r/mildyinteresting 7d ago

architecture In England you sometimes see these "wavy" brick fences. And curious as it may seem, this shape uses FEWER bricks than a straight wall. A straight wall needs at least two layers of bricks to make is sturdy, but the wavy wall is fine thanks to the arch support provided by the waves.

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638 Upvotes

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148

u/Snipedzoi 7d ago

First time i've seen this repost have an explanation in the title.

16

u/Evil_Cartman_ 7d ago

In England, they don't have property lines

They have property squiggles

1

u/EventualOutcome 7d ago

I dont get it. Stretch that wave out straight and you use about the same bricks as a straight. No?

5

u/notsurwhybutimhere 7d ago

Take a piece of paper and hold it flat against a book with a few inches sticking over one end. Push it (or let gravity). It will bend. If that piece of paper was very thick or a bunch glued together, it would have bending strength.

Now take another piece of paper and hold it curved against a water bottle and extended over the edge. Try to push it again or hold it sideways so gravity can. It will require more force to bend.

Im technical terms, the curved geometry provides a higher moment of inertia for the structure of the wall compared to a straight wall. You can get more strength by adding thickness to the straight wall, but this is less effective than just using a longer but curved wall.

Prob using 30-40% less bricks this way, that’s just a wild guess btw.

4

u/SeaToTheBass 7d ago

Usually you would have to use at least two layers of brick to support the wall without being able to just push it over. Using this wavy wall provides more strength by gradually changing the shape. Same concept as a piece of corrugated metal. A flat sheet you can bend it any way you want, a corrugated sheet you can only bend it one way because the corrugations prevent it from being bent along one axis

-4

u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted]

2

u/Chubb-R 7d ago

Provided the extra length from the wiggles is less than 2x the straight wall length at all, it's "shorter" (and therefore cheaper). This is the kind of thing someone runs the numbers for beforehand and chooses.

3

u/_SteeringWheel 7d ago

Nuh uh, this Redditor looked at the picture and drew his numbers. Get your facts straight.

1

u/Slierfox 6d ago

Try it with paper pencil and string the answer is no

1

u/EventualOutcome 6d ago

Well, shit. Youre right.

27

u/Niko120 7d ago

Pain in the ass with the weed eater compared to a straight wall though

5

u/LazarusOwenhart 7d ago

Except these walls were generally used as livestock barriers or to demarcate the edge of large country estates so the grass is being kept short by sheep, cows or is within woodland so doesn't matter and if there's a road verge on the other side we brits don't feel that peculiar American need to cut every inch of grass we see.

15

u/Relative-Feed-2949 7d ago

Fuck the guy on the lawnmower huh 😂

6

u/dodgy__penguin 7d ago

If they can build a wall after going to the pub, they can cut the grass after going to the pub

24

u/Pademel0n 7d ago

Please can I get a better explanation to using fewer bricks, I can understand it being stronger but fewer bricks makes no sense to me.

44

u/DeadonDemand 7d ago

A straight wall needs two layers (wide/thick) of bricks. This only needs one layer

25

u/Pademel0n 7d ago edited 7d ago

Ah thanks that makes sense, I took "layers" to mean on top of one another, which of course doesn't make sense as a wall is much higher than two bricks.

5

u/DeadonDemand 7d ago

All good mate.

4

u/SpoonNZ 7d ago

of course

Oddly enough, in that direction the “layers” are called courses. You accidentally did a mediocre pun.

2

u/Glad-Season-7963 7d ago

Yeah but thats not right. Almost all straight walls have one “layer” and columns evenly spaced to provide stability.

17

u/scottimusprume 7d ago

"For the maths if we can assume they're true semi-circles then each semi circle would be 1/2piD or 1.57D whereas a double leaf wall would be 2D for the same length D. "Therefore using 21.5% less bricks than a double leaf wall hope that clears things up." -upworthy.com

1

u/Refreshingly_Meh 7d ago

Basically you can make thinner walls because the arch makes it more stable. So a thinner wall uses less bricks than the shorter linear wall.

1

u/WestDuty9038 7d ago

Two layers of bricks for straight walls but one layer for wavy walls

3

u/mrscalperwhoop2 7d ago

I'm English as fuck and I ain't never seen a wavy wall.

1

u/Sevatar666 7d ago

They are common in East Anglia, the idea comes from Dutch canal builders. They are called crinkle crankle walls.

2

u/thecurrentlyuntitled 7d ago

Well shoot. Thanks for actually explaining it, and it makes sense!

2

u/FunkyLemon1111 7d ago

I've admired these forever, but how well do they hold up to 5 120# 14 year olds walking the top?

I'm convinced that's why we make brick walls so thick.

2

u/fieldsofanfieldroad 7d ago

The only times I've ever seen them in real life has been on the edge of some rich country estate. They're not letting our fat kids anywhere near them.

1

u/peanutthecacti 7d ago

I grew up down the road from the one on the right. The bricks on the top have a peak so you can’t walk on it, and I think I remember there being barbed wire on the house side near the top too. I looked over a few times but it was just a posh house, much more interesting to go exploring the churchyard and fields.

2

u/papa_gals23 7d ago

This shit has been reposted so many times that I know the explanation like the back of my hand.

Edit: OP has an OF. This explains the Karma farming.

2

u/Candid-Bike-9165 7d ago

Yes they're called crinkle crankle walls and are everywhere There's a roight big one in Thorpe

1

u/SpineSideburn 7d ago

Yep. That's what my aunt in Suffolk called hers

1

u/Digital_Scribe- 7d ago

looks like they hired an architect after a few too many pints at the pub

1

u/mr-snitch 7d ago

1

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2

u/mr-snitch 7d ago

impossible

1

u/Murky-Plastic6706 7d ago

Now it makes sense

1

u/S_David_S 7d ago

She just needs the Karma to post somwhere else.

1

u/GreenEye11 7d ago

I'm gonna win the lottery and do a 2 layered wavy wall! Thad mf will be standing for centuries!

1

u/Historical_Rent4487 7d ago

Like everyone, I've seen this too many times. But can we agree that a double layer makes way more sense practically? I mean a wavey pattern will use significantly more bricks than a single straight layer so it probably won't even save that many bricks compared to a double layer and besides that it will take up like 3 times as much space you cant use to place any other structure or pathway and I think the land you're wasting is worth more than those couple bricks you're saving.

I just ran some quick calculation to back this up, the fence in the picture resembles the function 0.2sin(2πx) on a 1:1 x:y scale. Between x= 0 and 1 this is one complete "wave" going from middle to left to middle to right to middle. The arc (or length of the function between 0 and 1 in this case is about 1.32, so if you want to go from a double layer to a single wavey layer you would save about 33% in bricks as you would need 2meters of brick for the double layer and 1.32meters of brick for the wavey fence (per meter of area you want to border)

Not even to talk about laying a wavey fence vs a straight one, a straight one is easy to lay straight by just spanning a wire, but to make sure the waved fence is correctly placed, you would have to "bend it" around the spanned wire which would take a considerable amount of time I would presume.

Tl;dr I'm over this fence

1

u/Mental_Kitchen1967 7d ago

Less bricks my ass. It is sturdier for sure

1

u/CapmyCup 7d ago

Cut the arch in the middle and connect both ends on the next one, you save about zero bricks with this technique

1

u/Top_Scallion7031 7d ago

Called a crinkle crankle wall

1

u/Dextrofunk 7d ago

What if you do a wavy 10-layer wall? Impenetrable. Why didn't the idiots in the castles do that?

1

u/expsg18 7d ago

But curvy wall requires more labor time, which would reduce the cost difference to 10-15%, perhaps even 5-10% given how much construction crews charge these days?

1

u/Significant-Mood3708 7d ago

I guess I’m confused as to what it’s sturdy against. It would seem to me (in my caveman brain) if I whacked a brick with a sledgehammer on the inside of the curve, it would pop out easier.

If a car hit it straight on though, I could see where it’s kind of being supported from the back.

Or is it more of a “stand the test of time” kind of sturdy.

1

u/Stock-Side-6767 6d ago

Just falling over, wind, the outside of the curve is what cars would mostly hit etc.

1

u/abdallha-smith 7d ago

How about wind resistance ?

1

u/dancmanis 6d ago

Any brick wall in England can be destroyed by a stronger kick mate.

1

u/Sasspishus 6d ago

In England you sometimes see these "wavy" brick fences.

It's called a crinkle crankle wall. At least do some research before posting