Originally Posted By: marko
You will very pleased to know that Laurie Smith is coming your way in the next few months. North East I think.
Go and meet him. Offer him curry and beer, sit back, listen and be amazed!
He did a fair amount of work with Adrian Gibson on Cressing temple barns and has a also found similarities with the layout of Ely cathedral.
There are daisy wheels scratched beside the fireplace at The Queens Hunting Lodge in Epping, these are as someone said credited as being ritual marks. No mention of layup or design.
I think they could be something as simple as an apprentice scratching the daisywheel out on a post that he knew would be covered up… idle hands and all that… or the master carpenter leaving a signature as to the design of the building.

The building that the above daisy wheel was used for is this one:
[img]http://www.flickr.com/photos/markuspalarkus/3480501733/[/img] and was designed by Laurie with the specific intention of testing his ideas on the use of the daisywheel in cutting a frame.
I think a similar arrangement was used for setting out the footings/plan. I didn't take part in the cutting, just joined Laurie for the cladding over a few winter weekends.



Hi Marko:

Thanks for coming onboard. It seems your attempt at the picture seems to have failed :-(

I'm drooling over the prospect of meeting Laurie Smith and receiving some of this "lost practice." I'm aware of the course he and Jack Sobon will be offering in Massachusetts this November.

Your ideas about the wheels scratched into obscure areas makes sense. I take it you are not inclined to believe they are a good luck symbol or talisman from pagan times? Perhaps it's both: they built acording to the wheel to ensure good energy, etc.

Today we hang up blueprints, back then I guessed they scratched a wheel...or a set of circles, etc.

Do you know the origins of the wheel? (At least some theories. Sounds like no one can really say for sure.) Is it European, Asian or some other design? It appears to be found in prominent Medieval buildings: Cressing's barns, like you say... But I wonder if its layout system is found in French or German buildings as well?




Don Perkins
Member, TFG


to know the trees...