bricks were placed on their edges. Since standard bricks then were 4.5 inches wide and 3 inches high, the builder could build a nine-inch thick wall to a given height using only two-thirds of the bricks that would have been needed had they been laid in the proper manner. There would have been a concomitant reduction in the time needed to build the wall. The result was a wall that was neither fish nor fowl since it was neither a proper cavity wall with an unbroken cavity between the inner and outer leaves, as is standard practice today, nor a solid nine-inch wall used by good builders in the days before cavity walls became the norm. 'Rat-trap' walls were thus neither as strong nor as weather-proof as they could have been.

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