Rude Material

The word is Clunch.

It sounds like it could be a swear word or an anatomical part.

In modern language it could be a combination word produced by an auto-text facility.

I see it being used to describe that awkward moment of meeting between two longstanding male friends when a hug is called for but genitals must not be seen to come into contact.

It could equally refer to a gathering of dieting office workers around a canteen table where caloric values for respective dry corn or yoghurt based snacks are being compared. An account in a local paper of a vehicle collision with a Restaurant may use the word as a graphic and onomatopoeic headline, plus exclamation mark.

I like to think of the word being used to describe that mechanical process in an old classic car with no gear box syncromesh when a steep hill looms up ahead and a change down is required.

One final one, unless you have some good interpretations yourself, is to describe the deductions of a highly intelligent detective sleuth based on a natural sense and feeling of a crime or misdemeanour.

The real meaning of Clunch is quite plain and on first impression, uninteresting, but in fact it has played quite an influential part in the history of the buildings of our country.

Clunch is a traditional construction material based on English chalk stone. It can consist of a variety of materials either quarried, excavated, cleared from the land or scrounged and when amalgamated and bedded in mortar it can be used for structural purposes from a mighty Cathedral down to a simple boundary wall. It was seen as cheap and readily available in areas where good quality stone was not in abundance.

The Romans, during their occupation of England, used this hardened form for civil engineering but not much has survived because of the susceptibility of the material to disintegrate from frost. Clunch was popular for craftsmen to work with as it was reputed to be capable of cutting with a saw rather than requiring specialist stonemasonry and tools.

Notable buildings so constructed include:

St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle  http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1990408,
Lulworth Castle http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/868135
and internal features at Ely Cathedral http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1601505

The chalk originated in the Cretaceous Age some 143 to 65 million years ago and from various embedded impurities it has a greyish white colour and sometimes with a greenish tinge. It is however quite a warm and comforting hue and a few paint manufacturers do refer to Clunch in their sample books and colour swatches. It is often found as a decorative finish in Listed or Heritage Buildings.

There are still active quarries in the South and East of England producing the materials for different markets and large blocks are well suited for working by sculptors or for show pieces such as landscape features for Horticultural Shows . The obsessively superstitious have an apparent craving for lucky stones made out of Clunch.

It may be a softish material as far as its building applications go, but as a small boy I do recall a painful experience when I was nastily grazed by a coming together with a Clunch wall of a building in Thetford, Norfolk. In that particular moment I felt that a constant muttering of that word under my breath was the best sounding, pretend swear word in my small world.