– for example, Coningsby, Somersby (21) and Thimbleby (22). A similar form of construction is found on the Lancashire Plain, known as ‘clam-staff-and-daub’. Here, unlike the mud-and-stud buildings of Lincolnshire, which always incorporated a frame, the houses are generally of cruck construction, the walls being of clay stiffened with thin studs morticed to the wall-plate […]

each timber with cusps on both sides, was a common design followed for the next thirty or forty years by all manner of shaped infillings as they became more and more elaborate. Concave lozenges, cusped, concave-sided lozenges, stars, crosses, quatrefoils and many other highly decorative shapes were all found. A variant form, widely used in […]

elsewhere in the country (one notable example being Prinkhams, Chiddingstone, Kent). These somewhat rare examples in the South – East are not to be confused with the widespread practice in the region of applying a narrow moulded timber to the close-studded framework which also serves as a continuous window sill, as at Old Bell Farm, […]

and still survives on the gables at the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, York, and on the cross-wing to a contemporary cruck hall at 39-43 The Causeway, Steventon, Oxfordshire (13), a house probably dating from the mid-fourteenth century. However, by far the most common form was angle-bracing, of which there are two basic types: ‘arch­braces’ (12F) which […]

or in addition to the mortice-and-tenon joint universally used later, made necessary perhaps by the thickness of the braces. A further characteristic early feature is the use of ‘dragon ties’ joining the wall-plates on two adjoining walls to triangulate the framing on the horizontal plane. At first the framework had no angle bracing, the only […]