mud wall
A wall built of earth or clay, or of materials laid in clay as a substitute for mortar. † Also, the material forming such a wall.
| 1395 Acc. Manor of Savoy in Archæologia XXIV. 313 Pro factura ij perticatarum muri ex parte occidentale gardini vocata mudwall. 1464 Nottingham Rec. II. 373 For makyng of the modde walle. 1578 Nicholas tr. Lopez de Gomara's Conq. W. India 52 The houses are great, made of lime stone & bricke: others there are made of mood wal, and rafters. 1679 T. Kirke Mod. Acc. Scot. 10 The Houses of the Commonalty are very mean, Mud-wall and Thatch the best. 1690 Locke Hum. Und. iv. xix. (1695) 403 Earthly Minds, like Mud-Walls, resist the strongest Batteries. a 1771 R. Wood Ess. Homer (1775) 242 The mud walls of a Turkish cottage. 1789 Trans. Soc. Arts VII. 34 Two parts old cobb (alias mud-wall). 1833 Loudon Encycl. Archit. §159 Mode of building the Mud Walls of Cottages in Cambridgeshire. |
† b. fig. Obs.
| 1662 Bp. Hopkins Serm., Funeral (1685) 78 There stand nothing between us and our eternal state, but this thin mud-wall of our bodies. 1670 Devout Commun. (1688) 142 Our mudwall of flesh made spiritual and transparent. |
c. attrib. and Comb.
| c 1470 Henry Wallace xi. 680 Castell was thar nayn, Bot mudwall werk withoutyn lym or stayn. 1543 tr. Statutes Table, Mud wall makers. 1785 Cowper Wks. 1837 XV. 159 The mud-wall cottages of our poor at Olney. |