Build a Round House
The round house design first appears in Britain towards the end of the Neolithic period (New Stone Age) at around 2500BC. The round house was in use alongside other structures, both square and rectangular, and it is possible that it became a symbol of status within a class structure. The round house continued to be popular up to approximately 200AD, when most of the Celts who were farming under the Roman occupation, converted to living in Roman style housing. The round house is peculiar to Britain as their use did not spread over onto the continent.
I am at present writing a paper on round house construction, and hope to publish in the near future.
More information on house contstruction can be found here
The following instructions are for a round house 4 metres in diameter, single ring of posts, and at a scale that can be built by school children under supervision. The basic principles can be used to construct a larger house by multiplying the scale.
Find a level area where you wish to build your house. Put a peg in the ground to mark the centre of the floor. A length of cord with a loop tied in one end (big enough to put over the peg) is marked at 2 metres. Put the loop over the peg and holding the cord at the 2 metres mark, pull the cord tight and walk round and mark the floor with a circle. This gives you a 4 metres diameter floor area. The next important thing is to decide which direction the doorway is to face. In most excavations the general direction is between East and South so that the morning sun lights the interior of the house. Mark on the circle the position that you want the door posts. Put them at least 1 metre apart to make the doorway wide enough to get in and out of. The rest of the post positions are then marked in on the circle. Make these 1 metre or less apart and spaced evenly. The number of posts is not critical.
At the marked position for each of the posts, dig a hole the same diameter as the post. The depth of the hole should be approx. 0.25 metre. If you are digging on a slope you must compensate for the slope by digging different depths to ensure the tops of the posts are level once they are placed in the holes. Do not throw away the earth removed from the holes as you will need some of it to infill around the posts.
Almost any timber can be used for the frame-work of the house, but if you can obtain a hard-wood such as oak or ash, the house will last much longer. The posts for the wall should be 7.5 - 10 cms in diameter, and 1.25 metres long. This will give an internal wall height of 1 metre with 0.25 metre in the ground for support. It is not important to strip the bark off, but if you wish to do so, it will prolong the life of the wood as there is nowhere for insects to hide. The top of the post can be prepared in one of two ways depending on the practical skills of the builders. The first way is to drill a hole vertically into the top. The hole should be 2 -3 cms in diameter and 7.5 cms deep. Make a wooden peg 15 cms long and the same diameter as the hole. You can keep the surface of the peg quite rough as this will help it grip. Hammer the peg into the hole in the top of the post. The second method is to cut the top away to leave a tennon 7.5 cms long at the end of the post.
Timbers are cut to form the horizontal wall plate. The length of each piece has to match the distance between the upright posts, plus the diameter of both of the posts. The ends of the timber are cut into half-lap joints 7.5 - 10 cms long, and then drilled with a 2 - 3 cms hole match the pegs (or the tenons) in the top of the upright posts.
The posts are placed into the holes. The spaces around the base of the posts are then back-filled to support the posts. Any earth left over can be put to one side and used in the daub for the walls.
The timbers of the horizontal wall plate are put into place on the top of the upright posts, The tenons or pegs should project upward through the holes in the end of the timbers. This pulls the top of the posts into position and creates a ring around the top of the wall giving it great strength and able to take the outward thrust of the roof.
Start at ground level. Coppiced wood of hazel, oak or ash, or pollarded willow, is woven in and out of the upright posts of the wall. Extra light weight posts can be driven into the ground between the main posts to give a beter spacing for weaving. At the door way, try to get the thick ends of the wood against the door posts. Work your way upwards, a layer at a time, with each layer woven in and out the opposite way to the previous layer. Continue upwards until you can get no more into the wall. You should have a wall that looks like a giant basket, with a gap at the position of the doorway. It can help at the top of the wall if you temporarily remove the wall plate to get the last of the weaving in. Put the wall plate back in place.
The surface of the wall has to be made weather and wind-proof by coating the inside and outside of the wall with daub. This is a mixture of animal droppings, clay, earth and straw or hair. All the ingredients are mixed together with water until smooth and free from lumps. The best way of applying it to the walls is by hand. Hand fulls of the mix are thrown at the wall so that it gets well into the woven hazel. The surface is then smoothed over and left to dry. As it dries it will crack so you will need to go over it a second time to fill the cracks.
The main timbers of the roof are oak, cherry, ash and hazel. They need to be 3.5 metres long. Approx. 0.5 metre from the bottom, cut a notch into the rafter. This is used to position and steady them where they contact the wall-plate. The construction starts with a tripod erected from the largest rafters. Lay three rafters out side by side on the floor. Tie the selected rafters together at the top with a piece of rope or cord. Lift the top end of the rafters into the air and pull the bottoms apart to erect a tripod inside the ring of the wall. Adjust the legs equidistant around the wall. Lifting the legs of the tripod one at a time, place the notch of the rafter onto the wall plate. You may have to rotate the rafter to get the notch to the inside. Drill a hole through the rafter and the wall plate. Drive a wooden peg through them both. Repeat the procedure for the other two legs of the tripod. If this operation is successful you should have the three rafters pegged equidistant around the wall at a pitch of between 45/60 degrees with about 0.5 metre hanging over the outside of the wall. A number of rafters are then lifted into place, pegged between the first rafters, and resting in the top of the first tripod. (Put up as many as there is room for without over-crowding).
A ring of ash or hazel of about 1 metre diameter, is constructed on the ground, and when completed, lashed into position inside the rafters at approx. 1/3 down the length. This is to eliminate any sagging of the rafters.
Concentric rings of hazel are lashed onto the outside of the rafters in horizontal layers approximately 25 cm apart. The rings start at the bottom of the overhang of the rafters, and continue up the full length, all the way to the top. They are positioned into notches cut into the outside of the rafters and held with a square lash. The cord used on the house should be a vegetable fibre - sisal is easily obtainable. However, in the original house a number of materials could have been used i.e.; leather thong, bramble, linen cord, bark strip, etc.
To provide a water-proof cover to the house, the roof is thatched with wheat straw. The straw is tied on to the thatching spars in bundles called yealms. The thatching is started from the bottom of the roof and proceeds in concentric layers up the roof, each layer over-lapping the previous one. If you have a local material to hand such as heather, bracken, or reed, feel free to use that.
Beds are mentioned in several of the Celtic stories and are usually placed to the right of the interior. They can be built as a platform off the ground with a layer of skins covering a hay mattress.
The oven is built from clay and is dome shaped, with a door opening in the front. It is operated by lighting a fire inside the oven to heat up the clay to the working temperature, (this is judged by how hot it is to the touch on the outside). Once up to temperature, a stone slab is placed inside on top of the fire. Bread can then be put in on top of a stone and the doorway of the oven closed up to retain heat. 
The fire should be sited on a permanent clay base built into the middle of the floor. This stops the ashes being spread about and prevents accidents.
The storage pits were dug into the floor and possibly lined with a basket. To help to keep a constant temperature, the pit can be covered with a wooden lid.
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