Earthquakes and architecture – ancient and modern in Peru

By Lindsey Atkinson

Peru lies on the western side of South America: approximately 100 miles off the coast in the Pacific Ocean the Nazca plate is subducted under the South American plate forming the Peru-Chile (Atacama) Trench.  As a result Peru is subject to frequent earthquakes* and sometimes even tsunamis (e.g. 1996 and 2001). 

Adobe house

 Approximately two-thirds of Peru’s rural population live in adobe dwellings which are particularly vulnerable to collapse during an earthquake.  Adobes are made out of sun-baked clay bricks and it is only possible to build up to two floors.  Professor Marcial Blondet and his team at the Catholic University of Peru in Lima have been working to make adobe buildings safer (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8202498.stm) using a polymer mesh for reinforcement.  They recommend keeping buildings to one storey and keeping the size of openings to a minimum for greater strength. Today although people in rural areas still build their own adobe houses, in many towns most buildings are now constructed with steel reinforced concrete which allows for much taller structures.

Huaca Pucllana

How did ancient Peruvians cope with earthquakes without the benefits of modern technology?  The temple of Huaca Pucllana in Lima (http://huacapucllanamiraflores.pe/) was built by the Lima culture between 200 and 500 AD and is an adobe ‘pyramid’.   This mud structure, now partially reconstructed, has survived so long, partly due to the extremely low rainfall in the region, but also because of its construction with bricks placed vertically and spaced to allow for movement during earthquakes.

The Incas (1200-1542 AD) built with stone.  For example the temple of Qorikancha in Cusco (https://www.cuscoperu.com/en/travel/cusco/archaeological-centers/qorikancha) demonstrates fine masonry with large, well–fitting, rectangular blocks of stone.  No mortar was used, but a fine layer of sand between blocks allows for some movement during an earthquake.  The structure has inward sloping walls which provide stability and it is said that the trapezoid niches and doorways help dissipate the energy of seismic tremors.  Sites such as Sacsayhuaman near Cusco have well-fitting, but this time, irregular shaped blocks.  This degree of craftsmanship seems to have been reserved for religious sites and for the nobility: other sites have rougher stonework with mud mortar and square niches.  

Sacsayhuaman

Qorikancha

Lima Cathedral

The Spanish colonial builders were not so successful: many of their buildings collapsed during earthquakes, while Inca structures remained. For example, the convent of Santo Domingo in Cusco was built on top of Qorikancha, using the temple as its foundations but while the convent had to be rebuilt following the 1950 earthquake the Inca walls stood undamaged.  The cathedral in Lima dates from 1535 but has suffered damage following many earthquakes and in 1746 it was completely flattened.  The current building has wooden, rather than stone, columns and a wooden ceiling plus a policy of strictly no candles!  However, the catacombs beneath the nearby Monastery of Saint Francis, built of bricks and mortar, do seem to have survived quite well.  These crypts also include well-shaped structures which again are said to dissipate the lateral energy of a tremor.

Probably the most famous site in Peru is the citadel of Machu Picchu, abandoned shortly after the Spanish Conquest in the mid-1500s: one theory is that this was to prevent it from being found by the Spanish.  It remained hidden to all but local farmers until 1911 when it was rediscovered by the American explorer, Hiram Bingham.  The ability of these structures to withstand earthquakes is largely anecdotal and have not been proven, although modern techniques allow for better assessment of their earthquake protection properties (see Cuadra et al. 2008). So far Machu Picchu has proved to be remarkably earthquake resistant.

Machu Picchu

*Most recently on 15.08.16 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-37084723)

Bibliography
Bankoff G. 2015. Seismic architecture and cultural adaptation to earthquakes. In: Krüger F, Bankoff G, Cannon T, Orlowski B, and Schipper L, eds. Cultures and disasters: Understanding cultural framings in disaster risk reduction. New York and London: Routledge.
Blondet M, Villa Garcia GM and Brzev S.  2003. Earthquake-Resistant Construction of Adobe Buildings: A Tutorial. Published as a contribution to the EERI/IAEE World Housing Encyclopedia, http://www.world-housing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Adobe_Tutorial_English_Blondet.pdf
Cuadra C, Karkee MB and Tokeshi K. 2008. Earthquake risk to Inca’s historical constructions in Machupicchu. Adv. Eng. Software 39: 336-345. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.advengsoft.2007.01.002.
Smith J and Petley DN. 2007. Environmental hazards: assessing risk and reducing disaster. 5^th edn.  New York: Routledge.
Stewart A. 2013. The Inca Trail, Cusco and Machu Picchu. 5^th edn. Trailblazer Publications. Surrey, UK

Five incredible old English homes built by women

by Briony McDonagh (@BrionyMcDonagh)

The initials ‘ES’ on the parapets are those of Elizabeth Talbot, who built Hardwick Hall. adteasdale, CC BY-SA

We tend to think of the landowners, architects and builders of the past as men, just as we do its politicians, rulers and artists. Women rarely get a look in. But research is uncovering more and more historical examples of women who played a leading role in society, politics or the arts – and the public, it seems, are fascinated. Take Amanda Vickery’s recent series on The Story of Women and Art for example, or the idea that Bach’s wife composed some of his finest works.

Likewise, my ongoing AHRC-funded research project on 'Elite women and the agricultural landscape' is revealing that women owned far more land than was once thought – and this despite the fact that before the late 19th century the law made it difficult for married women to own property of any sort. As a result, we’re also recognising that women played a far greater role in designing, commissioning and building country houses, gardens and parklands than was once imagined.

The nature of surviving historical sources means that women’s contributions are often poorly recorded, but there are exceptions – and we’re uncovering ever more of them. So as the National Trust and English Heritage open their properties to the public for the summer, why not pop along and visit a country house where the influence of a woman in its past is plain to see? Here are a few suggestions to get you going.

 

Temple Newsam

This vast Tudor/Jacobean house stands in grounds near Leeds that were landscaped by Capability Brown. Originally built for Thomas, Lord Darcy (who came to a grizzly end after rebelling against Henry VIII), the house was remodelled in the late 18th century by Frances Ingram, Viscountess Irwin, a highly involved female patron.

Her whopping £60,000 dowry – worth more than £7m in today’s money – had been used to fund improvements to the house and grounds in her husband’s lifetime, but it was only after his death that she was really bitten by the building bug. As a widow, she demolished and rebuilt the entire south wing “for the sole pleasure in building [it] up again” – as she put it – and redecorated much of the rest of the house.

Temple Newsam. theracephotographer, CC BY-SA

 

 

Weston Park

Weston Park is a Palladian-style mansion in Staffordshire largely designed and built by Lady Elizabeth Wilbraham in the 1670s. Weston was her childhood home and while her husband was the legal owner, Wilbraham seems to have retained considerable control of the property during her marriage. We know she was heavily involved in both the design of the new hall and the financial management of the building work, and she’s often hailed as the architect of the house.

 

 

A la Ronde

An unusual 16-sided house near Exmouth, A la Ronde was designed by cousins Jane and Mary Parminter in the 1790s. Somewhat unusually for women at the time, the Parminters had spent nearly a decade travelling in Europe and were apparently inspired by a visit to the octagonal chapel of San Vitale at Ravenna (Italy). The Exmouth property was small and there was no tenanted agricultural land, but the cousins also designed and built a chapel, almshouses and school in the grounds just as much wealthier women did on their estates.

A la Ronde. charliedave, CC BY

Hardwick Hall

Built by Elizabeth Talbot, countess of Shrewsbury (better known as Bess of Hardwick) Hardwick Hall is perhaps the most well-known country house in Britain built by a female landowner. Bess was born into a minor gentry family in Derbyshire, but was a woman of great ambition: she married four times, and the property left to her by her four dead husbands eventually made her the richest woman in England.

She oversaw the building of Chatsworth Hall from about 1550 onwards, and later built not one, but two, grand houses at Hardwick. Soon after finishing the Old Hall in 1591, she began to build the adjacent New Hall, a vast house known for its glittering glass façade and unusual floor plan. Visitors should look out for Bess’s initials “ES”, highlighted for posterity in parapets of the towers and elsewhere in the house.

 

 

Belvoir Castle

Elizabeth Manners, fifth duchess of Rutland, was credited by contemporaries both as the driving force behind the rebuilding of Belvoir Castle in the 1820s and the principal manager of the family’s Leicestershire estate. As one friend noted at the duchess’s death in 1825, the duke “did nothing for himself, and his estates, his horses, his family, everything was under her rule”.

While it’s unclear how far this was a fair assessment of the duke’s contribution, the duchess certainly oversaw landscaping works to the castle grounds and took an active interest in the agricultural aspects of the property, including designing a model farm. She also made improvements to Cheveley Park (Suffolk) in the early 1800s, oversaw the building works at York House on the Mall for her lover the Duke of York and drew up designs for a new palace for George IV.

The list of such houses is growing. So, while undoubtedly disadvantaged both by the law and by societal expectations of their gender, the wives, widows and single women of the past could – and did – build grand country houses. Not all female landowners had access to the money and resources necessary to re-build or significantly extend their country residence of course, but others re-planned gardens and parklands or improved the large agricultural estates which lay beyond the park boundaries. In doing so, these women and others like them had a far greater impact on the landscapes of early modern and Georgian England than history has so far acknowledged.

Briony McDonagh is Lecturer in Human Geography at University of Hull.

An earlier version of this article was published on The Conversation. Read the original article.