In two phases, (between about 1350-1500, and again between 1550-1650), virtually all domestic buildings in Southern England were replaced. In Surrey this ‘Great Rebuilding’ saw houses of standard plan and structure built of the, at first, plentiful Wealden Oak. In the countryside the vast majority of these houses are still standing: in the towns, however, most have been demolished or drastically altered. Guildford is fortunate in having a large number of surviving timber-framed buildings mainly in Quarry Street, Chapel Street and the High Street. Many of these have simply been hidden behind a façade added in later years to ‘update’ them in what was then the fashionable style.
The standard later medieval plan for a farmer’s or yeoman’s house was essentially a large hall open to the roof with a central fire. The householder and his family would live in the parlour and the room above – the solar – at one end of the hall, with the pantry (for food) and the buttery (for drink) beyond the cross-passage at the other end. The servants would sleep in the room above the pantry and the buttery or in the hall itself. This open hall plan lasted until Elizabethan times when the second great phase of rebuilding saw the introduction of brick-built chimneys which made it possible to have an upper room above the hall as well. By about 1650 nearly all open halls had been floored over.
Houses in town centres however had to modify their plans because of the increasing pressure on space. At first it was possible to build parallel to the street but the sub-division of tenements meant that it became more convenient to build them at right angles to the frontage. This meant that the typical cross-passage of the hall house had now to run the length of the building - good surviving example of this is Milkhouse Gate. It is interesting to note in Guildford that while there are several houses parallel to the street in Quarry Street there are none on the High Street, reflecting the relative pressure on space. Town houses also had to make provision for shops and craftsmen’s workshops, and were often jettied out on the upper floors – perhaps for increased space but perhaps just as a fashion.
The dates of the surviving buildings can be ascertained roughly by the nature of the trusses used to frame the roof. These fall into four distinct periods, based on the type of purlin – the timbers running the length of the roof. The earliest form is the crown-post roof, dating from perhaps 1350-1500, where the crown-post supports a single purlin which in turn supports the collars which joint the pairs of rafters (see diagram) 92 High Street is an example of this. The next stage from about 1500-1550 was to have a purlin on either side of the roof with extra rigidity given by windbraces from the principal rafters. The purlins were mortised into the principal rafters in a straight line along the length of the roof. The Guildhall has a windbrace roof like this. From the mid 16th century the purlins began to be ‘clasped’ in other words, instead of being mortised into the principal rafters they were sandwiched between the rafter and the collar (later 16th century rafters began to be made narrower above the purlin). Many roofs of this date survive in the town, often associated with queen posts or struts, which support the collar from the tiebeam. The final phase from the earlier 17th century returns to the butting of the purlins into the principal rafters but this time not in line as before. This technique was used to the end of the timber-framing period and lasted well into the age of brick. The roof at Castle Arch (c.1630) has butted side purlins not in line. By this late period it was harder to obtain large timbers so generally speaking they are altogether less substantial than before and often the thickening of the top of the main posts the ‘jowl’ – is omitted so that the tie beam rests not on the post directly but on the wallplate which runs along the top of the outer wall.
From late Victorian times it has been fashionable in Guildford to build imitation timber-framed houses, and perhaps half the timber-framing visible on the High Street is fake. They can be detected by the way that the timbers are anything up to an inch proud of the filling between them and the projection of the pegs fastening them but above all by their regularity.
Guildford Museum, Castle Arch, Guildford, Surrey
(01483) 444750
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