Hi Ken and others:

Our historic houses look quite new compared with what you work with Ken, my hat off to you and the challenges that must come your way from time to tme wow!

Here we wrestle with trying to understand 150 to 200 year old structures where as you are working with 500 and 600 year old specimens--alot more information and knowledge are needed when you attempt to repair or alter them without a doubt.

Just as a passing thought how do the owners obtain fire insurance? or do they just do without.

And for a final thought do they (the owners) have to follow strict guidelines as they deal with remodeling\repairing or restoring or can they just do their own thing. What I am trying to say I guess how involved is the Gov't?

Nice pictures what medium are you using to post with?

NH

Hi Tim,

There is an issue with the shinkage of all wood species however some are worse than others. Unfortunately, I do not have Jack's yellow book - to what does this book pertain ?

What quantified evidence do you have to justify your proposition that the cog is more fequently employed than the dovetail as a tie beam end joint ?

Stud and mud sounds a bit like wattle & daub. Wattle is a woven structural membrane made up from vertical (oak) staves with interlaced horizontal withies (split hazel or willow) then covered with daub which will be made up from clay, animal muck, sand and maybe some chalk.

Richard,

There is a thatch insurance company that specialises in both providing insurance and in arranging re thatching. Thatch needs to be re ridged (the patterned bit at the top) every 12 - 15 years and recoated every 25 - 40 years as the top surface breaks down. The layers of thatch can and do build up over the centuries till they are 5 - 6 feet thick. North and east facing thatch tends to be damper and hence grows more moss whereas south and west facing thatch will erode more due to rain and UV sun action. Though most thatch homeowners are fastideous about buying insurance cover the vast majority fail to recognise that they need a decent set of drawings to rebuild. In the first picture showing the box frame you will see a new building to the right which was built to replace an older medieval thatched house that burned to the ground a few years back. Any comments about this building ?

All of the buildings illustrated above are from the same village in which there are a total of about 60 "listed" buildings. This listing is accorded by English Heritage a government body with prescriptive powers but the day to day administration of this power is excercised by the various local authorities equivalent to a town selectmen council or board. The building listings are graded as II - II* and I. Grade I would require the involvement of English Heritage for change approvals and these buildings represent only about 5% of the total listed building stock with II* (two star) being about a further 10%. Most of the buildings that I have shown are Grade II and thus will require only local authority approvals to alter.

Owners are allowed to make repairs and maintain their properties without needing formal approvals but in practice there is such a overlap area between repair and alteration that most folks would involve the local conservation officer in the decision making process. That said not all conservation officers are created equal with this being a fairly modestly paid job appearing to attract a lot of young women most of whom have no real building experience and thus they tend to rely heavily on locally developed planning and conservation policy documents to shape and frame their advice and approvals. I am hopeful that this situation might now be changing with some youngsters now taking part in Masters Building Conservation courses and local recording groups where they can gain exposure to more knowledgeable persons however I hold the line that really these officers should really be drawn from the building trades where real life building experience can be brought to bare to assist and benefit both the buildings and owner.

Cecil Hewett was a conservation officer and was also a very practical person - good with his hands and he and his work stands as a good role model for youngsters to aspire to achieve, following in his footsteps and developing further the vernacular knowledge needed to deal with our listed buildings in an individual, thoughtful, caring and considerate kind of way rather than following a prescriptive mantra. Here endeth my rant about conservation oficers !

The pictures were taken by my son James using a Canon SLR type digital camera. The images were then shrunk to about 680 x 4?? using Adobe Photoshop. I have then posted these images onto Windows Live photo albums (for free) where all "hotmail" or Windows Live users have recently been given 25Gb worth of storage space.

I would very much like to see and hear more about North American buildings. Please keep in mind that many of these are older than the Great Fire of London and so some American built heritage is older than what can be seen today in central London.

Regards

Ken Hume

This link has some pictures from Jamestown which is where I first saw the term,I think in a Nat'l Geo article. The technique apparently comes from Lincolnshire. That is apparently where my surname comes from, so it does strike some curiosity.

http://www.historicjamestowne.org/the_dig/dig_2006_11_20.php

Ken,
European brick looks to be of higher quality than what I've typically run into even through the 19th century here. Ours have many soft and imperfect bricks that are often spalled. Brickmaking here, and I may be talking too locally, was a wheelbarrow trade. The bricks were generally made on site, stacked into a "clamp" or small kiln made of the unfired brick and then fired with wood. As the clamp was disassembled they were sorted and used according to quality. Infill nogging is where I've seen the lowest quality "salmons" used. Fireplaces used the best. Did you have factory brick at those earlier dates?

Fascinating topic.

Great that you can post pics Ken.

Northern Hewer certainly hits the nail on the head comparing our 200 year-old "old" buildings with your 500-600 year-old structures. A whole different ballgame. Fascinating to see.

Like the above post, I find the brick work interesting as well. That brick infill (I think it's referred to as herringbone pattern?) must weigh a ton +. Things certainly seemed more ornamental back then. Brickwork on this side of the Atlantic is far more utilitarian: one on top of the other.

Hi Don x 2,

The brick making and laying process is exactly the same in both he UK & USA. The pattern brickwork shown above is a much later replacement for original wattle & daub and in general light red bricks are quite soft and so in combination with lime mortar will act like a wick to help draw water away from the timber as per Tim's earlier post. The brick will probably weigh only marginally more than daub since this is simply made from unfired clay with a little wattle lattice structure that would make to overall panel a just a bit lighter. This brick is only single skin (4.5") thick as is wattle & daub. I have recently had to deal with soft red brick noggin [note there is no "g" on the end of this word] in a timber frame building which was repointed using portland cement based mortar and now all the brick have spalled leaving the mortar protruding which encourages and causes further freeze thaw spalling damage. Bricks tend to have a hard skin but much softer core and so if the suraface is lost then rapid deterioration will ocurr.

You really need to go and see your own old buildings. I made a memorable visit to The Fairbanks House (c 1638) at Dedham, Mass. with Ed Levin and the smell inside this house is identical to buildings in Olde England. It provides a snapshot of timber frame building construction at the time New England was settled and hence also very likely reflects building style and construction in (east Anglian) Olde England at that time.

Regards

Ken Hume

Ken, the yellow book is Historic American Timber Joinery, A Graphic Guide. On page 8 Jack does mention shrinkage due to our higher moisture swings. Perhaps your moisture levels are more consistent. We get wet/dry cycles allowing settlement in the joinery. For this reason some tying joints used the cog system. I am perpetuating this by using 99% cogs in my joinery.

My Mother-in-law just passed through Jamestown and had to call me on the mud and stud wall system she noticed, it was a great conversation and I wished I had been there.

It is interesting, the smells of old buildings and even more that one so far away has the similar smell, it's a small world , really.

As for the plain brick work here in America, We were a developing nation and needed the quick infrastructure, not much time for flash, "get 'er done".

Tim

I think the Sobon book Tim is referring to is available as a pdf from the guild site under publications / joinery:


http://www.tfguild.org/joinery/part1.pdf
The shrinkage issue Tim speaks of is on pg 5 in this pdf version


That's neat about common smells. There is so much to learn...see...and smell...

I ran across this company while looking for restoration materials. They can analyze and remix old mortars. That would be neat to know how that's done...
http://ushg.macusa.net/heritagestore.php

I've used silane/siloxane on old brick a couple of times and it seems to help make them more water repellant without affecting the color or breathability. I've seen far more masonry contribute to rot than help keep something dry. I would isolate, backer rod and chink the interface of masonry and wood here.

The spelling must change across borders? Webster's and a quick google all showed the G.

Reading back to the first "codes", the first codified or written laws, those of Hammurabi, King of Ur, who wrote them in stone and posted them in the town square... uniformity in the application of the law.

Codex... the trunk of a tree... a block of wood... a tablet with the law carved on it.

Anyway, the law that has made it down to us as "breaking and entering" first comes from his laws and relates to breaking through the thin wattle and daub walls of his time and entering into another man's home to steal.

I heard the other day that 1/3 of our population is in prison.
Hammurabi didn't imprison anyone. The thief was buried outside the hole in the wall.

Hi,

We surveyed and recorded the cruck building shown at the top of page 1 today.

We found that this is nearly an all elm frame with elm cruck blades, purlins, floor joists, spine beams, mantles, collars, rafters but with oak wall plates, sills and wall studs. This frame has stood exposed to the elements no for nearly 600 years and they say that elm is not durable - yeh right !

Regards

Ken Hume

What species of elm do you have over there? Most of the elm around me is Ulmus Americana. I've sawn some recently for truck sides and trailer decking. Waiting to here how it holds up. I know the red oak doesn't.

Very neat to see the pictures of the old buildings. Thanks.