I was recently driving past a house that is being built with an eye catching natural stone outer skin of schist stone.
The internal skin of the house is traditional block work and plaster. It’s a traditional cavity wall construction with insulation.
I love to see high quality craftsmanship it gives me a real sense of pride in the work that we do. I also make sure that I get the craftsman’s phone numbers if their work impresses me.
Xisto, Schist or random stone walling is how all rural houses were built in central Portugal. Many unfortunately are not made of the same quality of stone and very, very few are constructed with the same expertise. Which is why so many of them are rendered over.
I know an old guy who when he was twenty and got married. His father gave him a small plot of land in the village and the local men virtually all relatives dug out the soil to make a level piece of ground to build the house. They then went to a nearby rock outcrop and with a couple of sticks of dynamite (the only money he paid for building materials) they blew up enough rock to build the house and the external kitchen.
The rock was loaded by hand onto heavy wooden ox carts and was delivered to the site. First they built the single story outside kitchen approximately 3 meters by 5 meters and the “Casal” happy couple moved into that. It had an earth floor and a cooking fire on the ground in one corner, no windows just a wooden door.
Then the house was built with 2 large animal shelters on the ground floor. These housed goats, chickens and an ox. The first floor was made of local pine boards laid onto tree branches which had been split down the middle not sawn as this was cheaper.
The living area had a large living room and two bedrooms (two partitions with doors) no ceilings you could look up at the roof tiles the same as in the living room. Access to the ground floor was via some external stone steps. There wasn’t a bathroom, just a trapdoor in the floor which gave access to a ladder and you went to the toilet with the animals.
The house had no electricity or water this had to be carried from the local spring or village pump.
Built of stone and the joints filled in with a mixture of soil and cow muck. The house still stands.
In fact this is what we did to it as part of an extension and refurbishment.
