Self-taught cob builder, Michael Buck of Wolvercote, built a garden house from locally sourced natural and reclaimed materials including an old truck windscreen which he turned into a triple gothic fixed light.
 
In 2007 it was reported that with the threat of climate change, Michael Buck, springs on to the stage at the inaugural meeting [of the Low Carbon Wolvercote initiative] brandishing an old wooden clothes peg. "Washerdriers are wasteful - use these!" he urges. "Turn off the clocks on your microwaves - they use as much power as if you were cooking something. Turn off all your standbys. Replace your light bulbs." Well known and popular in the village, he has spent the past year building cob houses, from local materials, which have been used for storytelling venues and meditation evenings. Other CO2 conscious characters are the local vicar, Mark Butcher, who manages to weave environmental issues into his sermon; Jane Carey, an artist who runs workshops creating useful objects from other people's junk; Christopher Gower, who runs a "recycling surgery", and Ian Curtis, founder of Climate Xchange Oxfordshire (climatex.org) who urges everyone to plant sunflower seeds in their front gardens to show their support. Meanwhile, the village school is raising money for solar panels, as is the village hall. The newbies are increasingly looking to the older residents for advice - they want to know how to grow their own fruit and veg, how to compost and live with less gas and electricity. People in the village say they are starting to use the local bus service more, or cycling, and are setting up car shares, giving each other lifts to town or the supermarket. [Jane Muir: The Guardian]
 
Michael Buck takes up the story in Permaculture magazine: Two summers ago I decided to build a round thatched cob house in my back garden in Wolvercote, near Oxford. I decided not to use any money and to gather all the materials and energy from the locality. I was inspired to dedicate it to my mother, Mother Earth and all mothers. I started with a circle of dry stones laid on firm ground about a foot deep. It is important to lay them without mortar so as to avoid any rising damp. The stones originally came from the ruins of a nearby Nunnery but had spent the last hundred years in a neighbour's wall. It was good to know my foundations were holy! My neighbour, who no longer needed the stones, was happy to exchange them for a hazel arch, which I made and coppiced from local timber.
After laying about 45cm (18in) of stone I started the cob. After a lot of experimentation and undue worry, I found that the earth 30cm (1ft) beneath my feet was absolutely perfect. You need not less than 15% and not more than 50% clay. There's an easy way to tell if your earth is suitable. Shake a jar with a sample of your soil, filled three quarters full with water. The sand settles first, then silt and then the clay. If you are not sure whether you have clay or silt, cut it with a knife and if it is shiny you know it is clay … [Permaculture magazine]
 
'Once the walls had reached hip height I saw a complete lorry windscreen in a skip. Having got it home, it perfectly fitted the circular curve of the wall. This kind of serendipity was happening all the time. I hardly ever went consciously looking for anything, synchronicity was efficiently by-passing the need for research. All I had to do was set the wind-screen into the wall and build up to the glass, with cob, sculpting three gothic portals,' he writes.
 
The coppiced hazel roof was thatched with straw scythed by keen WWOOFers and some Norfolk reed found growing in a nearby canal.
 
The story finishes with Mr. Buck making his own paint from clay, local chalk and flour.
 
He has now built a cob holiday house for his WWOOFers to stay in, featured in a recent edition of the Daily Mail and on Amazing Spaces.