Shelter First, Then A Home.

These are some images of the half-faced shelter I built in Fox Valley in Wychwood Forest. The ground here was very hard so there was no way of putting upright posts into the ground and I had to utilise standing trees.

This is the sort of shelter I imagine a settler would put up first before building a more permanent structure. This Half-Faced shelter was reasonable quick and easy for me to construct on my own just using the tomahawk that I always carry. If I wanted to I could close this shelter in a lot more and make it more weather proof to house a small family through winter.

This was a project that I have wanted to do for a long time now because I wanted to know if the average settler without many tools and no horse or cattle to carry a burden could infact make a decent shelter large enough to house a small family. For me this Half-Faced shelter proves that they could. I have slept in this shelter in winter and even with the front and one side open I stayed reasonably comfortable. But for really cold weather I would close it in a lot better than this.

I could have used bark on the roof but it would have meant killing several trees, so I compromised and used thin ply. If this had been in the Northern Hemisphere I could have used Birch bark. Alternatively I could have made a less permanent roof covering by using oilcloth and covering it with brush. When I make a simple lean-to for myself I use my oilcloth as is with no brush cover and it works very well.