Cobbles and clay for the driveway

One afternoon I found Keith where he was studying the driveway, my quizzical look prompted him to explain his next project to me. He was going to cobble the driveway with river stones from the historical floodplain of the Breederiver in the valley.

Clearly inspired by the property name engraved on the marble plaque on the gate pillar, he decided that the entrance to the property needs to be elevated to match it.

When one is in tune with vernacular building practices one sees building materials in everything. One day on our way back to Towerwater coming from Swellendam, we passed a farm where there were mountains of stones pushed to the edge of ploughed fields.

I know how Keith has been longing to get his hands on those stones, and this day he asked if I could see the name of the farm and the owner on whose farms the stones were. I could get the farm name and we went home and the next day Keith did not only manage to get the farmer’s name, but Keith’s contact managed to arrange that Keith could go and fetch some stone.

On Keith’s question as to how many stones he may take the farmer pointed to the mountains of stone and said, “knock yourself out”, meaning that he can take as many as he needed. Keith started the painstaking job of cobbling the driveway after the first load.

After working out which shape stone worked best as a cobble, the second and subsequent loads were much easier to select without having to take back any that were unsuitable for the task.

Watching Keith build this big stone puzzle with determination, it was clear that when he set his mind to it nothing was going to derail him. The best thing was to support him. Every day after I had finished working, we set off to pick up stones for cobbling the next day.

When the cobbles were all in place, I learnt that the preferred grout for this vernacular driveway is a mixture of clay, lime, and cement. On a Saturday morning we climbed into the old faithful Toyota Hilux bakkie loaded with spades and buckets like big children setting off for the beach. Our destination to look for natural clay, was not the beach but a patch of recently disturbed veld outside the town.

The grout mix of clay, lime and cement

The art of grout

The first load of clay we took was in the form of big lumps of clay that we decided to stomp into fine clay again. We soon learnt that breaking down big clay lumps into clay dust is not that easy and is back breaking work.

The second load of clay we sifted directly into the buckets at the source. It took a bit longer to collect the clay, but it was quicker and easier to mix the fine clay into the grout. We mixed the grout in an 8:2:1 ratio, being 8 clay: 2 lime: 1 cement. Then we brushed the dry grout into the gaps between the stones and wet it with a fine spray of water to dry overnight. We could not ask for a more natural look for the cobbles, the grout turned out to be a very nice red-looking clay between the cobbles.

The next day, after photographing the completed cobbles, I discovered a serendipitous stone heart in amongst the cobbles. This was surely proof that Keith had put his heart into cobbling the driveway for Towerwater.