Medieval Village Houses Pack

[Claribel Szwaja]

Someof the highlights of the drive were the one lane country roads and the charming stone houses and barns that dotted the landscape. The fields were lush green- it actually rained a bit while we were in France and we were told it had been quite the rainy spring. Clearly the foliage and fields loved it with their vibrant colors. A favorite for me on the drive that day was driving through the tree lined streets and meeting a chicken that was literally crossing the road.

We explored and drive most of the day that first day on a mission to get up into the Southwestern regions of France where we were focusing our trip this time. As it got to be evening, we pulled over and looked for a place to stay that night and found a most incredible apartment in a medieval French village. We were not familiar with the village so it was perfect for exploring a new spot- we booked it and got on the road.

We stayed in a most delightful medieval village and in an apartment on the top floor of a village house. The apartment was such a beautiful place to stay. With big old beams, stone walls and so much charm- I was absolutely in love and while we were there, I was living my French village house dreams!

The owner of the apartment we stayed in was wonderful. She had lived in the U.S. for 40+ years and had recently moved back to her native France- and we chatted all about life in France and all of her tips. We really enjoyed meeting her and staying with her. I highly recommend a stop if you are in this part of France. Stay tuned for our next stop and the oops that came along with it. I will ask my husband to look up the name of where we stayed at share.

My Husband & I moved from the US 2.5 years ago to a very charming MEDIEVAL village in the Dordogne called Issigeac. I highly recommend that You visit it at some point. You will not be disappointed. I would send you pictures if you provide me a way of doing so! There is much to discover in this area and I would be so happy to share with you.

I love reading and seeing pictures of your trips. I will never get to go but enjoy seeing it through your pictures. I am a lover of French Country and have enjoyed redecorating our home recently. Thank you for sharing! I look forward to your post!! Linda

It used to be thought that only high-class houses had survived from the Medieval period. Radiocarbon and tree-ring dating has now revealed that thousands of ordinary Medieval homes are still standing in the English Midlands, many incorporated into des res village houses. Chris Catling reports on how some peasants lived very well in the Middle Ages.

Fifteen acres of arable land and pasture is just about enough to keep a family fed, and few peasant smallholdings exceeded 30 acres in extent up to the mid-14th century. One of the economic impacts of the Black Death and climate deterioration from the 1340s was to make more land available; population decline meant that those who survived were in demand as agricultural labourers, able to sell their services for hard cash, rather than land or kind. Peasant landholdings doubled in size in the period 1380 to 1540, enabling peasants to produce a surplus for sale in local markets. Many peasants were also able to supplement their income from pursuing such occupations as mining or fishing, or working as artisans or traders. Initially weak and vulnerable, surviving on a subsistence diet of very basic foods, peasants were increasingly able to afford better clothing, tools, utensils, and foodstuffs after the difficult decades of the mid-14th century.

This kind of circular argument, whereby if it survived it could not be a peasant house because peasant houses did not survive, has now been comprehensively undermined by a study initiated by the late Bob Laxton and continued by Nat Alcock, Robert Howard, Dan Miles, and Cliff Litton. Their Leverhulme-Trust-funded project set out to investigate cruck houses, and to provide more accurate dates for this type of early building.

Crucks of the matter

Cruck buildings, referred to in Medieval documents by the Latin word furcae (fork) are built around pairs of timbers (cruck blades) that extend from the ground all the way to the apex of the roof in a single sweep, forming an arch-like truss. Typically these are houses of three bays, with a truss at each end and two internal trusses. The central bay forms an open hall, without upper floor or chimney, recognisable today by the fact that the surviving roof timbers are covered in soot and tar deposits from smoke rising from a central hearth on the floor below. One of the side bays was used as a service space, while the other, the only one with an upper floor, reached by a ladder, provided rooms for sleeping.

Crucks are not the only structural form found in the Midlands. There are also aisled buildings, base crucks (in which the cruck blades only rise as far as a tie beam), and box-framed structures, but these are all minor components among the older timber buildings of the region. With 3,086 documented examples, crucks are by far the most common type to have survived. Plotted on a distribution map, cruck houses are mainly found in western Britain, and are completely absent from large parts of eastern Britain. This sharp boundary was recognised a long time ago, but has never been explained.

How they were built

The absence of the roof decoration and timber ornamentation seen in so many higher-status houses, their small floor area (881 sq ft on average), and the modest upper chambers, with low eaves and little headroom, all support this basic premise, as does the efficient use of fast-grown and immature timber that makes cruck construction such an economical form of house building. Only the eight cruck blades are constructed from tall, mature trees of at least 24 inches in diameter.

Early crucks used an entire tree of the right size and shape for each blade, trimming off all but one of the main branches, and using the surplus timber for making windbraces and arch braces, the components of the frame that make it rigid and stop the house falling over. This was soon superseded by the more economical alternative of sawing such a tree in two, creating a symmetrical pair of blades that together form an arch. A further 19 tall, straight, medium-sized trees are needed for the tie beams, wall plates, purlins, and ridges, and a further 60 trees of about 4 to 6 inches in diameter are needed for studs, rafters and internal walls, screens, and floorboards.

In all, 111 trees were consumed to build one of the houses studied at Mapledurham: 75 of which came from immature trees of 6in diameter or less, grown in woodland that produced tall, straight trees, 30 of which came from medium-sized woodland trees, and six of which came from large branching trees. By comparison, 332 trees went into the building of a similarly sized box-framed house constructed in Suffolk in 1500. And if 111 trees sounds a large number, Oliver Rackham, the expert on ancient woodland use, estimates that the Mapledurham house would have used the growth of 1.25 acres of woodland, and the oldest trees would have been about 50 years in age, the smallest about 10.

Prosperity amid crisis

What is especially surprising about these findings is that the main phase of new building in this sample of Midland buildings peaked during a period of severe economic recession, the evidence for which is visible to archaeologists in the form of abandoned or shrunken Medieval settlements all over the country. Until now we have thought of the period from 1380 to 1510 as one of crisis. Estimates of the size of the Medieval rural population in England put the number at 500,000 in 1100, rising to one million in 1300, falling back to half a million by 1400, and then remaining static until the 1540s.

This still begs the question of how the peasant could afford the specialist services of building craftsmen, but Professor Dyer points out that there was also an active credit market in many Medieval towns and villages: peasants could borrow money in the expectation that their investment in, say, a better plough would pay for itself in increased crop yields. The same argument applies to investment in buildings: livestock and grain kept indoors in good condition would fetch a better price. The better the buildings, the more able peasants were to pursue additional profitable activities, such as brewing and baking, or making butter and cheese to sell in local markets, or (as seems to be the case in the Midlands) to join the growing number of peasants who engaged in domestic textile production.

Most village houses would have been of a poor quality, not built to last. This is why we do not have many remains of this kind from the medieval period. Before the 13th century, most village cots (the houses of cottars, the poorest people in a village) would have consisted of only one room, around 5m x 3.5m in size. By the 13th century a room may have been added on, but no examples from this period survive. These houses were mostly built of timber and in-filled walls such as wattle and daub construction. If the wall-posts were set on flat slabs of stone as opposed to being put directly into the earth, they would last for about 50 years without rotting.

In wattle and daub construction, twigs of hazel, willow or cleft oak were intertwined and daubed on both sides with a muddy mixture of earth, chopped straw and dung, with chalk or lime added if available.

Hedges were an important resource in medieval Herefordshire. Hazel was a particularly useful source of wood, especially for peasants who did not often have (legal) access to managed woodlands. Hedgerow species can help us to interpret the age of the hedge.

The construction of a cot cannot be called timber frame, as the timbers were not worked into joints and the timber posts were rarely set in straight lines. In fact the lord of the manor kept the best wood for himself, so only inferior, slender posts would have been used. The result was flimsy and not very durable. The untreated wood would soon decay and the building collapse.

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