Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/111

 CHAPTER VI. CREDITON

CURIOUS, sleepy place, the houses like the great church built of red sandstone, wherewere [sic] not of the red clay or cob. But in the latter case the cob is whitewashed. No house can be conceived more warm and cosy than that built of cob, especially when thatched. It is warm in winter and cool in summer, and I have known labourers bitterly bewail their fate in being transferred from an old fifteenth or sixteenth century cob cottage into a newly-built stone edifice of the most approved style. As they said, it was like going out of warm life into a cold grave.

The art of building with cob is nearly extinct. Clay is kneaded up with straw by the feet, and then put on the rising walls that are enclosed in a 79