Hi Thomas,
Ok you have shaken me out of bed !
Hi Derek,
Time for a good scratch
Hi Mark,
Time to prepare you for your upcoming visit to the UK
Several years back we made a visit to a really excellent 3 bay cruck frame cottage in an adjacent village.
There are a number of things worth noting about the end gable shot of this cruck cottage posted above.
The heart of the tree is quite visible on the left hand cruck blade and with better resolution it is also possible to match up the knots from one blade to another so here we have a halved tree formed into two cruck blades. The blades are positioned upside down compared with growing position. The upward springing (now downwards)of juvenile branch outcrops are clearly visible. There are two large mirror image curved braces sweeping down to intersect with "the mantle beam". Note the height of this beam compared with my son (now 6' 5" but then about 5') and though not visible in the photo recognise that the upper floor joists (7 x 5's laid flat) at this end are jointed into the mantle beam thus internal headroom at this end of the cottage is not good. The floor has been lowered inside to help improve headroom.
You can see the whole frame arrangement at
http://www.kfhume.freeserve.co.uk/pages/...ottageframe.htm but you should note that the rafter hips are incompletely and probably incorrectly drawn due to access diffulties to inspect same.
The sidewall posts joint into the lower outside face of the cruck blades and the whole wall frame is then tied to the cruck blades using a short tie cut with mortice and tenons.
You will see that the mantle beam and tie joints have come apart after 600 years but the cottage is still standing thanks to the brick infill which affords quite a bit of stiffening to the frame. The rear of this cottage still has original wattle & daub infill panels on the north side i.e. away from the prevailing south westerly wind and rain.
There are only about 100 or so known cruck frames left in Olde Hampshire and most of these are of some antiquity generally 1400 - 1550 but less than 20 miles to the north in south Oxfordshire a well known timber framer is living in a cruck frame dendro dated (by him !) to the late 1200's.
This can be a seriously long lived way to build.
Regards
Ken Hume
p.s
Here is another very famous cruck frame located at Woebley in Herfordshire.