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Dry Rot: The Chemical Origins of British Preservation

The term "dry rot" appeared in English at the end of the eighteenth century as a name for the pathology of timber's distemper; it signified that timber was behaving irrationally by decaying prematurely in confined situations, affecting the stability of a single building, and in turn the entire building industry. This essay surveys British discourse on dry rot in the early nineteenth century to form an alternate history of preservation—one inscribed not by style or aesthetics—as a narrative of animated vegetal substances as they migrate from forests to the building industry. The campaign against dry rot was conceived within the boundaries of morality: to protect timber against disease, thinkers transferred the ideological framework of Protestant theology and ethics to the microrealm of materials. Standing apart from the official origins of British preservation traditionally attributed to John Ruskin and William Morris, the history of dry rot illuminates the origins of a chemical understanding of architectural preservation traced through the interaction of builders and horticulturalists.