Pargeting (or sometimes called Wall pargetting) is a decorative or waterproofplastering applied to building walls. The term, if not the practice, is particularly associated with theEnglish counties ofSuffolk andEssex. In the neighbouring county ofNorfolk, the term "pinking" is used.[1]
Patrick Leigh Fermor describes similar decorations on pre-World War II buildings inLinz, Austria. "Pargeted façades rose up, painted chocolate, green, purple, cream and blue. They were adorned with medallions in high relief and the stone and plaster scroll-work gave them a feeling of motion and flow."[2]
Pargeting derives from the word 'parget', a Middle English term that is probably derived from the Old Frenchpargeter orparjeter, to throw about, orporgeter, to roughcast a wall.[3] However, the term is more usually applied only to the decoration in relief of the plastering between thestudwork on the outside ofhalf-timber houses, or sometimes covering the whole wall.[4]
The devices were stamped on the wet plaster. This seems generally to have been done by sticking a number of pins in a board in certain lines or curves, and then pressing on the wet plaster in various directions, so as to formgeometrical figures. Sometimes these devices are in relief, and in the time ofElizabeth I of England represent figures,birds andfoliage. Fine examples can be seen atIpswich,Maidstone, andNewark-on-Trent.[4]
The term is also applied to the lining of the inside of smokeflues to form an even surface for the passage of the smoke.[4]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Pargetting".Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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