External wall issues

Earth walls have been used in domestic construction from the earliest times. Usually made up of local earth coated in limewash or lime render, such walls are built up on a stone plinth. See Defects in earth wall construction.

Brick walls are remarkably robust, and although the early quality of bricks does not match modern standards, they were effective in their own way. See Brick walls.

Earlier brick bonds sometimes appear on later buildings, and so the type of brick bond should not be used in isolation to date a building.

Cavity walls emerged from the hollow wall bonds that developed as a response to the revised brick tax of 1803. Rat trap, Dearns and Loudan bonds were hollow walls (thought to derive from garden wall bonds), but were not effectively cavity walls as we know them. The rat trap bond was very economical but not particularly watertight, so if used for houses it has to be rendered on the outside.

Cast iron and wrought iron wall ties in cavity walls were sometimes protected by bitumen and were designed to be quite thick.

Damp-proof courses started to become compulsory around the 1870s in England through local housing orders, but individual builders are known to have introduced them in some form around the same time, so no fixed date can be usefully given for when DPCs where definitively introduced in the UK.