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Medieval Roofs with Base-Crucks and Short Principals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

N. W. Alcock  and
M. W. Barley
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Summary

This paper examines, from two points of view, a collection of some ninety buildings with base-cruck trusses, and a further group of related buildings, particularly those whose roof trusses incorporate short principals. Examination of the social status of the buildings shows that they belonged to a remarkably homogeneous section of feudal society, and their distribution can be explained largely in terms of the social connections of a class, with some further influence of local schools of carpentry. The typological development of base-crucks and short principals is traced from their twelfth- or thirteenth-century origins to a fifteenth-century devolution into various local sub-types.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 1972 , pp. 132 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1972

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References

page 132 note 1 xlix (1969), 346.

page 132 note 2 ‘Medieval Roofs: a Classification’, Arch. Journ. CXV (1958), 148Google Scholar, fig. 22. The term ‘base-cruck’ is used for the first time on p. 140. The new list has been compiled with the considerable and willing help of members of the Vernacular Architecture Group, to whom the authors are extremely grateful. We should particularly single out the contributions of J. M. Fletcher, S. R. Jones, and S. E. Rigold. The numbers identifying individual buildings refer to Appendices A and B (pp. 154 ff.), which include detailed references.

page 132 note 3 Fletcher, J. M., in Oxoniensia, xxxiii (1968), 71.Google Scholar

page 132 note 4 Smith, J. T., Arck. Journ. CXV (1958), 122.Google Scholar

page 134 note 1 A suggestion of F. W. B. Charles. For the significance of this setting, corresponding to the arcade plate of aisled halls, see Smith, J. T. in Arch. Journ. cxii (1955), 97–9Google Scholar; Ibid. cxv (1958), 111–49, passim.

page 134 note 2 Following S. E. Rigold, Ibid. cxxii (1965), III.

page 134 note 3 J. Harvey has suggested that Hugh Herland may have been consulted about the roof of Dartington Hall, and that of the roof of the guardroom in Lambeth Palace; English Medieval Architects (1954), pp. 129Google Scholar, 131; see also below, p. 136.

page 134 note 4 There is now the authority of N. Denholm-Young for the isolation of this class: see Country Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (1969), especially Ch. 1.

page 134 note 5 Horn, W. and Born, Ernest, The Barns of the Abbey of Beaulieu … (1965), p. 59.Google Scholar

page 135 note 1 Lives of the Berkeleys (ed. J., Maclean, 1883), i, 301–9, 326.Google Scholar

page 135 note 2 V.C.H. Gloucs. viii, 10Google Scholar.

page 135 note 3 Ibid. 8, 9, 20.

page 135 note 4 We owe to Mr. C. R. Elrington the information that Brockworth Court belonged to Llanthony Secunda, near Gloucester.

page 135 note 5 Feudal Aids, ii, 254, 268, 292; information from C. R. Elrington.

page 135 note 6 Ex. inf. Dr. A. Rogers.

page 135 note 7 With base-crucks or short principals; there are no barns with short principals.

page 135 note 8 Emery, A., Dartington Hall (1970), pp. 95–8.Google Scholar

page 136 note 1 Emery, pp. 142–5; roofs of entrance block, 166–8; roof over second-floor chamber of lower residential block, 162–3; original roof of hall, 241.

page 136 note 2 V.C.H. Berks, iii, 139Google Scholar; Med. Arch. xiii (1969), 222, fig. 66Google Scholar.

page 136 note 3 J. Harvey, op. cit., p. 143.

page 136 note 4 Complete Peerage, iii, 345 (where it is stated that he put a new roof on Cooling Castle); Pat. R. 1385–9, p. 103; Salzman, , Building in England down to 1540 (1952), pp. 461–2Google Scholar; C. Hussey in Country Life, 4 and 11 February, 1944.

page 136 note 5 By S. E. Rigold.

page 136 note 6 Thorpeacre is virtually identical in most details of construction with Bathley (53) which certainly had only one aisle originally. This casts doubt on the interpretation of Thorpeacre in Med. Arch. xii (1968), 152Google Scholar, as having had two aisles originally, making it 31 feet wide, and so likely to have been built as a barn.

page 137 note 1 Cave-Brown, J., Lambeth Palace and its Associations (1882), pp. 113–14Google Scholar; J. Harvey, op. cit., p. 131.

page 137 note 2 By Tonkin, J. W., in Vernacular Architecture, i (1970), 8.Google Scholar

page 137 note 3 Thoroton, Nottinghamshire (1677), p. 349. Rufford Abbey had land in Bathley, but the nearest grange identified in the cartulary lay at Park Leys, 2 1/2 m. to the south-east. Dale Abbey, Derbyshire, certainly had a grange at Bathley (Saltman, A., Cartulary of Dale Abbey (1967), p. 236)Google Scholar; it seems to be identical with Grange Farm or Corporation Farm, 300 yards east of The Hollies, and part of the endowment of Magnus Grammar School, Newark on Trent; it was sold by the Corporation of Newark, c. 1914.

page 138 note 1 Arch. Journ. cxii (1958), 91.Google Scholar

page 138 note 2 Dr. Kathleen Major kindly contributes the following note: The dean and chapter of Lincoln seem to have had very little land round the Minster at the time of the transfer of the see from Dorchester, c. 1072. William I's charter (Registrum Antiquissimum, ed. C. W. Foster, no. 2) speaks of Terram ab omnibus solutam et quietam sufficienter dedisse ad construendam matrem ecclesiam totius episcopatus et eiusdem officinas. This latter term I take to mean cloisters or chapter house, etc. There is no evidence that the area of the atrium was extensive. No dignitary had a house attached to his office, on any sure evidence until Richard Fitz Neal, coming to Lincoln in 1184 found himself without a habitation and, taking this ill, set about supplying the lack, bought a house, rebuilt it, and gave it to the deanery for ever (Reg. Ant., no. 990).

In the course of the thirteenth century canons who had provided themselves with houses began in some cases to give these to the chapter, subject to their own residence in their lifetime, or gave their executors freedom to dispose of them: increasingly the chapter began to buy them in, until by 1300 they had most of the property within the close wall which they obtained licence to build in 1285. It is not yet clear who owned the house now known as Deloraine Court in the twelfth century, but it may safely be said that the chapter did not: it may have been one of the tenements of the Chancellor whose fee included All Saints in the Bail, just to the south of Deloraine Court.

page 138 note 3 See Roskell, J. T., ‘Roger Flore of Oakham’, Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. XXXIII (1957), 37.Google Scholar The house has recently been surveyed, and the details of design are compatible with a date of c. 1375.

page 139 note 1 Billson, C. J., Medieval Leicester (1920), p. 57.Google Scholar

page 139 note 2 See, for instance, Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi, York (Surtees Soc. lix), passim; Thompson, P., History and Antiquities of Boston (1856), pp. 115–17.Google Scholar

page 139 note 3 Antiq. Journ. xlix (1969), 357.Google Scholar

page 139 note 4 W. Horn and E. Born, The Barns of the Abbey of Beaulieu…, pp. 55–7.

page 140 note 1 Distribution map by Smith, J. T. in Arch. Journ. CXV (1958), 139.Google Scholar Recent discoveries have slightly extended the eastern limit (shown on fig. 1) without altering the weight of distribution.

Although we have here indicated adherence to J. T. Smith's theory for the origin of cruck construction in Britain, it would seem wise, pending the discovery of better and more direct archaeological evidence for it, not to overlook the implications of an alternative view, that the cruck system evolved in the Conquest period and in the western half of England. By either theory, these early examples of base-cruck construction would have the same significance.

page 140 note 2 Fletcher, J. M. and Spokes, P. S., ‘The Origin and Development of Crown-Post Roofs’, Med. Arch. viii (1964), 160 ff.Google Scholar

page 141 note 1 To this list must be added the barn at Siddington, Glos., recently discovered by C. A. Hewett, which has parallel rafters and straight braces, and uses some notched lap-joints. Doubt has been cast on the documentary date of Frocester by radio-carbon measurements which indicate a fifteenth-century date for much of the timber. However, one base-cruck blade has given a date consistent with the documentation, and this and the typology suggest what is assumed here, that the fifteenth-century work left the original design broadly unaltered.

page 142 note 1 Charles, F. W. B., Medieval Cruck Building, 1967, p. 36.Google Scholar

page 142 note 2 Hewett, C. A., ‘Structural Carpentry in Medieval Essex’, Med. Arch. vi–vii (1963), 240, fig. 85b.Google Scholar

page 142 note 3 In Leicestershire, Webster, V. R., Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. xxx (1954), 26.Google Scholar

page 143 note 1 Charles, op. cit., p. 38.

page 143 note 2 Fletcher, J. M., ‘Three Medieval Farmhouses in Harwell’, Berks. Arch. J. lxii (1965–6), 66Google Scholar; ‘Crucks in the West Berkshire and Oxford Region’, Oxoniensia, xxxiii (1968), 75.Google Scholar

page 143 note 3 Field, R. K., ‘Worcestershire Peasant Buildings’, Med. Arch. ix (1965), 109.Google Scholar

page 143 note 4 Innocent, C. F., The Development of English Building Construction, 1961, p. 20.Google Scholar

page 143 note 5 The stone Irish chapels that may be interpreted as skeuomorphs of cruck structures (F. W. B. Charles, op. cit., p. 14) must be treated with great caution as evidence.

page 145 note 1 O'Neill, B. H. St. J., ‘Some Seventeenth-Century Houses in Great Yarmouth’, Archaeologia, xcv, 141Google Scholar.

page 145 note 2 This is also supported by evidence discussed below concerning the use of the double tie.

page 145 note 3 Bishop's Clyst has been dated to the first quarter of the fourteenth century, but seen in relation to the other base-cruck buildings, its unusual features make the late thirteenth not unlikely (plausibly shortly after 1276, when the bishops of Exeter acquired the manor). The treatment of the upper purlins is identical to that at Frocester (built between 1284 and 1306) while queen posts, not found in any other base-cruck roofs, occur in thirteenth- rather than fourteenth-century contexts. (Fletcher and Spokes, op. cit. 164.)

page 146 note 1 Jones, S. R. and Smith, J. T., Med. Arch. ix (1964), 109.Google Scholar

page 146 note 2 The roof of the upper chamber here is also a base-cruck although, with a span of only 13 ft. 6 in., it was obviously used for the sake of its similarity to the hall roof, rather than for technical reasons.

page 147 note 1 Briefly discussed in Charles, op. cit., pp. 36, 41.

page 148 note 1 Smith, J. T., Arch. Journ. CXV (1958) p. 122.Google Scholar Short principal has also been used as equivalent to base-cruck (Fletcher, J. M., Berks. Arch. J. lxii (1965–6))Google Scholar, but it is more satisfactory to allow separate meanings to the two terms.

page 148 note 2 It should be noted that the collection of examples of this type may be very incomplete because it has not received the same critical attention as the base-cruck proper. Recent recognition of two examples in Northants (Drayton House, B14, and Yardley Hastings, B15) may throw light on the apparent absence of base-crucks in this area.

page 150 note 1 Smith, J. T., Arch. Journ. CXV (1958), p. 138.Google Scholar