“Things are not always what they seem,” was how Stephen Gray concluded his illuminating unravelling of the stylistic development of the timber-framed house in England.
He had just completed a fascinating talk, the third in a series delivered to the Winchelsea Archaeological Society, in the eminently appropriate gothic setting of St.Thomas’ Church.
His theme had been the detective work necessary were one to trace the history of a timber framed house through the development of carpentry skills, stylistic variation and the promptings of, apparently perennial, arriviste conspicuous consumption.
Much could be hidden using plasterwork, mathematical tiling, and even Georgian brick facade. Things indeed were added, altered, layered and disguised, and a considerable amount of the sleuthing involved inspecting the attic woodwork.
The timber framed house evolved from the early Anglo-Saxon hall with posts dug into the soil, through adaptation occasioned by Norman French prefabricated wooden forts during the invasion to the framed timber construction on a stone foundation of its later heyday.
The periods identified were High Medieval and Late Medieval, Tudor and Jacobean. The exposition highlighted regional differences in terms of style and construction.
The vernacular divisions were North, South, East and West. Although there were “erratics” in the form of pockets of variation and overlap, attributable to carpenters moving around, the styles were largely ‘stout framing’ in the north and ‘square framing’ with short straight timbers in the west.
In the south and east where, then as now, most of the money was, ‘close studding’ was the school of carpentry favoured. This is the sort of building you might recognise as the half-timbered house with smaller infill panels and more wood which in the later Tudor period had continuous ‘jettying’ on the first floor and had a quarter of a log per stud. One might say ‘ostentatious’ which had just arrived in English from Old French.
Jettying was a form of cantilevering or corbeling to increase floor areas in the upper floors and gave rise to the streetscape characterised by the Shambles in York or depictions of pre 1666 London with upper overhanging storeys a handshake away.
Earlier styles evolving from the Anglo-Saxon Hall style of dwelling featured ‘cruck’ construction and large panels of ‘wattle and daub’. Stability and reinforcement was provided by curved compression braces which, as the carpenters learned from their mistakes, gave way to tension braces. As the technology and the knowledge developed the structures became sturdier, the panels smaller and the studding at closer centres.
These were the houses of the burghers and the shopkeepers, relatively prosperous and not averse to keeping up with the Joneses. Properties were added to as wealth and necessity allowed and dictated.
Older buildings were refurbished and extended in new styles, chimneys were inserted, floors and rooms added. Facades were rendered and plastered, lime wash and colour was applied. The frames were not necessarily apparent. Pargetting, a form of decorative bas-relief waterproofing plaster, added distinction in the 15th Century
All this variety and uncertainty making life interesting for the guileless timber-frame detective.
Door frames might help or indeed mislead. A gothic two centred arch would suggest an early example whereas an ogee would suggest the 14th Century and a four centred arch the 15th or 16th Centuries.
Ah, but was it original or the affected posturing of some Tudor parvenu? Maybe another climb to the attic space to check for blackened sooty beams or ancient reed thatch with mummified vermin.
As was intimated at the outset – fascinating. Fascinating and baffling and I will leave you with that.
A baffle entry is a feature of Tudor or Jacobean timber-framed buildings adapted from earlier structures. A chimney added to an earlier smoke hole channel and accessed from the panel in the facade presents a barrier that constricts entry and necessitates a diversion left or right into the building. You can find one at Ticehurst. The Bull Inn, originally built in the late 14th/early 15th Century, is a 16th or 17th Century example of a baffle entry.
Oh yes. The black woodwork and white plasterwork? Victorian affectation apparently.
Photos Gerard Riley and courtesy Stephen Gray