Herefordshire Through Time
Herefordshire Through Time
Houses in the central and eastern parts of Herefordshire were often built with a timber frame, usually of oak but sometimes of elm wood. Oak trees were plentiful in the county and their wood was not only used for the frames of houses, but also for fittings and furnishings. Even the bark was useful for tanneries. The wych elm tree was preferred for wood exposed to damp conditions as it is more water resilient than the oak. It was therefore used for water pipes and pumps, but also when very long beams were necessary, as it grew taller than the oak tree. One historian believes that a 90 foot long beam used in the construction of Upper Cross, Ledbury was of elm wood.
The use of timber declined from the 17th century onwards, partly because of the demand for oak in the ship-building industry and partly because the number of oak trees had been depleted by over-use in the preceding century.
Different types of material were used for the infill panels between the timber posts, such as stone rubble or brick. The most popular, however, was wattle and daub. Twigs of hazel, willow or cleft oak were woven together and daubed on both sides with a muddy mixture of earth, chopped straw and dung. If the completed panel is lime-washed and properly maintained, it will last indefinitely. Sometimes barns and other outbuildings used woven twigs without the daub as infill.
Broom, rushes and straw from cereal crops were used for thatching roofs. Already in the Middle Ages town dwellers were discouraged from using thatch because of the fire hazard. However, in rural areas many houses would have been thatched, depending on the part of the county and the resources available there. It is said that in the 19th century all the cottages in Eyton were thatched. Today there are only a handful of thatched cottages in this area.
In the south-western parts of the county, where a suitable stone, such as laminated rock, is available for making roof slates or tiles, thatch is less frequently found.
As far as stone is concerned, much of Herefordshire is composed of Red Sandstone and this has been used extensively by the building trade. This type of stone, however, does not weather well and care must be taken in its use. The Malverns are formed of pre-Cambrian rock, which is used in walls as far as Ledbury, and is especially useful in road building. Silurian rock, such as the Wenlock limestone, is also quite plentiful in parts of Herefordshire and was used in buildings such as St.Katherine's Hospital at Ledbury. In the north of the county, Downtown Castle sandstone provided an excellent building material. This buff-coloured sandstone, for example, was used for the construction of Downton Castle and parts of Croft Castle.
In the west of the county suitable timber was not always available and stone was used for most construction work. The Dittonian rock here was a useful source of flagstones and roof tiles in a damp area where thatch would have rotted.
Bricks became a popular building material from the Tudor period onwards. Initially bricks were used for the construction of chimneys. A 1467 regulation to prevent fires from spreading demands that either bricks or stone are used to build chimneys: "No Chimneys of tre be suffered buyt that the owners make hem of bryke or stone".
Parts of Herefordshire are blessed with the Downtonian red marl, which is an excellent material for the making of bricks. There used to be brick works at Hereford, Holmer, Grafton, Ledbury, Pontrilas, Leominster and Bromyard. Often bricks were made and burnt on the building site. Tudor bricks were not as thick as modern ones. A good example is the brickwork in Hereford's Mansion House, (now Black's in Widemarsh Street).
However, sometimes one can find bricks of a much larger than normal size. Some of the bricks used in the headmaster's house at Ledbury Grammar School, for example, are twice the normal size. It is said that these were made at Colwall at a time when there was a tax on bricks. From 1784 to 1850 property owners were taxed according to the number of bricks used in their building. The size of individual bricks was therefore increased.
Two hundred and fifty-one brickworks are listed on the Historic Environment Record database.
Brick became very fashionable in the 18th century, when many country houses were built using bricks. Sometimes timber-framed houses were re-fronted with bricks, especially in the towns. Wattle and daub panels too were sometimes replaced with brick panels, despite the fact that some experts think that brick is too heavy, tends to hold the damp and is a poor insulator.
Lime was an important ingredient in mortar and was obtained from limestone. Remains of lime kilns where the lime was burnt can still be seen in Herefordshire. Virginia Morgan has written an informative article on lime kilns in Walford, near Ross-on-Wye. These and other lime kilns are listed on the Historic Environment Record database. One interesting entry is number 21757, a lime kiln near Ledbury, as the Ledbury enclosure award names field number 1569 as Lime Kiln Field.
Limewash (lime diluted with water) was also used for painting buildings. When the limewash was wet it easily filled all the gaps and crevices and when it dried it turned back into calcium carbonate. Tudor people believed that limewashing a house would keep out the vapours carrying disease. This procedure would weatherproof the walls, although it left both the timber and the panels looking uniformly yellow- or ochre-coloured. This leads us to the question:
No. There is no evidence that timbers were blackened before the 19th century. When the timbers were left unpainted (as would mostly be the case) they turned a silvery-grey colour. If the timbers were painted to emphasise the pattern, an earth-red or ochre colour was probably used. The panels, too, were unlike the ones we usually see today. As they were painted with limewash, the resulting colour would have been dependent on the impurities of the particular limewash. Often the panels were a yellow or ochre colour. Sometimes sand was added to the limewash, which led to a pink colour.
[Original author: Toria Forsyth-Moser, 2003]