Cob is the English term for mud building, which is also sometimes called monolithic adobe. The term cob is an Old English root meaning a lump, loaf or rounded mass. The cob mix is made by combining soil, sand, straw and water; and walls are raised by piling up one handful or shovelful of the mix at a time. It uses no forms or bricks. Similar kinds of building have been common throughout the world. In England, cob houses were being built by the 13th century. Between the 15th century and industrial revolution, they became the norm in many places, particularly southwestern England and Wales where the subsoil was a sandy clay. English cob usually consisted of clay subsoil mixed with straw, water and sometimes crushed shale or flint. It was mixed either by people shovelling and stomping, or by heavy animals like Oxen trampling it (Smith, 2002a). While many cob cottages were built by poor farmers and labourers working cooperatively, many townhouses and manors were also built of cob before the ascendance of brick construction. It was common for cob houses to go a century without needing repair, and tens of thousands of old cob buildings survive in England today (Smith, 2002). After the virtual disappearance of new cob construction between World War II and the 1980s, a cob building revival took hold in the early 1990s, fuelled by historical interest and the real estate value of historic cob homes. It has used mainly the same methods as its historic ancestors. In the old days, a stiff mud mixture was shovelled with a cob fork onto the wall and trodden into place by workers on the wall. In a single day, a lift would average 18 inches (450 mm) high. It would be left to dry for as long as two