From: "nightjar" .uk.com>
Newsgroups: alt.architecture alt.building.construction alt.building.realestate misc.consumers.house uk.d-i-y
Subject: Re: What's This Board?
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 16:18:43 +0100


"The Natural Philosopher"  wrote in message
news:cb8sq6$nae$1$830fa79d@news.demon.co.uk...
> Mark & Shauna wrote:
>
> > Its called half-timbering. It comes from the way tudor homes were really
> > built in the days of old. The space between the structural timbers were
> > infilled with masonry. In todays more efficient construction they have
> > just become a decorative element to copy the design.
> >
> No, they weren't infilled with masonry. They were in filed with wattle
> panels which were then daubed.

The support for the plaster could also be laths slotted into the frames.

> A few house were uprated to use the (impossible expensive) bricks in
> Stewart times IIRC, but if you could afford brick or masonry, you didn't
> build in the shoddy and vernacular oak frame, by and large.

By and large, people used the construction materials that were to hand. If
that was timber, they built in timber and even if it wasn't, they might
still build in timber - for example Nonesuch House, shipped from Holland as
a pre-fab and erected on London Bridge in 1577. When the rich built in
timber they simply demonstrated their wealth by having the timbers close
together, by decorating them extensively and, as with an Elizabethan mansion
in Crutched Friars, by using lots of very expensive glass.

Colin Bignell