Hi Will,

You could well be correct in your surmises about how something like a cathedral might be rebuilt.

The roof of York Minster burned (in part) quite a few years ago now and when it came to rebuilding homage was played by using oak but everything was bolted and split ring connected together which frankly I found to be somewhat of a disappointment. There is a difference between utility and artistry.

The same was also true with the rebuilding of the roof of St George's chapel at Windsor Castle after the major fire where the engineers did not believe that the hammer beam roof could be relied upon to be reinstated in its original form and so constructed a metal roof over the new (Capps & Capps) hammer beam roof and then link suspended the hammer beam roof from the steel roof above.

Sometimes it would just not be possible to follow previous practice e.g. as in the case of the internal scaffold on the spire at Salisbury cathedral where the original access to build the scaffold was most probably from the outside ahead of the stone masonary that followed upwards therebye encasing the timber scaffold.

The timber-framing fraternity has made huge strides forward over the past 20 - 30 years but it still needs to develop a voice that can be heard and also be persuasive to help overcome the lack of confidence by the unintiated in order that wood night perform as it did hundreds of years ago and is still quite capable of doing the same today.

Ken Hume