Keith
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Keith
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Ok, could be many things in 380 years. But is any explanation more likely than random hammer blows or kids' games? Thanks!
Cubist
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Other than a bored apprentice with idle hands or kicking his heels then the only thing that comes to mind is the bruises I inflicted on the underside of a piece of timber I laid on a concrete path before hammering a tenon into it.
Frankly I'm more intrigues by the mortice and nearby repairs on that timbers underside?
Frankly I'm more intrigues by the mortice and nearby repairs on that timbers underside?
Keith
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Complicated... the bressummer is thought to be a part of a moved (when?) truss and it's about 30 cm in front of a 1640s Inglenook fireplace. The mortice to my untutored eye might have been part of a 1860s interior curtain wall separating the house interior from the newly nonfunctional fireplace. It had been replaced by the still existing cast iron range on first floor. The 1860s folk were quicker than me to realise that warming 100 tons of fireplace+wall from maybe 7C to 17C, for comfort, took a lot of kwh or coal.
Cubist
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We're out in the sticks and rely still using hardwoods to heat this place. The old Esse range that came with the place soon bit the dust and was replaced with a then modern high output wood-burner to drive the CH system and backed up with a smaller capacity/output model to provide point heating. Both do an excellent job and we have little to complain about them other than the need to lug the needed circa 16 tons of firewood from the store each year, and of course replenish the same. Ah well, it keeps you fit.... the First Lady keeps telling me, but I just can't get that old song, "16 Tons and deeper in..." out of my head - though that doesn't quite chime as for most of our time here the wood has come directly from the land. I can say though that its true - wood can and does warm some of us more than once.
Keith
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Sounds idyllic, Cubist. You might want to look at the photos in the related thread I just started, 'Inglenook fireplace, blocked, cold'. Despite that title we of course love the fireplace. The beam with mortice is in the new photo.
Cubist
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In many, many, many respects it is but it has its sour moments too... like that recent snowfall that brought down half a dozen of my favourite trees... but they will end up adding fuel to the fire in a year or so and most will also grow back to their prior scale and beauty.
The brick openings don’t shout 17c in terms of style at all, probably at least a century later into the Georgians time.
I also wouldn’t call that timber a bressumer, unless there’s an earlier full width inglenook hiding being what you can see. What do the ends of the timber do? How about hearth clues on the floor?
It looks more of a structural tie beam. The mortice has no peg hole, so not a major structural element below, partition post quite possible. Is it the only mortice? Seems lonely.
The other alternative, is the timber is a repurposed spine beam, spun 90deg and that’s a pocket for a tusk tenoned joist. But then they would be present every 300-400mm or so. What’s the cross section size of the timber?