As long as it has a good roof on it with a hefty overhang, the walls would
probably be fine although obviously not as long lasting as brick. I'm sure it
periodically needed to be repaired. There are a few early 19th c. historical
references to plantation mainhouses in the hot and humid S.C. lowcountry that
were at least partially "clay walled" which could mean either cob construction,
wattle and daub, or some other mix of clay and wood. And there were numerous
slave houses made of clay, particularly in the 18th c., but even into the 19th
c. in South Carolina.
 
Ned Heite wrote:
 
> This morning, I was reading the 1804 assessment for Mill Creek Hundred, New
> Castle County, Delaware, when I saw something startling, to say the least.
> Most of the houses in the hundred were stone, or log, or sometimes brick.
> Three were listed as mud-walled. What is a mud-walled house doing in
> temperate, humid, rainy, wet New Castle County in 1804. In all three cases,
> the inhabitants of these mud-walled houses were substantial, one of them a
> farmer with more than 200 acres.
>
> Turf or sod springs to mind. How else can one intepret this?
>
>     _____
> ___(_____)                           LAND ROVER
> |"Baby"  \                           Official vehicle of the
> |1969 Land\_===__                    Vogon Construction Fleet!
> |IIA__Rover   ___|o
> |_/ . \______/ . ||                  42
> ___\_/________\_/____________________________________________
> Ned Heite, Camden, DE  http://home.dmv.com/~eheite/index.html