Moxon writes about brick work and that in certain places it was required to be two bricks wide.....

Hi All,

I think that you will find that Laurie will talk about proportions and not dimensions. What is interesting about the 16" centre to centre is that this is clearly a measured dimension that corresponds with todays unit of measure. The metric system of measurement was introduced in the UK in the late 60's early 70's but I think that this has been the standard way of measurement on mainland Europe for centuries. England had a bit of an aversion to the use of bricks after the Roman occupation and it wasn't until the late 1500's / early 1600's that building with brick really took off. Prior to this it would more likely have been stone or wattle & daub with no fireplaces so the 2 bricks wide fireplace theory is liable to flounder. In any event fuel wood was brought home in bundles [faggots] and this was more like brushwood (lop & top) than split logs.

Regards

Ken Hume

Regards

Ken Hume

Ken is right -- the daisy wheel and other geometric design schemes are independent of any unit of measure.

However, it is quite easy to add that "dimension" (pardon the pun) to the method by making the radius of the wheel in your design drawings a known division of the radius in the actual building layout.

eg, your building's real size may be based on using a radius of 12 feet to draw the daisy wheel. If you make your drawings with a radius of 1 foot, you would have scale drawings -- 12 to 1 scale. Of course any scale can be used. At that point any dimension can be scaled off your drawings by setting the dividers to the two points in the drawing and stepping off 12 times.

You can certainly build using geometrical systems without using any standard unit of measure -- you can just draw it out using any arbitrary setting and say that the building will be 10 times this big and set your dividers and step off 10 times and make your own story pole or "rod". then use that rod to swing the arcs to lay it out full size on the ground, etc.

But more commonly, I would think, the builder was working with a commonly held unit of measurement in order to communicate with clients, suppliers, and tradesmen. My understanding is that the rod was a commonly used standard measurement for building.

Perhaps Ken can speak to that?

Hi Gabel,

There is something in your hypothesis. Most old timber framed buildings and especially cottages that I check out are about 16 - 18 ft wide. The room that I am sitting in right now is 16.5ft wide [of/of] and this is the old medieval measurement called the rod, pole or perch. Heresay has it that this is the length of the shaft between 2 oxen and that this shaft was used to measure and buck trees in the woodland.

The answer to this question must lie in fact based observations and thus a quantitative survey of building widths would establish whether or not a standard unit of building width measurement was employed. Though I have not done this study I have examined records for about 1500 buildings and found that there is a statistical distribution curve of building widths and therefore this would appear to rule out the concept of standard measurements being employed so what then could drive the establishment of building layout dimensions? The answer might lie with the trees themselves in that in most buildings the longest timbers are the tie beams, cross beams and cross sills. Wall plates, girding rails, purlins and long sills are generally composites i.e. scarfed and so do not require the longest timbers. Thus it might make sense for the builder to examine the logs to hand and then optimise building width based on the mix and then as Gabel suggests simply use a string and pegs to layout the footprint of the building. The one place where this practice might be more constrained is when building in a town on a medieval burgage plot of fixed dimensions. I have checked out the design of a building in Farnham, Surrey with Laurie and we found that it was laid out and cross frames spaced using overlapping circles i.e. string & peg.

From experience in my own woodland I know that I can easily prune most trees with the aid of an extending pole saw to about 16 ft. By the time the pole is extended to the range 18 - 22 ft it becomes much more difficult to clean the trunk becuase the pole becomes more vertical and the amount of bend or whip in the pole begins to make sawing difficult and the saw becomes trapped in the kerf as branches droop before they fall. In medieval times commoners were free to take branch wood for faggots (by hook or by crook) from woodlands and probably most landowners would have encouraged this practice since it would have provided them with good clean standing trees thus woodland management practice might play a larger part in building layout than we might currently credit today especially since most people tend to be well divorced from the origins of timber (Home Depot).

This might prove to be an interesting dissertation topic for a bright student to pursue.

Regards

Ken Hume

As the originator of this TTRAG thread, I suggest that all Daisy Wheel and related posts dealing w/ proportions be entered here where Tim Beal has already begun a thread:

http://www.tfguild.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=19562#Post19562

Dear Moderator,

Can you please action the previous request.

Regards

Ken Hume

Quick, before the other topic wonders astray. Who knows where something may lead, larger bellies obscuring the perspective.

Tim