Internal Walls

This section explains how to repair and care for different types of internal wall in the period house of the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian eras in particular.

Houses since 1800 have normally had walls of three types:

• solid brick (or stone)
• studwork with lathes or plasterboard
• studwork with brick in-fill

The external and loadbearing walls are in solid brick or stone, and internal and non-loadbearing walls are made from wooden studwork. Sometimes studwork walls with a brick in-fill are semi-loadbearing in that such a wall on the ground floor can carry the weight of a similar wall upstairs.

Studwork is a wooden frame; 'plates' go on the floor and ceiling, 'studs' are the vertical supports between the two plates, and 'noggins' are horizontal pieces of timber nailed between the studs.

Laths or 'lathes' are strips of wood nailed to studs and noggins. Gaps are left between the laths; when plastering, the plaster oozes between and behind the laths locking the plaster to the wall.

Brick in-fill is simply courses of brick laid with mortar, on and between the plates, studs and noggins.

Most internal walls are then plastered.