Month: July 2021

The Chettinad mansions / villas / houses are sumptuous, spacious, and flamboyant with intricate carved structures. Chettinad mansions are built using bricks (known as ‘sengkal’), country made roof tiles (known as ‘naattu odu’) preferably from ‘Manamadurai’, (owing to the soil’s rich iron content), decorative floor tiles (preferably, the famed ‘Athankudi’ handmade terracotta tiles), limestone mixture…

Many of the mansions / houses in and around Chettinad were built-in with arrangements, (the contoured metal sheets placed under the corners where roof tiles of two walls join), for rainwater harvesting, to provide for clean drinking water. The rainwater is [fine cloth] filtered and funneled into large brass-ware that can be stored for weeks….