HONEYCOMB HOUSES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 March 1939, Page 8

HONEYCOMB HOUSES

CURIOSITY OF ATLAS MOUNTAINS One of the curiosities of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco is the honeycomb houses of the Berbers. These are dwellings built on the steep mountain side, low flat constructions, where the roof of one house forms the threshold of tb.e house above. These houses grow in number one on the other and beside one another in cells. The walls, of brown earth, slope slightly inwards towards the roof. The doors are small and narrow. Windows are little more than loopholes, high up in the walls. Whole families live in these clustered houses,’ for as the family grows so the members build above or beside the other dwellings. Many of the Berber dwellings, on the .rare occasions when they stand alone, are built as one entity around a small central space, or yard. There is only one door, and darkness —and coolness—reigns within the low rooms grouped round the tiny central space. Here at night the cattle can be sheltered. The roof is a terrace for the women folk. At each corner is a bastion, but now. under the protection of the French, no longer needed for defence against marauders. The brown earth walls are so similar in colour to the hillsides against which they are built as to render them almost invisible until one is quite close.