The traditional mud-built houses are disappearing from rural areas of Barind region due to brick-made houses. For thousands of years, people of Barind region are habituated in living in mud-built houses which are known as 'air conditioned' houses for both the poor and the rich men alike because of their being cool at summer and warm in winter inside.
In Barind region, most part of the rural areas was inaccessible due to absence of concrete road even thirty to forty-year ago. The only way of reaching those villages was to travel on buffalo-driven cart or horse driven cart during the rainy season because roads remained full of sticky muds. As a result, people living in the Barind villages used to make their houses with mud-wall.
The walls were two to three feet of wide and 10 to 15 feet in height. On the walls, ceilings were made with wood or bamboo and over there straw or tiles were fabricated as roof. Some of those houses were also two-storied and are still visible in some rural areas of Barind districts.
There was mass destruction of mud-built houses after the flood in 1971, 1974, 1976 and 1996. Since those houses have no concrete foundations, the earth behind those houses loosened in water and the entire walls including the roofs of those houses collapsed causing severe loss of properties of the people living in those houses. Those mud built houses are especially susceptible to flood and earth quake. Now, with improved economic condition of rural people and metalled road connected to every village, rural residents were making brick built houses by demolishing the mud-built houses.
Abdul Wahed of Talanda village, Habibur of Kamargaon village, Borkat of Pachondar village under Tanore upazila informed, there are still several hundreds of mud-built houses in Tanore and Godagari upazilas but with the construction of metalled roads connecting villages, it has become easy to carry bricks and construction materials to rural areas and people were preferring to build brick and concrete houses by destroying their age-old, mud-built houses.
Azad Sarder of Shahagola village, Ramjan Ali of Bhobanipur village and Mobarak Ali of Rasulpur village under Raningar upazila of Naogaon district informed, the mud built houses which they used to live in were built by their forefathers. They don't feel any trouble in living in these houses with their family members because those houses bear all modern amenties like electric lights, fans, fridges. They further said, the houses are air conditioned naturally due to their construction device.
The wide earthen wall and thick straw on the roof keep the rooms inside cool at summer and warm at winter. They further mentioned, moneyed people were now-a-days were destroying the mud built houses and were making brick built concrete houses there seeking more security and to save space.
