Glossary entry

French term or phrase:

murs de grès bâtis à la terre

English translation:

walls of stone and puddled/rammed earth

Added to glossary by Una D.
Apr 10 08:38
1 mo ago
33 viewers *
French term

murs de grès bâtis à la terre

French to English Other Construction / Civil Engineering construction d'une ancienne grange
Hello,

I have a text for an exhibition catalogue describing a 19th-century French barn with "murs de grès bâtis à la terre". I'm not familiar with building techniques so I'm not sure that "sandstone walls built with earth" makes much sense. Maybe just "earth and sandstone walls" or "sandstone and earth mortar walls"?

Any ideas?

Thanks for your help!

Discussion

Johannes Gleim Apr 10:
Probably Sandstone walls built with earth or clay
Mpoma Apr 10:
Bourth ... should be along in a minute. This is clearly a traditional technique, but whether it corresponds precisely to "earth-based mortar sandstone walls" I don't know. Mud clearly has been used as mortar: check out https://www.themudhome.com/mud-as-mortar.html or (present-day) https://www.periodproperty.co.uk/forum/threads/earth-mud-mor...

Proposed translations

+2
3 hrs
Selected

walls of stone and puddled/rammed earth

In days gone by, earth was an inexpensive material for holding stone walls together. If built properly and protected from rain by a coping, they did their job. Various names for the technique in French.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hourdage

"En France, le mortier de terre a été appelé quelquefois mortier ordinaire ou bauge.
Dans le toulousain, en Camargue, dans la Crau, on l'appelait mortier d'agasse4, en référence à la pie bavarde, et en Périgord, mortier d'hirondelle, pour l'usage particulier de la terre qu'ont ces oiseaux dans la construction de leur nid.
Dans les pays industrialisés, il a été remplacé par le mortier de ciment à partir du XIXe siècle."
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortier_de_terre

The Wikipedia article on bauge here https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauge
gives the following as English terms :

"clay dab, clay dabbin, clob, clom, cob, dab, daubin, dung wall, korb, mudwall, mud walling, puddled earth, tai clom, tai mwd, tai prid, witchert, wychert."

Of those, 'puddled earth' is the word I'm most familiar with, ahead of 'daub' which is Norfolk (a friend and neighbour had a fishing lake near here in Normandy, the track to which he often described as 'dauby'), and there is also 'rammed earth' which is a more recent term.

So I'd say "wall of stone and rammed/puddled earth" (probably no need to specify 'sandstone'; French has distinct words for grès, calcaire, etc., we have a prefix with 'stone', and that is really all that matters in such cases).




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Note added at 3 hrs (2024-04-10 12:17:33 GMT)
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@ Mpoma - Thanks for the vote of confidence (Discussion).
Peer comment(s):

agree writeaway : Your expert field, your language pair, your target language. So I would place my bet here.
10 hrs
agree Mpoma
18 hrs
disagree Andrew Bramhall : And if I were to place my bet here, I'd have just kissed goodbye to my money. Puddling is a civil engineering term used in dam construction.
1 day 2 hrs
agree Kim Metzger
1 day 9 hrs
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Very helpful, thanks!"
9 mins

sandstone and mud/clay mortar walls

Perhaps ‘sandstone and mud mortar walls’ or ‘sandstone and clay mortar walls’?
Something went wrong...
11 mins

earth/earth-based mortar

There doesn't seem to be any clear answer but there are both earth and earth-based mortars used with stones so you can choose. Here's an article explaining it a bit
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-2
1 hr

Soil/earth-backed sandstone retaining wall

Peer comment(s):

disagree Bourth : A retaining wall holds back earth, as depicted in your link. It is not a structural wall (with air on each side) for a building.
21 hrs
Yep thanks; kudos to you!
disagree Mpoma : What Bourth says. Even I know that much. It's a barn.
1 day 2 hrs
"What Bourth says"... goes? Well done for having the courage of your own convictions, though!
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10 hrs

Sandstone walls built with earth or clay

Le grès est une roche sédimentaire détritique, issue de l’agrégation de grains de taille majoritairement sableuse (0,063 mm à 2 mm) et consolidé lors de la diagenèse. Les grains qui constituent le grès sont généralement issus de l'érosion de roches préexistantes, qui déterminent en grande partie sa composition, principalement constituée de quartz et feldspath. Selon le degré de cimentation et sa composition, il peut former une roche très friable ou cohérente[1]. Le grès se rencontre dans une grande variété de milieux de dépôt, depuis le domaine continental (rivière, plage) jusqu'au domaine marin (turbidites). Son équivalent non consolidé est généralement appelé sable.
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grès_(géologie)

Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks.[1]
Linked to:
Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar, because they are the most resistant minerals to weathering processes at the Earth's surface. Like uncemented sand, sandstone may be any color due to impurities within the minerals, but the most common colors are tan, brown, yellow, red, grey, pink, white, and black.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandstone
Peer comment(s):

agree Adrian MM. : https://iate.europa.eu/search/result/1712778899798/1
44 mins
Thank you; Definition: roche sédimentaire constituée de grains de silice: siliceux (grès siliceux), calcaire (grès calcaire, ou argileux (grès argileux), ... . Term: grès Term: sandstone https://iate.europa.eu/entry/result/1203571/fr-en
disagree Andrew Bramhall : A contradiction in terms, sorry;
3 hrs
No, it isn't. constituée de grains de silice: siliceux (grès siliceux), calcaire (grès calcaire, ou argileux (grès argileux). Term: grès Term: sandstone https://iate.europa.eu/entry/result/1203571/fr-en
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1 day 5 hrs

sandstone walls built at ground level

It's clear that "grès" means sandstone, but I'd like to suggest that the walls are not built OF earth ("batis EN terre" or "batis DE terre") but built directly at the level of the ground (batis A terre) due to the preposition.

In the area where I live in France, the traditional building technique using packed earth is very common and is called "pisé". It's not the same thing as mortar, which goes in-between the stones.

It would be useful if the source sentence was accompanied by a photo or diagram.
Peer comment(s):

neutral Schtroumpf : Je ne pense pas. "À la..." signifie que cet élément est ajouté à la matière principale - comme les spaghettis "à la" sauce tomate.
48 mins
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