A slab hut is a kind of dwelling or shed made from slabs of split or sawn timber. It was a common form of construction used by settlers in Australia and New Zealand during their nations' colonial periods.
Huts, humpies and hovels
The Australian settler From the very beginning of European settlement in Australia, improvised methods of building construction were in use. The First Fleet, arriving in 1788, brought with it few carpenters and a meagre supply of poor-quality tools. Nails and other ironmongery were scarce. The colonists were forced to build shelters using whatever skills they possessed, from whatever natural materials they could find.Freeland, Architecture in Australia pp. 11–13 They tried the traditional British wattle and daub (or 'dab') method: posts were set in the ground; thin branches were woven and set between these posts, and clay or mud was plastered over the weave to make a solid wall.Herman, Early Australian Architects pp. 3–7 Wattle and daub walls were easily destroyed by the drenching rains of Australia's severe summer storms, and for a time, walls of timber slabs took their place. These were soon replaced by brick structures; the Sydney Cove landscape was almost denuded of useful timber.See for example Thomas Watling A Direct North View of Sydney Cove, 1794 The trees are being rapidly cleared and burned.Freeland, p. 18; Herman, pp. 5–6; 10.
When settlement moved beyond Sydney Cove, an abundance of suitable forest timber became available.Cox, 1969. Rude Timber Buildings p. 39 Huts and humpies made entirely from timber poles and large sheets of bark were easily erected, but these were often only temporary structures.Some log huts were built, but 'the tradition had died out in Europe'. Lewis, Australian Building: A Cultural Investigation 2.02.10Cox, 1969. p. 51. Local timbers presented a fresh challenge to the European settler. Australian hardwoods were difficult to work, and tools were scarce or inadequate. Australia's colonists were forced to improvise again, and become their own craftsmen.Lewis, 5.02.1. Lewis also notes the local evolution of tools suited for Australian woodworking.
In time, buildings of timber slabs became a familiar feature of rural Australia.Lewis, 2.04.2 Some were public and long-lasting structures: shops,Butcher shop, Tambaroora schoolsSlab school house, Stanthorpe and churches; even substantial homesteads were built of slabs.See Lucas, Australian Country Houses. Examples include Cressbrook, Gracemere, The Springs. Others were no more than hovels. As workmanship and tools improved, the slab structure became more permanent and sophisticated, eventually to become an icon of Colonial Australia, as evocative of time and place and humble beginnings as the thatched cottage of an English village or the log cabin of Early America.Cox, 1969. p. 47In a letter dated 1844, a settler wrote that the word 'hut' was the preferred local usage over 'cottage', for her slab dwelling. (see Starr, Pioneering New England) but another, writing in 1817 of his new slab home, noted 'My wife said that she didn't like me to call it a hut, so I made a memo, to call it a cottage.' (see Thornley The Adventures of an Immigrant p. 43).
The New Zealand settler New Zealand's European settlers also had to adapt to local circumstances, building with whatever materials were available, and employing tools of poor quality, or even none at all.An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966 Settlers tended to use the Maori word whare (house), instead of 'hut', for a temporary or pioneer dwelling.
Ten pounds will go a long way towards putting up a sod hut; a cabin of outside slabs and refuse timber from the sawmills, or a serviceable tent with timber frame and sod chimney, sufficient to protect the inmates from the weather, and afford a temporary home at all events. There is, too, one great advantage [to] the immigrants hampering themselves at first with only slender households, for they may very soon find it to their interest to change their place of abode, in order to secure higher wages or engage in more congenial occupations...Timaru Herald, 26 August 1874.
Materials
In Australia The usual slab hut was built entirely from timber and bark. Australian settlers found that the most fissile timbers were the Eucalypts: blackbutt, bluegum, stringybark, ironbark and turpentine.Cox, 1969. pp. 26–32 Some of these species are also termite resistant.Termite resistant timbers The chimney, too, was often made of wood, although sometimes sods were used. The fireplace may have been given a lining of stones, sometimes covered with a plaster of mud or clay.Harris, Settlers and Convicts Chapter V; Lewis, 4.06.4
In New Zealand Settlers used a thatch of raupo,Typha orientalis toitoi, flax, fern, or totara bark; they erected tents from poles, saplings, canvas, and planks or split slabs; and made tree-fern huts or more permanent dwellings from clay, sods, wattle and daub, or stone.Encyc. of N.Z. 1966
Walls A slab hut is actually a 'slab-walled' structure. Its walls were, strictly speaking, built from 'flitches'. Slabs are sawn from a trunk, flitches are split from it.Sydney J. Baker states that this Australian use of 'slab' dates from 1829. Baker, The Australian Language Chapter IV: 3 'Dwellings' Hut-builders felled selected trees,Rawson, Australian Enquiry Book recommends trees ten inches in diameter as likely to be both sound, and easiest to handle. and sawed the trunks into suitable lengths.Harris gives eight feet for this length (Harris, Chapter V) others give ten feet. (Lewis, 2.03.3) They then split these lengths into flitches using a maul and a wedge. Splitting Slabs for a Humpy, 1911. Oxley Library.Lewis notes that by the 1840s, traveling teams of sawyers could be hired for this work Timber was split tangentially, that is, along the grain, instead of by the traditional British radial method, from the core of the trunk out towards the bark.Lewis, 2.03.3 There was neither time nor tools suitable to properly dress timber into planks, nor to season the timber; it was used green.
Roofs and ceilings Rafters would be fixed atop the slab walls, and a pitched roof erected. The dimensions of the hut would be kept small, to avoid the need for roof trusses. Joists were not always laid, and a ceiling was not always included. A Queensland example can be seen here. If a ceiling was added, it was chiefly used for storage.Cox, 1969, p. 47 Slab dwellings with a second storey were almost unknown.Cox, 1978. p. 8
A bark roof was common, and was quickly and easily erected.Lewis, 2.01.8
... the roof [was] covered with forest box or stringy-bark, which was stripped from the living trees in sheets of about six feet long and from two to four feet wide, laid upon rafters composed of small sapling poles just as they came from being cut in the bush. The sheets of bark, having holes pierced through each in pairs, were then tied on the rafters with cords twisted of the inner rind of the kurrajong tree. The whole framing of the roof was secured as it was needed by wooden pins in order to save the expense of nails, which were then both too scarce and too dear to be used by the lower order of settlers.
Indeed, all kinds of ironwork were equally inaccessible, and instead of hinges to tie doors or window shutters, those appurtenances were all made to revolve on wooden pivots in holes, bored a short distance into the corresponding parts of the frames.Tucker, Ralph Rashleigh, Chapter XIII
Thatching was less common, but cumbungi (rushes),Lewis, 2.6.2 and blady grassCunningham, Two years in New South Wales p. 161 were used if available. Later, when crops were grown, straw was used.Lewis, Miles. "Making Do" in Troy, European Housing p. 41 For a more permanent dwelling shingles would be cut. The cabbage tree palm was found most suitable, and later the she-oak. In later years, galvanised iron became a popular roofing material, due to its cheapness and durability.Cox, 1969. p. 59. Sometimes this was laid over the original shingles.Kingston, Early Slab Buildings p. 8Henry Lawson commented, however, 'God forgive the man who invented galvanised iron, and the greed which introduced it into Australia: you could not get a worse roofing material for a hot country.' Lawson, Stragglers Mrs Gunn noted that 'Great sheets of bark... were packed a foot deep above the rafters to break the heat reflected from the iron roof, while beneath it the calico ceiling was tacked up.'We of the Never-Never Chapter 13
Linings, plasters and claddings Whether or not a slab hut was lined, inside or out, depended on the economic means, the energy and skill, and the taste of the occupants. Beyond the need for simple weatherproofing lay the desire for some aesthetic satisfaction, the wish to make one's dwelling place pleasing in appearance as well as comfortable to occupy.Cox, 1969. p 48Holland, G. "The Comfortable House" in Troy, p. 201
Battens might be nailed over the gaps between slabs, or the entire exterior might be clad with weatherboards.Lewis, 2.04.3-2.04.6; 5.03.08 The exterior might then be painted, using mixes of materials as diverse as skim milk, quick-lime, lampblack and cementCox, 1969. p. 49 or plastered over entirely.Lewis, 2.4.8 All these measures were less to do with appearance than with preservation of the fabric of the building.
The split timbers are put in quite rough, and chipped all over with the axe to insure adhesion of the coat of plaster. This plaster is composed of alluvial soil, mixed with a portion of cow-dung to prevent it from cracking, and with chopped grass to enable it to adhere, the coat being put on with a light spade and smoothed over with a plasterer's trowel. It is run over occasionally afterwards with the trowel to fill in the cracks; and on being quite dry, whitewashed with lime, plaster of Paris, or apple-tree ashes and sour milk, the latter forming a tolerable substitute for lime as whitewash.Cunningham, Chapter VIII
The interior might have a coating of plaster made from a variety of available ingredients: mud, clay, cow-dung. The inside face of the slabs might be whitewashed, or have newspaper pasted over them. More elaborate linings might cover the ceiling, and include sailcloth, hessian, calico, osnaburg, even wallpaper, cretonne or chintz.Freeland, p. 22The Letters of Rachel Henning, 10 August; 15 October 1863The Australian Enquirer p. 162. Cited in Archer, The Great Australian Dream Mrs Aeneas Gunn describes making 'a huge mosquito-netted dining room, big enough to enclose the table and chairs, so as to ensure our meals in comfort... we hoped to find a paradise at mealtimes in comparison with the purgatory of the last few months.'We of the Never-Never Chapter 11
Floors Floors might consist of the original ground upon which the hut was erected, but various mixtures of sand, clay, cow-dung, and similar materials were laid to make a firmer, more level, or harder-wearing indoor surface. Termite mounds, crushed and watered, had many of the properties of poured concrete when used as flooring material.Cox, 1969. p. 50 Termites mix their saliva, faeces and other substances to bind soil particles and form their mound: this type of flooring was known as 'ant bed'.Ant-bed as a building material All of these substances or mixes required regular maintenance, either by watering them to re-solidify the materials, or by spreading a new layer of mixture on top.Lewis, 3.06.2
Timber slabs might also be laid directly on the earth to form a floor.Lewis, 2.03.4; 4.06.2 More sophisticated and permanent dwellings had properly sawn floorboards nailed onto bearers.
Design and construction
The basic slab hut derived its plan from the vernacular English crofter's hut, a simple rectangular walled shelter with one door, and perhaps holes to allow air to enter. The interior spaces might later be partitioned off.Slab hut and floor plan, 1840 N.L.A. To this design Australian settlers often added a verandah.Cox, 1978. pp. 8–11