Vernacular Architect 38

The author traces the antecedents of the concept of vernacular architecture to later-seventeenth-century Britain, when the educated classes first started to categorise the rest of society as an object of study. This interest was revived in the nineteenth century. It is argued that study of the vernacular reflects a stratified society, and that what remains problematic about the concept is that it may disguise the processes it purports to explain.

W G Hoskins's essay `The rebuilding of rural England: 1570--1640' (in Past & Present 4 (1953) ) sought to demonstrate a surge in building activity between 1570 and 1640 and to relate this to the replacement of the medieval open-hall house by the house with a continuous upper floor. This replacement was achieved either by rebuilding a new house substantially from the ground up or by the insertion of a floor in the open hall of an old house, both processes occurring during the same period. This thesis is tested against the results of recent tree-ring dating in Hampshire and, in conclusion, some suggestions are made for further research.

Close analysis of the timber-framed porch at Old Impton (Radnorshire) reveals a mid-sixteenth-century carpenter using a comprehensive repertoire of geometries.

The paper looks at the range of techniques available for building clay-walled houses. In some processes aggregates and fibrous material were added, in some the clay was made into blocks, some with and some without fibrous material. The difference between unfired and under-fired bricks is clarified. The author reiterates his argument that the clay lump process was introduced to Norfolk from Cambridgeshire in the nineteenth century, and is not part of a continuous Norfolk building tradition from the medieval period.

The paper applies the Bayesian approach for modelling chronologies to a `real world' problem of dating a phase of construction at Baguley Hall, Greater Manchester, where the potential for tree-ring dating is limited. Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates and tree-ring dating independently estimate construction of the north wing in the third quarter of the fifteenth century.