Neolithicism...

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I've been desperately casting around this evening for something to write about, as I'm feeling a tad lazy today and short of ideas, or indeed, motivation. Pleased to find and read a piece in today's Observer, therefore, about building with stone getting a bit of a renaissance; and not before time, I might say. Having lived in stone-built buildings for most of the last forty-odd years, I can only attest to their unique qualities: two or three-foot-thick stone walls, suitably maintained to repel the ingress of too much moisture, and likewise allowed to breathe on the inside of the building; lend a certain stability to the climate of a house.

In hot weather, provided you control the ingress of outside air and the solar gain afforded by windows, a steady level of much lower and liveable temperature inside can be maintained: last year this place saw 35 Celsius outside, and yet we were able to maintain a steady 20 inside the house with sound practice and zero tech. Conversely, in winter, it doesn't take an enormous amount of heating to keep the place comfortable. There's a lot of common sense in the way these places were built in the past, and it seems good and appropriate that the benefits of thermal inertia are being revisited in these times when we really need some sensible building policies. Oh, and stone-built structures last a bit...

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