The old oak houses of Weobley

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In the Herefordshire village of Weobley many of the beautiful old houses are fine examples of cruck frame construction methods, using green oak timbers. Roger Hunt describes the traditional skills involved in building houses that will last for 500 years and more.

One of the most sparsely populated counties in England, rural Herefordshire is famous for its apple and pear orchards and consequently its cider and perry making. The county is a varied landscape of fields and ancient woodland that stretches out towards the Welsh border in a comfortable patchwork, interwoven with rivers and streams.

Unsurprisingly for a county rich in timber, this was the material of choice for building. Timber framing abounds, not only in the historic market towns of Hereford, Leominster and Ledbury, but in the wealth of cottages, houses, inns and shops in the villages which pepper the countryside.

Many of these buildings date from the 16th and 17th centuries or earlier. What makes them stand out all the more is their striking ‘black and white’ appearance. This results from the tradition of colouring the timbers black and the panels in between white. As a result the buildings act as a dramatic foil to the pastoral landscape and nowhere is this decorative style more marked than in the village of Weobley, some ten miles south-west of Leominster, with views towards the beautiful Clee Hills.

Weobley, pronounced ‘Webley’, possibly derives its name from ‘Wibba’s Ley’, Wibba being a local Saxon landowner and ley a wooded glade. An abundance of striking medieval timber framed houses survive in the village and the black and white vernacular highlights the distinctive triangular cruck framing so it is clearly visible in many of the gable ends.

ABOVE (left-right): Grade II listed Stawne is a fine, late 16th-century village house; the church of St Peter and St Paul houses a monument to Colonel John Birch, a Roundhead commander during the Civil War and a Member of Parliament for Weobley from 1679 to his death in 1691; the village shops are strikingly attractive.

Cruck frame basics
The carpenters who built timber framed houses used unseasoned or ‘green’ oak as it was easiest to work and they selected trees specifically for the creation of individual parts of the frame depending on their height, girth and shape. This is particularly evident in cruck buildings, the most basic type of timber frame construction. These were formed using substantial trees whose trunks had a natural curve and the wood was either taken whole or cut into two matching halves to ensure symmetry. The broad ends of the resulting ‘blades’ would, in early times, have been rammed into the earth but later were mounted on a ‘sill’ beam resting on a low plinth of stone or brick. Forming an arch, the timbers were joined where they met at the apex of the roof. The same arrangement was repeated at intervals along the length of the building, creating what are known as ‘bays’ in between each pair of crucks. The timber joints were held in place with wooden pegs.

At first such houses had only one floor but later horizontal beams were introduced to span the distance between the crucks to support an upper storey. The walls between the beams were originally infilled with panels of wattle and daub – a lattice generally of hazel twigs covered in a mixture of wet clay and straw to bond – or later by lath and lime plaster or brick infills.

ABOVE (l-r): Many of the cruck-framed houses in Weobley have jetties or first floor overhangs – these were incorporated to increase living space without being taxed on downstairs square footage; the view of Weobley from the church tower.

Cruck framed buildings are found in most parts of the north, south-west and Midlands of England but surprisingly are not present in the eastern and south eastern lowlands of the country where other forms of timber framing do, nonetheless, exist. Originally the infill panels and the timbers were left to weather naturally or were given a coat of limewash, often tinted with natural pigments, such as ox blood. The idea of blackening the exposed beams to contrast with white limewashed panels appears to be recent, probably beginning as a fashion in Victorian times following the introduction of tar and pitch, distilled from coal. More recently, inappropriate gloss paint has often been used.

The distinctive ‘black and white’ look is characteristic of north-west Herefordshire and may have evolved from a wish to protect the timber from the weather or in part to emphasise the intricate patterns of the timber frame. To help visitors on their quest, Visit Herefordshire has established a signposted, 40 mile circular trail that runs from Leominster via Weobley and ending at Eardisland. Some homeowners are now reverting to letting the exposed timbers weather naturally while painting the panels in soft earth tones of limewash, but the majority of houses remain staunchly black and white.

ABOVE (l-r): The Ley, built in 1589, is Grade I listed and one of the finest buildings in Weobley; the beautiful Herefordshire landscape.

Village highlights
Standing above the timber buildings to one end of Weobley is the tall, 14th-century spire of the stone church of St Peter and St Paul. Although the church was restored in Victorian times some features remain from the Norman era including the south doorway. Among the monuments is a marble statue in honour of Colonel John Birch, a Parliamentary officer who quarrelled with Cromwell and afterwards claimed to have been imprisoned at least 20 times. Having served as a Member of Parliament, he died in 1691.

In the Saxon period it is known that brewing and glove making were carried out in Weobley. In the later medieval, Tudor and Stuart periods it appears to have been a prosperous place with a village market in Broad Street where there was a market hall until it was pulled down in the 19th century. A bakery and mansion house within the marketplace were destroyed by fire in 1943.

Timber framed buildings of note include the Old Grammar School, which was founded in 1659. The Unicorn Inn once sold its own cider while the Red Lion is a good example of cruck framing. The house known as The Throne takes its name from the fact that King Charles I was supposed to have stayed there on 5 September 1645; an inscription found in the fireplace states that the house was built in 1599. A short walk just outside the village stands a farmhouse, The Ley. Grade I listed, it was built in 1589 and is probably Weobley’s finest house.

Visit Roger Hunt's website at huntwriter.com

WORDS ROGER HUNT PHOTOGRAPHS HUGH PALMER (COURTESY OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL VILLAGES OF ENGLAND); VISITHEREFORDSHIRE.CO.UK
Featured in the May 2011 issue of Period Living