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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
The use of pairs of straight or curved timbcrs to support the ridge-pole of a primitive Td welling affords one of the most fundamental of all house types. In England, Scotland and Wales, it developed into the complex cruck framework which, although it has many close analogies in north-western Europe, is a unique feature of peasant architecture, Detailed studies of the cruck buildings of northern England have been made by Addy (1), Innocent (2) and, more recently, by the writer of the present paper (3)) whilst Sigurd Erixon has published an excellent comparative study of analagous types (4). The object of this paper is primarily to trace the evolutionary stages through which the cruck building and its allied forms passed.
1 Addy, S. O., The Evolution of the English House, 1910.
2 Innocent, C. F., The Development of English Building Construction, 1916.
3 Walton, James, ‘Cruck-Framed Buildings in Yorkshire’, in The Yorkshire Archaeological journal, vol. XXXVII, 1948, pp. 49-66.
4 Erixon, Sigurd, ‘Some Primitive Constructions and Types of Lay-out with their Relation to European Rural Building Practice’, in Folkliv, 1937, pp. 124-55.
5 Erixon, Sigurd, op. cit. pp. 138-42.
6 Hartley, D. and Elliot, M. M., Life and Work of the People of England in the Fourteenth Century, 1925, pl. 26 f.
7 Addy, S. O., op. cit., Revised Edition, 1933, p. 42.
8 Innocent, C. F., op. cit. p. 23.
9 Grey, James, Sutherland and Caithness in Saga Time, p. 132. (I am indebted to Mr L. R. A. Grove for this reference).
10 Walton, James, Homesteads of the Yorkshire Dales, 1947, p. 18.
11 Innocent, C. F., op. cit. p. 24.
12 Jones, S. R., Old Houses in Holland, p. 116.
13 Vreim, Halvor, ‘The Ancient Settlements in Finnmark, Norway’, in Folkliv, 1937, p. 194.
14 Collingwood, W. G., Angles, Danes and Norse in the District of Huddersfield, 1929, p. 32.
15 Walton, James, ‘Hogback Tombstones and the Homes of the Vikings’, in The Quarry Managers’ Journal, 1946, pp. 201-5.
16 Addy, S. O., op. cit. p. 43.
17 Lloyd, Nathaniel, A History of the English House, p. 10.
18 Fleure, H. J., and Dunlop, M, ‘Glendarragh Circle and Alignments, The Braaid, Isle of Man’, in The Antiquaries Journal, vol. XXII, 1942, pp. 39-53.
19 Williams, W., Hynafiaethau a Thraddodiadau Plwyf Llanberis a’r Amgylchoedd, 1892, p. 66.
20 Atkinson, J. C., Forty Years in a Moorland Parish, 1907, p. 25.
21 I am very much indebted to Mr N. A. Hudleston for information on the Cheshire examples.
22 Innocent, C. F., op. cit. pp. 50-1.
23 Erixon, Sigurd, op. cit. p. 142.
24 Batsford, H., and Fry, C, The English Cottage, 1938, p. 16.
25 In a letter to the author from Mr R. J. A. Bunnett, dated 22 April 1948.
26 Hallam, Thomas, English Dialect Society Trans., 1882.
