Early medieval building and homes?

[Parrot]

I am having a bit of a problem recently.  I am putting together some buildings, but I need some help with what they should look like.

My question is really how should buildings from the 1000s look different from those of later times 15-1600s.  It seems like it should be obvious, but to me it isn't for some reason.  If I try to make a dark age building, it never looks dark age to me, it always looks later.  What were the significant advances in building styles?  Timber and wattle and daub buildings seemed to be common in both eras, so I am confused right now.  I hope this makes some sense, its been bugging me for a while now.

[ItalicaAcies]

Well, the issue is that poors' houses are almost identical from ancient times to early renaissance, depending more on the geographical area, than period. For examples celtic not round huts are not so wrong in dark ages.

Then early medieval is a broad term. If you include IX-X century, most buildings are ruined and restaured roman buildings. Even Carolingian and Lombards were basically re-using them either en-bloc or as costrusction material source.

Here is a nice example: http://1stcorps.co.uk/product-category/other/dark-age/

I feel for the church is easier, just search for Romanic style churches and convents. For common people houses it's a matter of personal tastes.

I think this is the issue: https://goo.gl/images/z3BXNE

Of course it looks correct from X to XVI century (at least in Northern Europe).

[rampantlion]

If you are talking western Europe wouldn't a chimney be wrong for 1000 ad up to even 1200 ad or so?  Not sure, but this is what I do when looking for feudal era buildings.

[Codsticker]

The Perry's plastic cottage kit comes with a chimney if the building is for the 15thC on wards, with instructions to set it aside if for use before then if that is a helpful indication.

Well, the issue is that poors' houses are almost identical from ancient times to early renaissance, depending more on the geographical area, than period.

I remember looking through a book on Scotland and there was a picture from the late 19thC of some crofters from the hebrides beside their house: it was a single storey, low roof, stone building with a sod roof- it could have been a hobbit hole .

[katie]

There are actually locations to look at reconstructions -- or find photos online; In the UK there are several good destinations:

"Flag Fen" has a couple of Bronze and Iron Age buildings along with some original wood construction (2000 years old!!)

"Butser Ancient Farm" is a farm with recreated Iron Age, Roman and early Dark Age buildings. Iron age buildings are often round with very long roofs and low walls.

"West Stow" is a Dark Age 5th century village reconstruction. Wood, straw and mud construction. The buildings are mostly wood, large roofs again, but now full height walls.

"The Avoncroft Museum" has 19th and 20th century buildings of interest and some amazingly good condition rescued medieval buildings -- really nice gallery at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-12805618

"Weald and Downland Open Air Museum" has several buildings both of medieval recreation and restored rescues; the half timbering is now in its "classic" form with curved members and complex junctions. Buildings are multi-storey, walls are often stone-based.


And there is, of course, "Chateau de Guedelon" in France.


All of these sites are not only tourist attractions but also working experimental archeological research -- or (in the case of West Stow/Flag Fen), reconstructions on known sites. If you can visit it's worth it.

Based on visits to various of them, I'd agree that 1st Corp's stuff is good -- they have a dark age village and villagers to fit which are reasonably priced and good representations (although the buildings are a little heavy on the daub which was apparently only for the top-end residents). Adrian's Walls also looks right and are good models. (And Adrian's a nice bloke.)

The Perry cottage is nice, but it's definitely early or mid medieval rather than dark age -- see the sophistication of the timber framing on the gable. Compare with this image from West Stow --
 http://www.brillmusica.com/Other_Areas/Suffolk_Essex/23West_Stow_Anglo_Saxon_Village/slides/Anglo_Saxon_Village_14_038.jpg (This is the "Great Hall" -- the top-notch building of the settlement!)

The killer distinguishing feature of "dark age" is, I think, the huge thatched roofs with low eaves. If you have to duck under the eaves to go in, it's dark age. If the roof is so low the doorway cuts into it... it's either earlier or more northern. See this for doorway height --
 https://heritageaction.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/dsc_0061.jpg

And as ItalicaAcies says -- even when London was full of those two-storey half-timbers like Avoncraft has, Little-Pokey-on-the-Wold would have been half-a-dozen thatched sheds, so you can get away with being half a millennium out...

[tin shed gamer]

Hi Katie,
I've not come across daub having a link to status .Plaster and renders yes ,but daub is a structural element as well as a weather proofing for the wattle frame work which requires a similar substantial eve to that of a cobb wall.
If you could PM the source's I'd love to read them,as you learn something new everyday. It really would be helpful,(I make alot of museum and archeological display models. If this is a new theory then I've missed reading it a brief or more often than not someone's assumed I already know it! Because they've read it,and left it out.)

Katie has given some really good examples. To which I'd add Ryedale folk Museum,at Hutton le hole in Yorkshire They have a collection of buildings (some reconstructions and actual buildings moved to the site.)these range from Iron age to early 20th century. All are buildings which you can access.
Also The Yorkshire Farming museum, Murton near York. This is a bit of a hidden gem. As it has a full reconstruction of a Viking settlement on its original footprint.This again is a fully accessible site and often populated with re enactors who live in the building on selected weekends. It also has a beautiful tudor farm house.There is a small experiment being run allowing an Iron age round house to naturally weather away ( which is good to note how such buildings collapse from a modelling point of view) The Roman fort reconstruction can only be described a dreadful.

Mark.
( in fairness I should add the 1st corps sets,would be me.)

[levied troop]

If you can't visit then some of those sites will have useful guidebooks that may be available via post.  I picked up this book:
http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/archaeology/news-and-events/dept-news/visions-of-ancient-leicester

at the Richard III museum in Leicester and it has some excellent illustrations of how a city changed through a Roman to late Medieval times.  Even more useful were the illustrations of a single parish that possibly better fits what could be built on a Wargames table.  In essence the conclusions are as above, poor buildings can be 500 years 'out of date' and stone building elements get reused or added to from Roman times.

[julesav]

For Celtic 'round-houses' see here:

http://www.pembrokeshirecoast.org.uk/default.asp?PID=261

[sukhe_bator]

As well as developments in technology, mainly around cutting and dressing timber and an understanding of arches, there are national and regional styles, as well as a big difference between town and village buildings to consider.

Essentially though, I find the best way was to think from the inside out and provide a range of variants and then impose a regional building style on them.

The simplest dwellings would be one room cots/cottages, then two rooms, often divided by a passageway with livestock secure overnight and overwinter at one end and living quarters the other. The well to do would have had a similar 2 room building, but storage at one end and an open hall the other. Grander halls would have had a cellar or undercroft for storage, and a first floor entrance by means of a raised staircase.

Depending on the materials and attendant fire risk you might find a simple open hearth in the centre with a smoke hole for lower rooves, or just ventilating through the eaves with taller buildings.

As with any other building you can either choose to extend or convert. Often an upper floor was inserted either partially or wholly over the ground floor. Once this happened, smoke became an issue. A central hearth was gradually replaced by an extra smoke bay in the case of a timber framed building, or by an external stack.
Later, internal stacks were developed which supplied radiated heat to the whole house, upper and lower. This was usually situated just inside the living quarters end of a passageway house and the stack often used to support a staircase on one side to the upper floor.

For the longest time then, most houses large or small were simple rectangular layouts. either a rectangular frame or line of posts, or larger constructs with aisles. In the case of Germany, huge communal aisled halls were constructed well into the middle ages. The more interesting roof lines and jettied buildings were almost exclusively developed in more built up areas. This I find frustrating as a modeller, since most of the surviving buildings you see are much converted and extended survivors. Taken out of context they can look odd. Unfortunately, most of the commercially available resin and card buildings are urban ones.

Other means of extension were by adding wings at right angles at one or both ends, or by adding an outshot for extra services, like a staircase or larder/kitchen storerooms.

I find the best sources of buildings with medieval style floorplans in the UK are more isolated cottages and farm houses. Barring one or two more obvious looking conversions they retain their original plan free from the pressures of an urban envirnment.

I'd also add the Middelaldercentret in Denmark as an excellent source of archaeological and experimental reconstruction
http://www.middelaldercentret.dk/en

[katie]

"I've not come across daub having a link to status .Plaster and renders yes "

Ah, then I may well have misunderstood that what I'd read was about the latter when I thought it was the former.. it certainly wasn't a detailed analysis and I can't recall where I read it to check what it actually said. If you're making museum models, you definitely have a better understanding & better contacts than I do!

(I bought the 1st corps village set by the way -- it's very nice!)

[tin shed gamer]

Not to worry the geek in me was quite excited by the notion.

I'm glad you like farm set.The 'Church ' is a much more versatile building.Than Simon and Mick advertised it as. It can be configured as a church as an isled barn/grain store,an open fronted warehouse, also as a single story building and a barn/warehouse with an open plan ground floor.As all these late roman buildings had a very similar footprint and construction .


As for contacts ,I wouldn't count on it.They're a flakey bunch of bookworms and Agoraphobic's.One actually in all honesty asked me what the tool I was holding was and how it worked( I was holding a Philips Screwdriver)
Mark.