ShortcutsHomesNick Clegg was rather disparaging about pebbledash this week. But it has its uses . . .Like it or loathe it, you can't escape pebbledash. Those jagged little stones gleam from the walls of semi-detached houses in the suburbs of almost every town and city in Britain, from Birmingham to Glasgow to Swansea. And, of course, Sheffield, where it adorns the constituency home for which Nick Clegg has claimed £84,000 over four years; when asked earlier this week whether this was excessive, Clegg retorted, rather disparagingly, that it was just "a modest, semi-detached, pebbledash home".
So what is pebbledash, when did we start covering our homes with it, and is it beautiful or beastly? The modern variety is a mixture of sand, cement and pebbles or aggregate (crushed stones), applied to the exterior of houses to protect them from the vagaries of British weather. "It's basically a prickly mackintosh for a house," says the Guardian's architecture critic, Jonathan Glancey. According to Lancashire-based pebbledashing specialist Nicholas Sanderson, it's also incredibly hard-wearing. "It's nearly indestructible," he says, "and much cheaper than painting."
Pebbledash enjoyed a burst of popularity in the postwar years, as a means of covering up shoddy workmanship – which is why some of the "prickly mackintoshes" on our suburbs and council estates now look so forlorn and pockmarked. But its real heyday was between about 1890 and the 1930s, when the arts and crafts movement spearheaded the rediscovery of traditional building processes. "What most people don't realise," says architect Hugh Petter, "is that pebbledash is the modern version of a rendering process that dates from Roman times: a mixture of quicklime and sand, thrown at external walls to give a stippled effect."
In attractiveness terms, the experts draw a key distinction between suburban, postwar examples – "slapdash pebbledash," says Glancey – and "rough-cast rendering", in which larger stones are applied to the walls, and then painted, a technique often found on coastal cottages. "In remote, weather-beaten places," Glancey says, "pebbledash is both stylish and sensible."
If you're stuck with the first type, however, you'll find it almost impossible to remove. And it can affect the value of your home. "It's fine if it's in keeping with the period of the house," says Daren Haysom, manager of the Islington branch of Foxtons estate agents, "but if pebbledash is done badly, or on a modern house, it can bring the value down."
Better, then, to learn to live with pebbledash – or even to love it. Sanderson certainly does: he's booked up with pebbledashing until the end of the year. "It's really in demand," he says. "It's such a great material. If he's being rude about pebbledash, I'd say to Nick Clegg – what other material can you put on your home that will last you at least 70 years, for just £3,000?"
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKSZm7KiusOsq7KklWR%2FcX2PaJipql9nfnC8xJuZpZ2UlsCpeceopJ6rXaO2pLeMnKOen5c%3D