“This house is a model for many houses and households of this region,” says decorative arts specialist Heather Ersts. Architectural historian Sherri Marsh Johns agrees: “Exactly, the archive that we are going to create with this is going to be so useful for preservationists’ projects where they are not going to have resources to go and do the in-depth analysis. They could look to Cloverfields and say, “this is a house of a certain age, a certain socioeconomic status,” and use it as a comparable and do a better interpretation than they otherwise would. So, the learning potential for other preservations is amazing.”

You can read the newsletter to find out what else they said.

Experimenting With American Bond

When laying the first brick, the primary decision a mason has to make is whether to lay it as a stretcher or a header. The difference between the two depends on what part of the brick will be the face of the wall, or what part of the brick you will see. When a row is composed of stretchers, you will see the longer side of the bricks. Alternatively, when a row is composed of headers you will see the ends or “heads” of the bricks.

Once he laid the stretcher or the header, the mason has to decide how to arrange the next brick, or what pattern to follow. Some conventional designs include the English, Flemish, and American bond. If the mason alternates layers of headers and stretchers, he will create an English bond. If he decides to lay headers and stretchers alternately within each course, he will create a Flemish bond. The American bond is the easiest to lay. The mason lays mostly stretchers and only puts headers every fifth or sixth course.

The eighteenth-century masons that laid the bricks at the Cloverfields house used a combination of bonds. Some sections are Flemish bond, and some others are a very early version of the American bond.

Newsletter

Cloverfields as of December 2019: “A Model for Many Houses and Households” of the Chesapeake Bay Region

Cloverfields as of November 2019: Cloverfields Was One Of First Houses Of The Eastern Shore To Use American Bond

Experimenting With American Bond