The villagers of Blewbury maintain one of the traditional features of the chalk landscapes, cob walls, of which only a few remain, writes ELIZABETH EDWARDS

Keeping a village spick and span is a challenge for any community but in Blewbury it is also a particularly interesting one for it is one of the few places in this part of the country still to have cob walls.

The walls are a feature of the local chalkstone landscape and others are to be found at East Hendred, and East and West Hagbourne. They are also found in Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset and Devon.

In Blewbury most of the walls, which run in most cases alongside public footpaths, are in private ownership, but one has become the responsibility of the village to maintain.

This came about as a result of house building that took place in the 1960s, explained Blewbury Parish Council chairman Chris Whatmore. When several houses were built on the site of a former single dwelling, the cob wall was excluded from the deeds of the new houses - leaving it ownerless.

"It rather fell between two stools," said Mr Whatmore, "so local people set up the Blewbury Cob Wall Fund, to which the parish council makes contributions, to provide for its maintenance."

The Cob Wall Fund is also supported by donations and fund-raising, such as the holding of a one-day course open to the public covering all aspects of, appropriately, Looking After an Old House. The proceeds will help towards the cost of restoring a section of the public wall, which is likely to be in the region of £3,500.

An important feature of the Blewbury cob walls is their covering of thatch, providing protection from weathering. This needs to be kept in a good state of repair and, like the thatch on the roof of a house, has a limited lifespan. The wattle and daub construction of the walls themselves makes them vulnerable to damage.

These walls need to be 'well-shod', with firm foundations, and 'well-capped' with a good protective covering. The capping may be of tiles. An example of a tiled cob wall can be seen at a historic house and garden in Hampshire that is open to the public, Houghton Lodge, near Stockbridge.

In Blewbury, as well as the maintenance, parishioners have taken an interest in learning the skills. When one of the private ones was rebuilt a few years ago, a number of people decided to 'have a go' themselves at preparing the wattle and daub.

Peter Cockrell has gone a stage further by doing work on his own house where there are sections of wattle and daub.

He explained how the walls are built up. A framework of wattle - a frame of woven branches - is prepared, and then the daub - a mixture of marl (the chalky soil), sand, straw, cow-dung and lime - is added. This is used to cover both sides of the framework. The resulting structure takes as long as two months to dry out and then needs a protective coating of lime render.

Audrey Long, chairman of Blewbury History Society, has researched the background of cob walls in this part of South Oxfordshire. Those in Blewbury are believed to date from Saxon times, although very little Saxon work remains.

The materials used were those that were readily at hand.

"Blewbury lies on the spring-line beneath the Berkshire Downs where the water has filtered down through the chalk of the hills to reach the clay and greensand of the Vale of the White Horse," she said.

"There is a line of villages from the Astons, through Blewbury to East Hendred, which all grew because of the supply of water. All these villages have some thatched cob walls, but Blewbury has been singularly fortunate in having four long stretches of these thatched walls, about 210m in total, with a further 30m of tiled cob wall."

In earliest times all building materials had to be readily available.

"The old, formerly Berkshire, settlements, of which Blewbury forms a part, had a plentiful supply of water, but their building materials were somewhat more difficult to find," she added.

"Originally, in Iron Age and Saxon times, they used mud and straw, often called cob, for their house and farm buildings, and later they used flints and chalkstone.

"Chalk and mud, though relatively easy to use compared with, say, granite or sandstone, are very susceptible to damage from rain and frost, so structures made of those materials need weather protection.

"In Blewbury and similar villages, there were no slates or stones to cover the walls, so they used straw as thatch, which was readily available and which could easily be replaced by the farmers themselves."

Because of the importance of the thatch in protecting the walls, regular renewal of worn stretches has always been necessary and nowadays a much thicker covering of straw is used, also often protected by wire netting.

It is not surprising, said Mrs Long, that with such a continuing need for maintenance, the earlier owners of these walls chose, when transport was bringing materials from other parts of the country for building, to replace their cob walls with structures that would last longer.

Although wattle and daub construction is not widely practised now, thatching still is and Blewbury has no difficulty in having this part of the walls maintained.

The original walls were believed to act as the boundary lines of properties in Saxon times - sarsen stones were also used.

Mrs Long is pleased that Blewbury has been able to keep so many of these historic walls, but says that the cost is very great. However, such is the local concern to preserve them, their future should be assured.