BUNGAROOSH (BUNGAROUCHE, BUNGLAROUGE?)

BUNGAROOSH (BUNGAROUCHE,

and other horror stories — or why you shouldn’t stand in a bay window in Brighton. Rob Fraser

However you spell this concoction, it is the mixture which makes up many of the structural walls of Brighton and is responsible for much structural instability, dry rot, dampness, and probably plague and pestilence as well. It is the sort of cobbled- together material that emerged from those desperate days of cowboy (shepherd?) builders, hurried and financially rocky developments, and a lack of adequate building regulations, that characterise the Georgian and Victorian eras.

Up to the time when Brighton became fashionable most houses seem to have been constructed reasonably soundly in the vernacular tradition. These include timber framed (partly weatherboarded, tiled or rendered), flint cobble in courses, or knapped flint from the fields.

Perhaps learning from the speculative builders of London, the builders of Regency Brighton concentrated largely on the front elevations. These were often brick — sometimes London stocks, other times grey glazed or brown multi bricks, probably from the brickfields towards Hove.

The party walls, however, seem invariably to be bungaroosh. Often the rear wall was bungaroosh too and if an owner was singularly unlucky the front wall could be as well, underneath the elegant render facade.

The material is basically a freely interpreted flint rubble. A lime mortar was made up, and poured into shuttering, and anything else that came to hand was bunged* in too. This could include old bricks, bits of flint, odd lumps of wood, lumps of chalk, in fact anything solid. The spacing of the shuttering even seems to have regularised after the coming of the railways, since sleepers were conveniently available!

Lengths of bungaroosh walling were usually supported by brick piers at intervals, although on lesser houses these are not always to be seen. Chimneys and flues were always brick. Into the mixture in the shutters were added whatever fixings were required for supporting other structures, so baulks of timber or brick courses could

be set into the bungaroosh to support floors or plaster battening. It is not easy to tie into bungaroosh, so if a series of houses in a terrace was not built contiguously, it is not unusual to find vertical joints between the front wall and party walls. This can be a boon if the front wall falls off, since it leaves the rest of the house standing. Any combination of brick, timber and bungaroosh (or flintwork etc) seems to have been considered acceptable. I have seen a bungaroosh wall with a timber lintel surmounted by two or three courses of brickwork (to enable corbeling to support a cornice) and this topped by a bungaroosh parapet. Not surprisingly this lot tried to fall down after 150 years when the timber lintel rotted and the weight of the cornice pulled the brickwork out from under the parapet. Most of the time, however, bungaroosh stays in place — probably through force of habit. All the bits of timber in the mixture tend to create a rather pleasant breeding ground for rot and exotic fungi. Since the mixture is very porous, the rot circulates quickly, and can usually find some damp somewhere to feed on. In fact bungaroosh has to be a little damp. Too dry and the now leached mortar crumbles, too wet and it becomes mobile. My predecessor considered that on this basis you could probably demolish a third of Brighton with a well-aimed hose.

There is no way of repairing the stuff, should you wish to. The only solution to a blown area of bungaroosh is to fill the gap in brick, blockwork, or reinforced cement. No structural engineer would justify a rubble repair, and most throw a wobbly trying to justify the existence of bungaroosh walls.

One of the main advantages of this type of lime mortar based material, of course, is that it moves, and it is usually when its movement is sufficient to create a gap against a more solid object, such as ad joining brick construction, that the material appears to fail. In very recent years with very dry summers and stormy wet winters, a number of bays have collapsed, due probably to this differential movement, and the lack of any solid fixing between the timber or brick bays and the adjoining

*The probable derivation of Bungaroosh, I believe.

bungaroosh wall. By the way, don’t stand in a Brighton bay window (as opposed to a bow front which is usually OK) since the weight of the bay is often taken through the window frames on the outside. The only thing tying the bay back may be couple of 6 in nails pulling the bay back against joists running across the building.

Next time you admire the Regency terraces, therefore, think of the innocents who have bought one of these buildings with that funny sounding material the surveyor said was in the front wall — can you spell it?

Rob Fraser is Conscrvation Officer with Brighton Borough Council.

GIVING TOWN CENTRES BACK TO THE PEOPLE

Kent County Council has embarked on a series of partnerships with several of the county’s Districts and a range of private sector organisations to seek ways of improving both the physical environment and the quality of life in town centres.

Around a dozen town centre initiatives have been established, some including the setting up of new posts of Town Centre Managers, jointly funded by the public and private sectors. Conservation will, in all cases, be an important element in the programmes including elements such as Town Schemes, Enhancement Schemes, ‘facelift’ grants, shopfront and advertisement guidelines.

The initiatives aim to bring about more

effective management in the public realm by agreeing objectives and focusing the activities and budgets of a wide range of statutory and local authority organisations towards a common goal. Traffic restraint, pedestrianisation, public transport, policing, art, leisure and the promotion of town centres are among the features of these schemes, but the key to their success will lie in the achievement of greater coordination and wide support for a shared vision of the future of each town centre. For more details contact: Tony Wimble on

BUILDINGS AND CRAFTSMANSHIP