ReInterpretation

Wharram Percy

Re-Interpretation of the Site

The two most striking results of the excavation on Sites 6 and 10 were:

the evidence suggesting that they were post & beam constructed
the evidence suggesting that the houses were rebuilt about every 35 years

Rebuilding the Houses

It would not be unusual to find house foundations re-oriented during a 400 year span. Wooden houses with thatch roofs would, of coures, decay and, when no longer habitable, might well be rebuilt and in a different orientation. Perhaps other buildings were built in the croft, so that the house would be more conveniently oriented E - W rather than the just previous N - S.

So, that fact alone was not troublesome to the Wharram archaeologists.

However, the evidence suggested that the houses hadn't merely been re-oriented; they had been constantly rebuilt. This suggested, first of all, that the houses were "flimsy" in their construction (otherwise, why did they have to be constantly rebuilt). Timber seems not to have been easily procured on the Wolds; perhaps, the peasants had to use small, weak timbers in their constructions?

Second, to rebuild a house -- even as something as basic as a peasant house -- requires what, today, would be called a considerable "infrastructure".

How, exactly, were the houses rebuilt?
Were their "teams of specialists" -- joiners, thatchers, blacksmiths -- who could be called upon to rebuild Old Mother Alison's house?
What did they charge and who paid for it.
Did rebuilding have to be approved of by the Lord of the Manor?
When -- in what month -- did they do such rebuilding?
How long did it take to rebuild a peasant house?
Did the whole village help?
What was the role of women in the process?

In a village of, say, 35 houses, one house would have to be rebuilt each year.

Post & Beam Construction

The original interpretation of both Site 10 and 6 -- based on the absence of padstones -- was that the peasant houses were constructed with post and beam method. In this method, the walls bear some of the weight of the roof. To construct (or, reconstruct) such buildings one would have to demolish the whole building and rebuild -- surely using timbers from the old structure.

Cruck Construction -- What Probably Happened

In the mid-1980s, led by Stuart Wrathmell, the evidence of the 1950s was re-examined. Wrathmell suggested that, as a matter of fact, padstones were visible in the foundations and that the houses were probably cruck constructed. Crucks bear the weight of the roof and the walls would be thin -- hardly more than baffles against the weather. To reconstruct cruck houses, one would tear down the thin walls, re-orient the cruck pairs and build new walls between them.

By seeing the peasant houses as cruck constructed -- not unknown in Yorkshire -- Wrathmell solved the problems of the flimsy walls and the pattern of rebuilding every 50 or so years.

Ken Tompkins
ken@odin.stockton.edu