According to the
Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911), roughcast had been a widespread exterior coating given to the walls of common dwellings and outbuildings, but it was then frequently employed for decorative effect on
country houses, especially those built using
timber framing (half timber). Variety can be obtained on the surface of the wall by small
pebbles of different colours, and in the
Tudor period fragments of
glass (
frit) were sometimes embedded. Though it is an occasional home-design fad, its general unpopularity in the UK was estimated to reduce the value of a property by up to 5%. However roughcasting remains very popular in Scotland and rural Ireland, with a high percentage of new houses being built with roughcasting. This exterior wall finish was made popular in England and Wales during the 1920s, when housing was in greater demand, and house builders were forced to cut costs wherever they could, and used pebbledash to cover poor quality brick work, which also added rudimentary weather protection. Pebbles were dredged from the seabed to provide the
building material needed, although most modern pebbledash is actually not pebbles at all, but small and sharp flint chips, known as spar dash or spa dash. There are several varieties of this spar dash such as Canterbury spar, sharp-dash, sharpstone dash, thrown dash, pebble stucco, Derbyshire Spar, yellow spar, golden gravel, black and white, and also sunflower. According to the
Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, the central tower of
St Albans Cathedral, built with
Roman tiles from
Verulamium, was covered with roughcast believed to be as old as the building. The roughcast was removed around 1870. == See also ==