Full cruck buildings in Staffordshire have, so far, been dated rather later. Recorded by Dr Faith Cleverdon, Cheddleton Grange retains a cruck roof with a timber felled in 1499, The Black Swan in Leek still has two cruck trusses of 1512-37d, and there are crucks in the stone-walled Old School House in Ford, with a datestone of 1605. However, the clay dabbin with a single pair of crucks in Hall Farm, Moorhouse (Cumbria) was built c. 1742.
When the late architectural historian J. T. Smith gave a talk to this Society in the medieval hall of Tamworth Castle he inevitably employed technical language to describe the various structural parts of cruck trusses, including the terms ‘collar’ and ‘stud’; for the record, the former is a transverse timber connecting cruck blades or principals and the latter is a subsidiary vertical timber in a frame, but as one of our members questioned him about these terms she pointed to the neck of her shirt – one of my favourite memories of the early days of the society.
Originally nothing whatever to do with full crucks, base crucks are far less common, having generally but not exclusively been built for monastic or secular manorial clients. One of the best examples in the country is West Bromwich Manor House, which was in Staffordshire until it was subsumed into the West Midlands Metropolitan Borough Council, but thanks to that authority it has been refurbished as a museum. The Manor House was the subject of one of the most detailed reports in print on any such building, written and illustrated by a great friend of J. T. Smith, the late S. R. Jones who, without the benefit of tree-ring dating, attributed the hall on stylistic grounds to c.1320 (our Transactions 17, 1975-6). It has recently been tree-ring dated to 1270-88d, making it one of the oldest and best-preserved domestic base crucks in the country. Currently recognised as the oldest aisled and base cruck stone barn, Siddington Barn has stood in Gloucestershire since 1245-7d. The survival of these two buildings is a remarkable conservation success story, in marked contrast to the notorious case of Handsacre Hall, which ‘collapsed by vandal action’ in 1972 (Transactions 15, 1974). The fragmented remains were removed to Avoncroft Museum, where, in the absence of sufficient resources, the timbers have by now decayed beyond repair. Tree-ring dating of some of these timbers has since shown that the base cruck hall was built with timber felled between 1306 and 1326, but that was a reconstruction of what was originally an aisled hall. As understood from known tree-ring dates, remarkably few such early domestic aisled halls now survive – Leicester Castle (1120d), Fyfield Hall (Essex) (1167-85d), the roof of the Bishop’s Palace in Hereford (1179d), an arcade post in Farnham Castle (Surrey) (1180+d), Oakham Castle hall (1180s) and Burmington Manor (Warks) (1194-5d). The aisled portions of the hall at Handsacre were dated to 1160-95d.
If you want to know which buildings in Staffordshire have been tree-ring dated, where they are, and how old they are, go to Vernacular Architecture Group then follow the link via Bibliography and Databases to Tables of tree-ring dated buildings in England and Wales.
For the most up-to-date overview on cruck-framed buildings, a generous present to yourself or a loved one would be the lavishly presented and highly authoritative book edited by N. Alcock, P.S.Barnwell and Martin Cherry – Cruck building: a survey, Rewley House Studies in the Historic Environment, 11. (Shaun Tyas, 2019). ISBN 978-1-907730-79-5. Price £50 + postage, available from the publisher at 1, High Street, Donington, Lincolnshire PE11 4TA).
Bob Meeson
