wattle and daub

wattle and daub, in building construction, method of constructing walls in which vertical wooden stakes, or wattles, are woven with horizontal twigs and branches, and then daubed with clay or mud. This method is one of the oldest known for making a weatherproof structure. In England, Iron Age sites have been discovered with remains of circular dwellings constructed in this way, the staves being driven into the earth.

When this method is used as filling-in for a timber-framed structure the wattles are set into holes bored in a horizontal timber above and fitted into a groove in a corresponding timber below. Then the staves are woven with twigs and plastered with clay. The half-timbered houses of medieval Europe were frequently finished this way. The lath-and-plaster method of building up interior walls, which was common before the introduction of plasterboard and Sheetrock, is a more modern evolution of the wattle and daub technique, using standardized materials.