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New introduction to the 2001 edition of
Practical Architecture
Charles William Pasley
In 1825 Lieut-Colonel Charles William Pasley was ordered to begin an architectural course at the Royal Engineers' school at Chatham which he had established in 1812. This was not to teach his students to design buildings, as architecture is now generally understood, but to teach them building construction, or practical architecture. He enlisted the assistance of Robert Howe, their experienced Clerk of Works, who was appointed as Professor of Practical Architecture, and looked for suitable textbooks. He found that Nicholson and Tredgold concentrated mainly on carpentry and joinery, assuming that details of foundations and walling generally were already known to their readers, so Charles Pasley filled this gap for his students by compiling and issuing lithographed notes, which were reprinted without alteration or revision, as a book, published by the Royal Engineer Establishment in 1862.
This scarce volume that Donhead have now produced in facsimile therefore sets out best practice in 1826 as researched and reported by Pasley using his extensive network of contacts. His fellowship of the Royal Society and membership of the newly formed Institution of Civil Engineers will have provided access to authorities on most scientific subjects, and references in the text to what such notable figures as Soane, Robert and Sidney Smirke, Nash and Rennie were actually doing on their current projects provide details of contemporary practice in 1826 which are simply not available elsewhere. There are more than six references to the details employed by Robert Smirke at the London Custom House, then in the course of underpinning, alteration and reconstruction following the collapse on 26 January 1825, and also reports of other of Robert Smirke's then current projects, as well as references to what Nash was doing at Buckingham Palace.
Since this text was written in 1826, references to "cement" refer to Roman Cement, because the Portland variety had only just been patented by Aspdin and had not yet been manufactured. This book shows us how important Roman cement was in the nineteenth century as a quick setting and waterproof binder for renders and mortars. It also describes the use of trass and pozzulana, as hydraulic additives to lime, and there are several references to the beneficial use of brick dust in mortars and renders as a substitute for trass or pozzulana.
Although Pasley concentrates on all aspects of brickwork and mortars, from footings to bonds to vaults to flues – did you know that 9" x 13½" (225 x 340 mm.) was big enough to provide access for a climbing boy? – to all the details needed for ordinary buildings, he also provides valuable information on such ancillary subjects as the use of hollow pots for fireproof flooring and on the use of timbers in walls. It is the only book I know which not only describes the use of chainbond timbers in the centres of walls, then common practice, but also sets out why they were used and why they were superior to common bond timbers and wall plates flush with the inside of the brickwork. It is interesting to note that twelve years later Pasley reports chain bond timbers suffering from dry rot, and advocates substituting four or five courses of bricks laid in pure cement mortar strengthened by hoop iron in the joints.
C. W. Pasley's best known work is of course his Observations on Limes, Calcareous Cements, Mortars, Stuccos and Concrete etc., of 1838 which is the standard text on those subjects current for most of the nineteenth century. His experiments on the manufacture of artificial cements had started in 1826, and are reported in this earlier text. There are also other gems in connection with the interaction of different materials of which this is probably the earliest mention, but which are still being regularly re-learnt today, such as spalling of soft bricks pointed with cement (then Roman, now Portland) mortar, and differential movement resulting in separation between brickwork built in cement mortar and brickwork built in common lime mortar. This last observation is sensibly extended to a recommendation that alterations to existing building be built in cement mortar, so that it continues to align with old matured walling and does not slump or settle as it sets.
Pasley reviews the up to date use of limes and cements, including their incorporation in concrete foundations as then being pioneered by Robert Smirke. Hollow walls are mentioned for the control of dampness and ventilation. Descriptions of Hiort's patent and improved chimneys, recently introduced and used by Smirke and Nash, leads on to a discussion of a variety of new heating and ventilation systems in course of development and use.
The purpose of this Course was to enable young officers to construct, extend, maintain and repair the carcase of ordinary buildings for barracks, hospitals, store-houses and other military purposes, and which could also be applied to civil buildings in times of peace. The intent was to explain all the details in the art of building in brick that could not be learned except by attending the construction of one or more buildings from beginning to end.
The fact that Pasley's original notes of 1826, of which only a few copies were lithographed, were deemed suitable for reprinting and more general issue in 1862, implies that they were still current and useful 36 years later. Today they are particularly useful as a guide to how ordinary buildings were actually being built a hundred and fifty years ago, and to the limes and cements that were used then and would still be eminently suitable for their repair.
Lawrance Hurst, BSc, FCGI, CEng, FICE, FIStructE, FConsE, FBEng
Hurst, Peirce & Malcolm was founded by his father in 1910, is a small practice of consulting engineers for structural work connected with buildings, new and old, in most materials. Lawrance joined Hurst, Peirce & Malcolm in 1968 where he was a partner and is now retained as a Consultant. He prefers old buildings and has been fortunate to have been concerned with the Royal Albert Hall, the Nelson Monument, the London Custom House and Finsbury Barracks, as well as a number of less prominent but equally important and interesting other old buildings. He has written papers and lectured on nineteenth-century concrete and cements, fireproof flooring, early iron and steel in buildings and the history of party wall legislation. He is convenor of the Institution of Structural Engineers History Study Group and chairs the Institution of Civil Engineers Archives Panel.
PASLEY, Charles William (1780–1861), general, royal engineers, was born on 8 September 1780 at Eskdalemuir, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, the son of a London merchant. He was educated in the school of Andrew Little of Langholm and later at Selkirk. Pasley entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1796 and graduated the next year, receiving a commission in the royal artillery. In 1798 he was transferred to the corps of royal engineers and posted to Portsmouth. During the period 1799 to 1809, Pasley served on the east coast of England as well as in Minorca, Malta, Naples, Sicily and various European theatres of the Napoleonic Wars. He was severely wounded at the siege of Flushing during the Walcheren expedition and this incapacitated him for further combat duty. Thereafter, Pasley's career in the corps was to focus on the education of military engineers and building technology research.
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In 1810 Pasley joined a group of six royal engineers in forming a society for procuring useful military information. The next year, while in command of a company of royal military artificers at Plymouth, he instituted at his own expense a course of instruction for the non-commissioned officers and men in order to improve their knowledge of fortifications and fieldworks. On 23 April 1812 a Royal Warrant established Pasley's school permanently at Chatham, making him director, and opened instruction to junior officers of the royal engineers as well as the military artificers, now renamed the royal sappers and miners. This new military educational institution was called the Royal Engineer Establishment. Pasley began with a teach-yourself system of training in which non-commissioned officers led the lessons. |
This method was influenced by Pasley's visits to the schools of Joseph Lancaster and the Reverend Andrew Bell, the two dominant figures in the primary education field in Britain. Pasley produced a three volume textbook, Course of Instruction Originally Composed for the Use of the Royal Engineer Department, and began a professional library at the Establishment.
Pasley married Harriet Cooper in 1814 but she died after a only a few months. Five years later, he was wed to Martha Matilda Roberts, by whom he had six children. His son, Charles Pasley (1824–1890), would also serve in the royal engineers, including as Commissioner of Public Works for Victoria, Australia and as Director of the Admiralty Works Department. As early as 1816, Pasley was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Three years later, he was appointed to a committee of experts to consider the Thames tunnel scheme of Sir Marc Isambard Brunel. Well recognised as a man of practical science and possessed of high social standing as an army officer, Pasley was asked by Thomas Telford, a life-long friend, to become a member of the recently founded Institution of Civil Engineers in 1820. For the rest of his career, Pasley participated regularly in discussions and presented papers at meetings of the Institution.
In 1825, following upon orders from the Master General of the Ordnance, the Duke of Wellington, Pasley began an architectural course at the Establishment. He developed another textbook, Outline of a Course of Practical Architecture, and appointed a civilian clerk of the works as instructor. Pasley was to serve for twenty-nine years as director of the Royal Engineer Establishment, and from 1839 to 1855 acted as a public examiner at Addiscome, the military college that trained engineer officers for service in India. He thereby became a major formative influence on the education of British military engineers in the nineteenth century.
Pasley's position as director of the Establishment induced him to pursue research in building technology. Initially, he undertook experiments with wooden models to determine the stability and most efficient form of retaining walls. Pasley published the results in the textbook for the architectural course, Course of Elementary Fortification, the century's first fully comprehensive English work on the subject. In 1826 he began experiments in an attempt to make an artificial Roman cement and four years later succeeded. Pasley tried his cement in structures at the Brompton Barracks, Chatham. He also printed an essay on his research and distributed it to all royal engineer stations at home and in the colonies, and to engineer officers of the East India Company. By 1836 his cement was equal in quality to the best of its kind. Pasley's achievement was founded on a prodigious programme of testing in which he used a variety of standard methods of the time for determining the tensile strength of mortar. In 1838 Pasley published his master work, Observations on Limes, Calcareous Cements, Mortars, Stuccos and Concrete etc., wherein he described his experimental findings and gave an historical account of cementitious materials unequalled in the nineteenth century. The book was highly commended by the technical press and reprinted in 1847. Pasley's principal influence on the manufacture and use of cementitious materials was in the promotion of Roman cement, both natural and artificial, establishing its superiority over ordinary lime and supporting an English preference for its use over hydraulic limes in civil engineering work.
As an adjunct to his cement experiments, Pasley was involved in the testing and promotion of hoop iron reinforced cement bond brickwork as a substitute for bond and chain timbers in brick walls and in door and window lintels. His experiments, which began in 1837, were modelled on the testing to destruction of brick beams undertaken respectively by Sir Marc Isambard Brunel and Messrs. Francis and Sons, cement manufacturers. Pasley was credited with resolving the debate between the two over the effectiveness of hoop iron in reinforcing the test beams; he concurred with Brunel that the material greatly increased strength. Pasley's 1838 book became the recognised authority on the subject.
Another achievement of Pasley's experimental work at the Establishment was with the use of military mines in blasting under water. Between 1838 and 1844, he carried-out the removal of shipwrecks that obstructed navigation at Gravesend, Spithead and St. Helen's. In 1841 Pasley was appointed inspector-general of railways. This government post had been created only the year before and he became an easy target for criticism by civil engineers who objected to such state regulation. Nevertheless, Pasley kept a diary during his five-year term and it demonstrates that he attempted to overcome his lack of practical knowledge of railways by great industry and conscientiousness.
Pasley was made a KCB in 1846. He became colonel-commandant of the royal engineers in 1853 and a general in the army in 1860. Pasley died on 19 April 1861 at his home, 12 Norfolk Crescent, Hyde Park, London, from an ailment of the lungs. A portrait of Pasley, by Eddis, hangs in the Royal Engineers Headquarters Officers Mess at Brompton Barracks, Chatham.
Reproduced from:
Biographical
Dictionary of Civil Engineers of the British
Isles, 1500–1830 (Institution of Civil Engineers, 2001) by kind permission
of the Institution. Article by John Weiler.
Practical Architecture
Practical Architecture