My business is with Isengard tonight, with rock and stone.

Stone Cloven House

About the name.
I'm calling our house "Stone Cloven House"

Back in 2000 when I first read Lord of the rings. I was enthralled by the description of Isengard and the tower of Orthanc.

I dreamt of building a stone house. In my mind I could see the smooth blue stone and Gothic arches.
Thirteen years has come and gone, and I still want a house of stone but I've toned down my desire for a castle but still the stone sticks.


I remember back riding the train from Tumbridge Wells to London (often with out a valid ticket), and the day I thought of the the name "Stone Cloven".
I wrote it down in my now long lost work diary, but didn't need to, as it has stuck with me all these years. Finally I'm building a house and it just happens to be on a block of land strewn with granite.


With a slant towards self sufficiency over the last few years, and great success in the garden, I'm looking towards the ideals of permaculture for inspiration for how our home will sit in it's environment.

Whilst looking for information on sustainable, efficient building materials I happened across the timbercrete web page (via the post and beam site) and it seemed strange and weird; up there with the other tree hugging hippy building methods like rammed earth, mud bricks, and hempcrete. I was looking more along the lines of aerated concrete (hebel) and the like.
Taken aback by the sandstone colouring and the texture of the hand-made blocks I looked into timbercete, reading everything that I could.
With my background in Timber it didn't seem like a bad option.

Back to the name:
The Cloven part is I guess a spin on 'to cleave'. To split asunder.
I've been moving a lot of rock this past week in readiness for a dry stone garden wall and will no doubt split many stones in the making of such a wall.



So I finally get to use my name that I've had saved up for all these years on a (mock) Stone House.
I should add here that it's important that you don't think of timbercete as a stone. But for what it is, a super efficient building material, making use of waste material, and meeting a need.

Fathers day Gift from the girls. Snake guard (meercat)

Old photo of Joscy from our Terrigal garden