As you are traveling through England, you may have seen wavy walls that line some of the roads. They were a popular item in the UK, but there is something that many people don’t know about them.
They use fewer bricks!
That’s right, compared to a straight wall, you would use a lot fewer bricks with a wavy wall. The simple reason why is because when you build a straight wall, you would have to have a buttress or it would fall over.
A curvy wall, on the other hand, can be built one brick thick and stand strong.
The wavy walls that are popular are also known as crinkle crankle walls, crinkum crankum walls, serpentine walls, or ribbon walls, according to Wikipedia.
These crinkle crankle walls seem to be of particular interest to the County of Suffolk. findeston.net reports that you can find 100 or so of these wavy walls and many of them have been photographed.
Wavy walls aren’t limited to the UK. You will also find them at the University of Virginia in the United States. Thomas Jefferson used these in architecture but he wasn’t the first to use them.
Contrary to some authorities who claimed that he invented the design, he was just using a design that was already popular in England.