The earthen houses called pinciaie

Scattered on the territory of Controguerra you can still admire some pinciaie, the typical earthen houses of peasant civilization.

Today no one builds earthen houses anymore, but in the past they were very common. The cheapness of the materials and the simplicity of construction, which also required great technical skill, made them the ideal home for an agricultural territory such as that of the Counter-guerrilla. In past centuries, in fact, the masonry houses were few and mostly concentrated in the village.

Right near the town, in Via Circonvallazione Nord, at the entrance to Vicolo delle Siciliane, you can still admire a pinciaia, which has survived to this day in fairly good condition, because it was reinforced with brick structures.

It consists of a main floor, at street level, divided into two rooms, and a lower basement floor, which in the past was used partly as a kitchen and partly as a stable. A wall separated the two rooms. The upper and lower floors are not connected by internal stairs, so the only way to access them is to go from the outside. In the second half of the last century, to increase the resistance of the structure, the cladding was made in bricks, which saved the building from certain collapse. In some parts of the facade the original building material is still clearly visible, i.e. earth mixed with straw.

As mentioned, the one just described is only one of the earthen houses still visible on the counter-war territory. Some structures are visible in the town, in Via Giardino and in Via Guglielmo Marconi, on the top of Colle Porcino (in the Corropoli area), in the San Venanzio district, in the Pignotto district and in the San Giuseppe district, but a more careful survey could to register other buildings on the ground.

Carmine Stipa (called Nino), originally from Torano Nuovo but always lived in Controguerra, son of one of the last pəngiralə (earth house builders) of Val Vibrata, in his youth followed in the footsteps of his father Carlo and learned the rudiments of art. This is his testimony on the construction of earthen houses:

"The first phase of the construction of an earthen house was the planning. Lu pəngiralə listened to the needs of the client farmer and proposed him a building model, agreeing on the number of rooms, floors and the size of the complex. Based on the request, lu pəngiralə asked for a fee and a certain number of men to carry out the manual tasks. The construction of the earthen house began with the excavation of the foundation, just as is done for brick structures. However, instead of concrete, the foundation was filled with earth and straw mixed together. To make the surface hard and resistant, men and animals walked on it. After this operation, the raising of the walls began. The unskilled workers mixed straw and earth and made balls, ten or fifteen centimeters large diameter, called marullə.With a handrail between the unskilled workers, the balls of mud and straw reached the pəngiralə, who proceeded to place them one on top of the other in the wall under construction, as if they were bricks. After placing the ball of mud, the edges were leveled with a flat shovel. Woe not to pay attention to this operation, there was a risk that the walls would be crooked, jeopardizing the stability of the building! In particular, for greater safety, every 50 centimeters in height the pəngiralə stopped placing other marullə and "smoothed out" the piece of wall raised, then smoothed once again all the sides and edges with the shovel. When the walls were high enough, the beams were laid and the ceiling was built with planks. Then, if desired, another floor was raised. The largest houses had up to three floors, all made with a mixture of straw and mud. Finally, the wooden roof was built and covered with tiles. To build a three-story house it was necessary to work from May to September. In fact, such work was done only at this time of year, not in winter. When the pəngiralə wasn't building earthen houses he dedicated himself to the countryside, since those who did this job usually also had land to look after. Building earthen houses was an "extra". Usually, then, after having built the house, since they were rural houses, the bread oven was also built, always on the ground. It must be said that the cost of the building did not lie so much in the materials, which were clearly cheap, but in the remuneration of the pəngiralə and the unskilled workers. The former, in particular, was better paid the more his fame and ability to create functional and resistant structures were known."

Carlo, Nino's father, built pinciaie until the mid-1950s, when, within a decade, demand completely collapsed, as the use of bricks had become widespread. His works were also in demand outside the borders of Teramo, so much so that some commissions had even come from Norcia.