dolls house source information building a tudor house

Tudor Architecture

The frame of a Tudor house varied, depending on the style and the cost of the house to be produced.

A cruck frame was the cheapest way to construct a dwelling. A tree was found with a strong outgrowing branch. All other branches would be pared off and the tree spliced in two longways. The trunk and branch would be turned upside down to form an inverted “V” shape with one half of the tree at each end of the house. A ridge rafter joined the two together.

A box frame was more expensive. A wooden, rectangular box shape was made with four pieces of wood and a triangular frame perched on top. They would be constructed on top of stone, brick or rubble foundations. The timber joined would be fixed in place with oak pegs. Sometimes the upstairs floors might jut out over the ground floor to increase the floor space in the upstairs rooms. If the owner was wealthy, he may display his wealth by decorating and carving the exposed beams. If the owners were poor, it was unlikely that they would have more than two floors, They would be no carvings or decorations on the overhanging beams.

Any spaces between the boards of the frame would be filled with studs leaving spaces for the windows and the doors. Gaps between studs would be filled with stone or brick for the wealthy, or in areas of the country where rock was easy to come by. Wattle and daub was more common. Wattles were vertical stakes with thin branches woven between them to form a primitive chicken wire effect. Daub, made from clay, mud or plaster mixed with straw was then stuck over the mesh framework.

In the western counties of England the exposed wooden timbers were painted with tar to protect them from the weather. The wattle and daub parts were painted white ( and might have been quite pale anyway as the daub often contained lime) The black and white paint served to protect the house from the elements and also gave the distinctive black and white colours associated with Tudor buildings.

The roves were thatched or covered in slates. Inside the houses the walls might be panelled with wood, arranged decoratively for the wealthy and functionally for the less well off. In wealthy homes the rafters might be concealed from view with decorative plaster work.

The poorer people could not afford wattle and daub and timber housing so they lived in houses made of cob. Cob was made from mud, lime and straw. The walls were often protected with white, yellow or pink pain and this can still be seen today in some counties in south west England. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, stone became more popular for building medium sized homes, particularly in areas where wood was hard to come by