More Related Content
Similar to Hall house Feature notes (20)
Hall house Feature notes
- 1. Early hall houses had a cross passage running through the building from front to back, with external doors at each end. The passage was sloped to allow rainwater entering one end to run out the other! The cross passage was typically formed by wooden “plank-and-muntin” screens on either side. The main timbers are still visible in some Dunster properties. This one includes the head of an original doorway into the main hall
- 2. The early houses had only a few windows. These were unglazed, with wooden shutters Wooden doors were often heavily constructed , particularly external doors. One form was cross- planked, the outer face consisting of vertical planks with fillets to improve weather-proofing, and the inner face having horizontal planks. Internal doors would generally have been of lighter construction. Doors and shutters were typically hung on iron “strap” hinges and pintels.
- 3. At the core of the structure were a set – typically 4 or 5 in number - of heavy wooden trusses set in the walls and running up to the ridge of the roof. Some are “true crucks” where each half (blade) of the truss was cut from a single piece of timber – requiring a very big tree! True cruck – cut from a single piece of timber. The 1st truss - at the left hand of the model – represents a true cruck
- 4. To avoid the need for large single pieces of timber, many trusses were formed as “jointed-crucks” – each blade consisting of 2 pieces of timber, jointed and pegged, near the top of the main vertical walls The bottom end of the truss was set into the wall, and in some cases may have run all the way to ground level. The foot of the truss was typical set on a horizontal timber block
- 5. The truss incorporated a heavy horizontal collar, jointed and pegged to the main timbers, to prevent sagging and spreading under the weight of the roof Some trusses incorporate further arch-bracing below the collar to add further strength and stability. This also adds an attractive decorative feature. The model incorporates examples of typical arch-braced trusses to be found in Dunster.
- 6. Particularly in larger buildings, elegantly curved wind- braces were incorporated into the roof structure to stabilise against lengthways deflection (“racking”) of the structure. Some trusses were filled or “closed” (eg with wattle-and-daub) to form a partition between the main hall and other parts of the house.
- 7. When cutting and assembling trusses, carpenters made marks – often based on roman numerals, scored into the timbers to identify corresponding halves of a joint. Many examples of these are still visible in the roof timbers of Dunster houses.
- 8. Early Hall Houses did not have chimneys. The fire was burnt on a simple hearth in the middle of the hall floor, and the smoke got out through perhaps a small vent in the roof, or anywhere else it could! Smoke blackening on old roof timbers can still be seen in many Dunster houses. Fireplaces and external chimneys (“lateral stacks”) were added later, but probably not before a few serious house fires had happened!
- 9. Although most of the house was open from the floor right up to the roof ridge, there was typically a small 1st floor area (“solar”) to one side of the hall, used for sleeping. The solar is partitioned from the hall by filling the adjacent truss from floor to roof. The solar was accessed through a small doorway, via a simple ladder from the main hall. The picture below shows the original frame of a solar doorway, either side of later doorway on what is now a 1st floor. Note the 2 vertical pins (pintels) on which the solar door would have hung on simple strap hinges.