Posted by: Blog Administrator
on Apr 20, 2009
The last time I posted my blog I was exclaiming over a hidden gem here in the heart of Chippenham – a wonderful, possibly 14th century roof hidden away for many years and only recently brought to light. This time I have to say I’ve found another one in similar circumstances! A change of ownership of a cottage in Winterbourne Dauntsey near Salisbury necessitated a thorough going over by the various prodders and pokers of old buildings such as surveyors and architects. They broke through the ceiling to find a fragment of unique roof carpentry type hitherto unrecorded by us in Wiltshire and that is saying something, considering we have records of over 14,000 buildings! It is a two-tier cruck (the Rose and Crown used a single cruck) with the blades crossed over at the very top so that the top-most longitudinal timber, the ridge purlin, sat snugly in the angle. I had an enthusiastic student balancing precariously on some joists in amongst the soot-blackened thatch to draw it up this time so I didn’t look like Worzel Gummidge at the end of it. The roof would make a great candidate for our dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) project if we could see past the soot to make sure it’s of oak – the only timber that can be securely dated so far. If you want to see famous two-tier cruck roofs on a grand scale then visit the tithe barns at Glastonbury Abbey and Bradford-on-Avon. These roofs were chosen because they were the mediaeval answer to spanning wide buildings.
The unique apex cruck with crossed blades
The cottage was magically unspoilt – something that happens when a person lives in a house for so long they get used to it and never change it, or get too old to be bothered. In this case the interior survived the mania for flush-panelled doors and double glazing in the 20th century and kept its old planked doors hung on blacksmith-wrought iron strap hinges, and iron window casements as well as a host of other details normally swept away in the name of modernisation.
