Creel House Tribulations

Two weeks ago, we were reunited with artist and vernacular architect, Rob Thompson.  Terroir first spoke to him in his native North Wales (see Cynefin, Blog 18, February 2021) but last summer we discovered him in Glencoe, having been working on the construction of a historic form of dwelling, called a Creel or Turf House.   During our last blog, we quizzed Rob on Creel House basics – the ‘what is it’ and the ‘why on earth build one’ sort of question.  Today we’re getting in much, much deeper to the practicalities, and uncovering some surprising stories.   

Terroir: Rob – you said that this sort of vernacular architecture used local materials.  So where did you get your timber, turf and heather?   

RT: on the whole the timber was sourced locally from within Glencoe. 

Turf is more tricky, however.  It comes in many different types, usually clay, silt, or peat based. Clay and silt rich turf shrink back the least, and are the best choice when building a structure that would suffer if a turf with high shrinkage was to be used. 

Peat based turfs are lighter in weight and hold more air. They are used where a high level of insulation is required, as is the case in Glencoe. They do however shrink back the most and this can be a problem if the building’s design does not allow for this to happen.

The turf for the walls at Glencoe was sourced from directly next to the site. The blocks were produced with a diagonal cut, and carried over to the site. I think it is an especially important aspect of the build that the walls, which are unlikely to outlive other parts of the structure, have come from, and can be returned back to, the ground in close proximity to the building.   

The walls are up to a metre deep in places and of solid turf block laid in herringbone course.

As the peat rich turf slowly shrinks as it dries out, the joints should close up. Additional height was added to the walls, to compensate for the loss of height due to the shrinkage of the turf. The walls are angled with a batter. This allows the load to spread, reducing the risk of collapse. The batter has also caused some issues, though, as its projection acts as an extended area for rain to hit.

Image above: the turf house steams gently in a brief sunny interval

Terroir: did you say there was turf on the roof as well? 

RT: yes, it’s called a turf divot, a layer of thin turf used as an insulation layer.  It sits on the cabers (the roof timbers) allowing a levelled off area for the heather thatch to sit on.  The thatch is then attached to the divots using hazel staples and spars.  The divot also absorbs moisture so acts as a second line of defence against wind and rain.  

Above: turf divots being covered by heather thatch

Although we managed to source the wall turf locally, there was not enough left to line the roof as well.  This is where the 21st century began to impact on the build.  A turf cutting area of sufficient size could not be found in Glencoe due to the glen’s protected status as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).

Eventually the turf was cut from the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) site at Kintail approximately two hours north of Glencoe.  The cutting site was a flat meadow field close to the road.  The cutting process was a difficult thing to get right.

A day was spent attempting to cut turf with a double width machine, the Turfaway 600, which looked an impressive lump of an American machine. It proved to be useless for this work, however, as the blades were unable to stay in the ground long enough to cut any decent turf. A replacement, older and heavier machine arrived several days later together with a mechanical wheelbarrow to pull it!

The turf was cut and stacked ready for the collection. The staff at the National Trust and the crafts people used a trailer and Land Rover to take it back to the creel house site - some 8 trips were needed. 

Terroir: no local sourcing there, then.  What about the heather for the roof?  No shortage presumably?

RT: hah!

Terroir: pardon?

RT: you would think it would be easy, wouldn’t you?

The heather required for thatching is the common native heather (Calluna vulgaris) which thrives on poor acid soil found in the highlands of Scotland.  The original intention was to gather heather from the NTS’s Mar Lodge estate, but due to nesting birds, it was not feasible and in the end, it was gathered from the neighbouring Invercauld estate. 

The picking of heather suggests the idea of walking through an open field, picking flowers with ease. Heather picking is far from this, requiring the plant to be physically pulled out of the ground, roots and all.  It’s hard manual labour with wildlife hazards: adders, clegs (horse flies), midges and ticks all need to be dodged, swatted or removed. 

Once pulled, heather is bundled.  A bundle size is a tight, ‘oversize hug’ ie a ‘hug’ plus about a foot between each hand. The material is pulled in, and when no more can be hugged it is ready to be stringed together. The twine is tied tightly around each end straightening the bundle out. This process often involves a bit of wrestling with the heather to get it compressed to a point where it is feasible to tie the string around. A length of string is about one stretch of an arm. 

For the purposes of the project, 1,000 bundles of heather had to be transported from Braemar to Glencoe - carried by a huge articulated lorry.

15 people took part in the heather gather over 10 days. There was one afternoon off, one visit to the pub, three swims in a river, and one end of gather party! The accommodation was a bunkhouse in Braemar.

Image © Mark Thacker

Terroir: and you still haven’t started thatching!

RT: thank goodness the traditional craft of thatching is still alive and well.  Working from the base of the roof, around three layers of heather were fixed with a spar, then another three layers and so on to the roof ridge.  The intention was to thatch the ridge but suitable lengths of heather were limited. A decision was made to do a turf ridge instead which is seen on many examples of heather roofs, including the township at the Highland Folk Museum.

A daub coating was added to seal the heather on the final layer.  It was a hot period and the daub baked dry in the sun.  Turf divots were then used to form the ridge, one layer pegged grass side down, and a second layer, overlapping the joints in the lower layer, placed and pegged grass side up.  It is thought that this will last up to two years before it will require replacement.  Maintaining this will involve very little; if it required a trim a rabbit on a lead could be used!

Image left: the daubing process Image right: the creel house with the ridge sporting a neat, turf mohican

Terroir: it all sounds a bit short term.  Does it really work as a form of dwelling?

RT: I know what you mean.  I have always associated turf wall construction with that of the Ty Unnos tradition in Wales. Here it was often used as a quick temporary building method, before a more long term method would be applied to replace it at a later date, such as stone or Clom (compressed earth similar to Cob in England).

Turf has a relatively short life expectancy before it breaks down. Roots that bind the turf slowly rot, and the turf degrades. It is interesting when looking at accounts of the creel/turf houses of Scotland that they were rebuilt very often. There would often be two sites that a dweller would rotate between, taking the valuable parts of the building with them, and allow the walls, and roof to rot away back into the ground. Often the building would become a cattle shed, then as it collapsed, a Kale yard. It is evident that the building went through a variety of uses before finally returning to the earth again. It seems like a very sustainable way of building!

The life-cycle of a creel house

All images © R J Thompson unless otherwise stated

The Creel House

No, not the name of a pub, nor a seaside shed for storing fishermen’s baskets.  The Creel House in question is located in Glencoe, some 35 miles from the Port of Oban (the ‘seafood capital of Scotland’) and well over a mile from the nearest Inn. 

But before we explain, let Terroir take you back to February 2021, when we posted a blog (entitled ‘Cynefin’) featuring Rob Thompson, a young Welsh vernacular architect and artist.  At the time he was firmly located in his Welsh homeland, sketching and painting traditional Welsh cottages, houses and barns, all constructed from local material. 

Derelict crog loft cottage, Anglesey © R J Thompson

In the summer of 2022, we tracked him down again, now living in Glencoe, and finishing off the construction of a Scottish Creel House, located at the National Trust for Scotland’s Glencoe Visitor Centre. 

So, what is a creel house?

RT: The Creel house, sometimes also called a turf house, is basically a very large basket, like a coracle, or log basket.  A timber cruck frame holds up the main structure and roof, with basket (creel) panels between the frame.  The one at Glencoe is a rather over-engineered version, and the originals would have relied more on the creel aspect with a much skinnier timber frame. 

The non-load bearing turf walls form a wind brake around the perimeter. A creel house would have been an especially common structure in the west of Britain where there was plenty of hazel in the warm damp conditions of the western seaboard.  

Above left: the cruck frame, creel walls and timber roof lining

Above right: herringbone turf outer walls, with tiny window, under turf and heather thatched roof

Terroir: Who lived in them?

RT: Creel houses would have been the homes of those who dwellt in townships (villages) in this part of Scotland. The type of building housed a range of social classes within the township. People would live at one end and animals at the other. The animals would help to keep the building warm. This was once a common living arrangement, and seen in similar types of buildings such as the longhouse in Wales and western England.

Creel houses were located all over Scotland and were the predecessors of the later stone built homes. Evidence shows they existed anywhere where hazel or timber was obtainable.

Terroir: probably a silly question, by why aren’t there any left?

No original Creel houses exist today. Due to the very organic nature of the materials used in their construction they had a very limited life expectancy.  They are described as pre-improvement dwellings.  Landowners discouraged the use of turf as a building material in the earlier part of the 18th century, to prevent large areas of potentially fertile land being stripped.  The use of stone was encouraged as a building material instead.

Many people felt that their turf and creel houses were warmer and better insulated than the new stone houses and often refused to move out of their basket dwellings.  Much propaganda by the ‘establishment’ deemed these creel homes poor and squalid, and forced the eventual demise of such structures.

Terroir: why build one and why in Glencoe?

RT: It is experimental archaeology; it tries to demonstrate a lost vernacular building style, and to understand how the materials used would behave.   The building will also form part of a wider interpretation in telling the local story of the massacre of Glencoe. 

From my point of view, and that of many of the crafts people involved, it is hopefully creating a resource for understanding this lost typology, and to provide an example of these materials and techniques. The turf wall aspect is particularly unusual.

Above left: turf wall detail. Above centre: base stones to keep the turf dry and off the ground. Above right: modern construction and safety techniques support ancient thatching skills

Terroir: how did you know what to build and what materials to use?

The building is based on archaeological findings from the National Trust for Scotland’s (NTS) excavation of the 17th century township of Achtriachtan further up the Glen - one of the main townships which predated the Glencoe massacre in 1692. The footprint for the new creel house was based on one of the larger houses to be found in the group.  Along with written historic references and maps, the findings enabled the design of the new, replica house.

The project was commissioned by NTS, and constructed at the Glencoe NTS visitor Centre as a visitor attraction.  The work was mainly funded by enthusiastic American donors, keen to see a recreated creel house form part of the interpretation of the Glencoe Massacre of 1692. It was led by an architect and a team of skilled crafts people. My involvement was funded by Historic Environment Scotland (HES) as a way of creating a skills legacy, including a record of the construction process, the skills and materials required and a maintenance manual. [Terroir: if only all new houses came with one of those]

Terroir: do you think that this new Creel House looks anything like the original dwellings?

RT: I think it is similar to an original creel house, but this is a very beautiful ‘Rolls Royce’ example. I think that the originals would have been a truer product of what could be sourced close to hand.  Also I imagine the houses would have been continually altered and improved to cope with the climatic influences of their locality. What is important to understand is that these houses were often only built to last a few years, but this example has been constructed to last a lot longer, so it has to be more robust!

Accounts from the time revealed a palette of what materials may have been used, but it is not always clear how exactly some of these materials may have been used, for example, the coursing of the turf walls, or the use of glass in the window. The timber frame and wattle creel infill is similar to historic references, but the need to comply with modern building regulations made this a much more over-engineered example.

Terroir:  are their lessons to be learnt?

It is a great example of what we can do with the materials in a historical way but I think that these materials can be developed into a modern context too. Long lost building techniques such as constructing with turf could be used in new homes, and I think it has certainly made people more aware of these materials, and their uses. 

Having worked a lot with turf over the last year I can see its merits as a building material.  Turf is easier to obtain than stone and is much better insulated.  It is cosy to sit within the walls of a turf house, and it does not feel cold in the same way as a stone house.  I also think when it comes to self-builds that turf and timber are both very user-friendly materials for anyone to try using. 

Our next blog will return to Glencoe and its creel house and look at some of the unexpected and unintended consequences of creating a traditional building in a 21st century landscape. 

But the best unexpected consequence is thanks to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Building (SPAB).   The SPAB Heritage Awards will be presented by Kevin McLeod on the 3rd November in London https://www.spab.org.uk/news/new-awards-celebrate-historic-buildings-and-craftspeople . There are three finalists in the ‘Building Craftsperson of the Year Award (career changer)’ and we are delighted to announce that Rob Thompson is one of those three.  Good luck Rob!

All images © R J Thompson