What's in a name? by TheLocalismRoadshow

NUMBER 55 SPRING 2014

Liam Kelly Building a Playground in Belize David Leviatin What’s in a name? Paul Snell Pencil Pencil. Sharpen Sharpen Rediscovering Cecil Hewett Stan Watson Getting Your Waterstone Back in Shape

W h a t ’s in a na me? David Leviatin

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. Juliet, Act II Scene 2 Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare Who Are Ya! Who Are Ya! Who Are Ya! Who Are Ya! Arsenal Football Club Chant When someone I don’t know asks me what I do, I either say, I am a timber framer or that, I repair and build timber frames. Depending on the background of the person asking, I usually get one of the following responses. 1. Polite and clueless: Oh right, that sounds interesting. 2. Clueless and curious: Oh right, that sounds interesting. What does that mean? 3. Polite and clued-in: Oh right, that sounds interesting; are you an architect? 4. Clued-in and to the point: Oh right, you’re a chippy. Not too long ago, we were just carpenters. Very much like the all-rounders described in 1937 by Walter Rose in his book, The Village Carpenter. Then all of a sudden and relatively recently a number of us became timber framers and the work we do became timber framing. How did this happen, when and why? After making my way through the pages of historic building contracts in Appendix B of L.F. Salzman’s 1952 book, Building in England Down to 1540: A Documentary History, I never found any reference to timber framers or timber frames. What I did find were clients requesting carpentarius, carpentaruium, carpentarios, citeseyn & carpent’ de Loundres, carpentere, charpenter and carpenters to build them: halls, chambers, solars, stables, shops, houses, wharfs, gatehouses, gaols, chapels, water-mills, buildings, roofs, windmills, inns, floors, almshouses, bridges, stairs, doors, windows, quire-stalls, rood-lofts and weirs… Not until 1855 could I find a reference to a carpenter as a framer. The poet Walt Whitman, whose father Walt Sr. was a house carpenter, used the term framer in the first edition of his poem Leaves of Grass: Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house, Putting higher claims for him there with his rolled-up sleeves Driving the mallet and chisel… Aside from the reference noted above by one of America’s most unabashed poets of democracy

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(whose choice of words was more than likely designed to highlight the common work of a house-building carpenter by using the terms more often associated with the loftier business of nation-building undertaken by the framers of the United States Constitution), that is all I could find of carpenters being referred to as framers, let alone timber framers, until the early 1980s. As for the terms frame and framing and the later ones timber frame and timber framing there is much more to consider, and what one finds is a bit confusing given that the recorded references to these words come from a variety of observers (historians, architects, engineers, builders, enthusiasts) over a long period of time and, despite sharing the same English language, tend to reflect the many cultural differences between the old and the new sides of the Atlantic. In consulting the Oxford English Dictionary, one does find that the words frame and framing are generally used to describe the concepts of fashioning, constructing, contriving, making, inventing, preparing, shaping, fitting and composing. The terms were also used to describe being helpful, being profitable, making progress, preparing or making ready, to shape or give form to material. When frame is used in relation to timber, it has been used in the following ways: 1374 this timber is al redy up to frame. 1479 and when the tymber his hewyn and begon to frame. 1520 to square tymbre, frame and rere ony buyldynge. 1532 An agreement between Thomas Crumwell Maister and Thesaurer of or soveraigne Lorde the Kynges Juelles and James Nedeham Maister Carpenter for Nedeham to: workmanlie and substantialle make frame bielde and sett up oon frame of good substanciall and seasonable tymbre of woke… 1532 An agreement between Maister Thomas Cromwell Esquyer and treasorer of the Kynges Jewelles and Thomas Hall and John Kynge citizens and carpenters of London to: substancially and wirkemanly make frame and set up within the tower of London to and for the use of our said soveraigne Lorde the Kynge thre newe howses… 1542 it shalbe lawfull to erecte, make, frame and set up one good windemill. 1707 the carpenters work to hew the timber, saw it out, frame it, and set it together. As for the word framing, there are two mid-15th century references to the framynge of tymber and framyn tymbyr for howsys; the way in which the word is used, however, suggests that what is being described has more to do with preparing or squaring up timber than it does to the making of a timber building.

What we now call the framing In 1870, Sereno square – thought to have been Edwards Todd invented around 1814 (and published Todd’s patented in 1817) in Vermont by Country Homes and an enterprising blacksmith named How to Save Money: Silas Hawes who welded two old A Practical Book by saw blades together at a right angle a Practical Man. In – was around long before Hawes had Chapter VI, titled Barns his bright idea and it was not called and Out-Buildings, the framing square. On the long list of Todd uses the terms tools itemised in the Estate Inventory frame, framed and of Francis Eaton, a house-carpenter framing in explaining born in Bristol, England in 1596 Encyclopedie, Diderot, 1751 the Manner of Framing who sailed to New England with a Large Barn and the Pilgrims on the Mayflower in 1620 and remained in Framing Buildings by the Scribe or Square Rule. Plymouth, Massachusetts until his death in 1633, there is In 1909, Fred T. Hodgson published Light and Heavy recorded: 1 Iron square. Timber Framing Made Easy. An advertisement placed by a Connecticut carpenter As for describing buildings made of wood as frames or named Samuel Blin Jr. that appeared in the American as timbered, in 1817, a J. Bradbury, travelling in America’s Mercury on 12 January 1814 suggests that the concept of southern States noted that every planter is able to erect a framing had been adopted by new world carpenters but handsome frame-house. The description above appears that it was still being used to describe a craft technique in the OED with the definition for frame-house as a house rather than a building style. Blin proposed to open: a constructed with a wooden framework or skeleton covered school for teaching ancient and modern architecture, and with boards. the square rule of framing. As mentioned earlier, the balloon frame arrived in the In 1820, the engineer Thomas Tredgold published mid-west in the early 1830s and quickly put the older Elementary Principles of Carpentry: A Treatise on the Pressure and more labour-intensive types of house frames (the and Equilibrium of Timber Framing. This appears to be one braced-frame and the plank-frame) to the sword. In 1838, of the earliest published examples of the use of the term the architect Matthew Habershon published The Ancient timber framing. Half-Timbered Houses of England. And in 1887, an article In Civil Architecture, published in 1836, Edward Shaw in the Spectator noted: a master carpenter… lived in a has a chapter on Carpentry in which he has a section comfortable two-story frame-house. on Framing. Shaw wrote that framing was a mechanical In 1912, a Mr. Mcbride published The Half-Timber House: science divided into two principles – the Scribe and the Its Origin, Design, Modern Plan, and Construction. Square Rule. The Bedales Memorial Library in Hampshire, built in In Chicago in 1832, the future of both the scribe 1921 by Gimson, Barnsley and Lupton, is very clearly a and square rule of framing were seriously threatened timber frame building to all of us looking at it today but I by the arrival of an entirely new form of light-timber would be curious to know what it was called when it was construction derisively called balloon framing. Apparently, being built in the 1920s. the balloon frame got its name when one of a group of In 1951, F.H. Crossley published Timber Building in old-school carpenters watching a balloon frame being England and in 1955, J. Walton published an article titled built joked that it was too light and that it would certainly Early Timbered Buildings of the Huddersfield District. blow away. The title of Chapter XIII of L.F. Salzman’s 1952 book In his book Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth Building in England Down to 1540 is The Timber-Framed of a New Tradition, Sigfried Gideon notes that the House. This is perhaps one of the first times that the balloon frame was named, in contempt by those old fogey combined term timber-framed is used in a way with mechanics who had been brought up to rob a stick of timber which we would be familiar. of all its strength and durability, by cutting it full of mortices, 1952 was also the year in which the Vernacular tenons and auger holes, and then supposing it to be stronger Architecture Group was founded. The members of than a far lighter stick differently applied… this group, and other similar groups most notably the In 1859, William Bell, who described himself as an Wealden Building Study Group (1964) and the Essex architect and practical builder, published Carpentry Made Historic Buildings Group (1983), promoted the study of Easy or The Science and Art of Framing On a New and timber buildings overlooked by architectural historians; Improved System. With Specific Instructions for Building their work inspired the publication of numerous articles Balloon Frames, Barn Frames, Mill Frames, Warehouses, and books, in many of which the terms timber frame, Church Spires etc. timber frames and timber framed were used.

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In 1958, S.E. Rigold published an article titled The Timber-framed Buildings of Steventon, Berkshire. In 1959, Harry Forrester published The Timber-Framed Houses of Essex. This is probably the first book (a short one at 93 pages) to use the term timber-framed in its title. In 1964, R.T. Mason published Framed Buildings of the Weald. (Mason was described in 1977 by Roy Armstrong, founder of the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum as having been for many years the pioneer and lone worker in the study and systematic examination of timber-framed buildings…) In 1966, J.T. Smith, a founding member of the VAG, published an article titled Timber-framed Buildings in England. Another factor that played a role in the evolution of timber building terminology was the opening of Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings in 1967 and the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum in 1970. Both museums grew from their first exhibits: reconstructions of a pair of dismantled timber buildings. Avoncroft opened with its reconstruction of the Merchant’s House, a late 15th century timber building that was originally located on Worcester Street in Bromsgrove before it was taken down. The Weald and Downland opened with its reconstruction of Winkhurst, part of an early 16th century timber building originally located in the parish of Sundridge, Kent that was dismantled in 1968 to make way for the Bough Beech Reservoir and reconstructed on the Museum’s grounds in Singleton in 1969. Interestingly, both reconstructions were the work of a little known German refugee, perhaps the man we might want to consider to be the original timber framer. Born in 1915, just south of Frankfurt in Jugenheim, Germany, Gunolt Daniel Greiner left Germany to avoid serving in Hitler’s army and spent World War II as a refugee in an agricultural work camp in Avoncroft College in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. A woodcarver, Greiner first worked on repairing, reassembling and reerecting the Merchant’s House at Avoncroft (and also its watermill, the last working one in Birmingham) before moving on to the Weald and Downland, where he apparently arrived on site with his tent and mobile workshop. According to the historian Kim Leslie, the arrival of Greiner was a good omen because not only was he prepared to live and work on site much in line with the style of itinerant medieval craftsmen but Gunolt’s skills had already earned him a reputation as one of the last carpenters in the country with knowledge of medieval craftsmanship. While working at the Weald and Downland, Greiner helped train Roger Champion, who went on to become the Museum’s long standing carpenter-in-residence.

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The 1970s saw the publication of a number of studies focusing solely on timber buildings and the beginning of the widespread use of the terms timber frame, timber framed and timber frames. In 1971, R.W. Brunskill published Vernacular Architecture: An Illustrated Handbook. Brunskill was a student of R.A. Cordingley, a Professor of Architecture at the University of Manchester. In his British Historical Roof-Types And Their Members: A Classification, published in 1961, Cordingley begins his Classification by identifying: two carpentry systems… known respectively as the Box Frame and the Cruck. Cordingley then goes on to discuss the…cruck form of timber structure and the box-frame system of timber structure as well as, box frame roof types and cruck frame roof types. Cordingley does not use the terms timber frame, timber frames or timber framed. Ten years on, Brunskill devoted his attention to the last of what he identified as… the three main types of timber-based wall construction: horizontal log, post and plank and timber frame. In 1971, Trudy West published a book titled The Timber Frame House in England and in 1975, in his book English Vernacular Houses, Eric Mercer discussed timber framing and Chapter VIII of the book (titled, Materials) is sub-titled Timber Framing. 1978 saw the publication of what has perhaps become the single most influential book on timber building construction: Discovering Timber-Framed Buildings by Richard Harris. The book’s title, because of the book’s popularity, no doubt helped to establish and insure the future currency of the term timber-framed. Harris notes in the opening line of his book that, ‘half-timber’ and ‘black and white’ are the common names for timber-framed buildings. While having chosen to use the term timber-framed instead of the terms half-timber, or black and white, Harris does not use the now popular term timber-framer, refering to the builder of timber-frames as a carpenter. Harris does however set the tone for things to come by noting that the builders of timber-frames are like alchemist-carpenters… the secret of [whose] magic was the craft tradition. A year later, in 1979, on the other side of the Atlantic in New England, Abbott Lowell Cummings published The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay. In what is a wonderful book on the development of early American architecture, Cummings discusses the significance of house-frames built by carpenters. In 1980, Cecil Hewett published what is regarded by many to be his most significant work, English Medieval

Carpentry. In this magisterial work of description and illustration, Hewett, either unaware of or resisting the new trend, refers throughout to historic timber buildings, structural carpentry and structural carpenters. Still 1980, and back across the Atlantic again, Ted Benson, who founded, Bensonwood Homes in 1973, published Building The Timber Frame House: The Revival of a Forgotten Craft. Benson argued that the loss of timber framing as the dominant building system [in the United States] was simultaneous with the loss of the human element in almost everything. While Benson wrote passionately about timber frames and timber framing, he still referred to himself and those he made frames with as carpenters: I have found it a privilege to be a carpenter in New England. Despite this, it is quite clear from his barely disguised antipathy to the mass-produced work of stud-frame carpenters that he is searching for an alternative moniker. And so, in our race to enter the promised land at the other end of the assembly line, we left behind vast stores of knowledge that for centuries had been passed through generations. Whole crafts were lost. Among these was timber framing, the joiner’s craft. Benson further develops his idea of the framer/joiner in Chapters Three and Four, titled The Joiner’s Vision and The Joiner’s Work, by introducing us to a new sort of woodworker– those of us who practice timber joinery. He goes on to describe the people who work in his shop as craftsmen. Proper joiners would no doubt wince and look up from their Norris Planes with a sneer upon hearing Benson conflate and confuse their refined efforts with those of a house wright, but never mind. The die was now cast and the so-called timber frame revival was about

to take-off. Some carpenters were about to become timber framers… In 1983, Steve Chappell published A Timber Framer’s Workshop: Joinery, Design & Construction of Traditional Timber Frames in which the identity of the timber framer is clearly laid-out for the first time. There is even a section of the book titled The Timber Framer’s Tool Box. A year later, in 1984, Jack Sobon’s Timber Frame Construction: All About Post-and-Beam Building was published. Sobon adopts the terms timber frame and timber framing throughout his book. However, he does choose to use the terms house wright and timber frame builder to describe the sort of carpentry done by a builder of timber frames. In doing so he very clearly joins other members of the revival in distinguishing between the work of medieval guild trained master craftsmen and modern day production or stud-framing carpenters: Studframing probably began in the Midwest in the early 19th century. Aside from using ready-made lumber, the frame required fewer hours to build. The process of butting lumber and joining the pieces with mass-produced nails made joinery obsolete. Also discarded were the remnants of the apprentice system. Less skilled workers who could work faster with simpler materials and tools were all that were necessary. So house building changed from a craft to an industry, and the craftsman evolved into a labourer. In 1985, The Timber Framers’ Guild was established, formally institutionalising (at least in attitude and name) the emergence of a new type of mythical old carpenter – a joiner of timber, a master craftsman, as opposed to a nailer of studs, a mere labourer. Carpentry and house building in particular were reimagined by a

Barn raising in Granby, Connecticut. Photo, George and Alvah Howes, 1902

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group of people captivated by an image of the past and dissatisfied with the reality in which they lived. In 1986, R.J. Brown published Timber-Framed Buildings of England and in 1996, Recording Timber-Framed Buildings: an illustrated glossary was published by the Council for British Archaeology as the 5th Number in its series of Practical Handbooks in Archaeology. Though one would think that the process that resulted in our describing timber buildings as timber frames and the carpenters who make these sorts of heavy oak, jointed structures (as opposed to the lighter ones composed of softwood studs and nails) as timber framers is now pretty much complete, adopting the new terminology was not a smooth process and the new terms still cause confusion. For example, 1984 saw the publication of The Conservation of Timber Buildings, the classic work by F.W.B. Charles in which he refers to: timber-framed buildings, timber structures, timber buildings, timber-framed houses and the timber-frame tradition. Similarly, in 1985, even after the terms timber frame, timber frames, timber framed and timber framer were commonly used to describe jointed, heavy structural carpentry and those engaged in its manufacture, R.W. Brunskill titled his new book Timber Building in Britain. The SPAB described Brunskill’s book as the standard textbook on timber building. Though like Charles, Brunskill uses the phrase Timber Building on the cover of his book, in its pages he adopts the new lingo, writing about timber framed structures, timber-framed buildings, timber-frame walling, timber framed walls, timber walled structure, conventional timber frames and timber frame construction. Despite his generous use of these new terms for the buildings themselves, Brunskill never refers to the builders of timber-frames as timber framers but instead as traditional carpenters engaged in traditional carpentry. In many ways, the English version of the American timber frame revival was introduced to the UK in practical terms in 1980 when, according to its brochure, Border Oak pioneered the revival of green oak framing across the UK and worldwide. The architect Roderick James’s Seagull House, in which he created a green oak framed ‘barn’ room by adapting, extending and remodelling a run-down existing house and his founding of Carpenter Oak & Woodland with Charley Brentnall in 1987 helped popularise the terms green oak frames and green oak framing. In the UK, the terms oak framer and green oak framer and oak framing and green oak framing and oak frame and green oak frame were used as well as the terms timber framer, timber framing and timber frame. In 1992, the Weald and Downland Museum and Bournemouth University began offering their Timber Building Conservation course. Led by Richard Harris, this course was soon accredited to MSc level, first by Bournemouth University and now by York University.

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In May 1997, the Museum began offering courses in Traditional timber-frame repair and Traditional timberframe construction. The following year, 1998, the Museum introduced its flagship-course: Timber-framing from scratch, a still popular course currently being taught by the Museum’s carpenter-in-residence, Joe Thompson. In November 2005, rather than offering more clarity on the terms timber frame, timber framer and timber framing, the BRE (Building Research Establishment) Centre for Timber Technology and Construction, in publishing its Digest 496, Timber Frame Buildings: A Guide to the Construction Process, confused matters by defining timber framing as follows: Timber frame is a modern method of construction (MMC) – using standardised, prefabricated timber wall panels and floors commonly in use in many developed countries – which bears no relation to its Tudor ‘post and beam’ namesake. Nor does it bear much relation to the form of softwood framing common in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. Nowhere in this document is there any reference to either carpenters or timber framers. The only people who are involved are: timber-frame manufacturers, timber-frame suppliers, timber-frame designers and timber-frame erectors. In 2007, TRADA published Green Oak in Construction. One of its three authors was Andrew Holloway, founder and owner of The Green Oak Carpentry Company, who is described as a carpenter-builder and an experienced City and Guilds qualified timber frame carpenter. Throughout the book the following terms are used to describe what is essentially structural carpentry: traditional oak frame; traditional framing; traditional carpentry; traditional methods of construction and fabrication; medieval timber frame; modern green oak structures; green oak frame; green oak framing; green oak structures; green oak carpentry; green oak building; green oak carpentry enterprises; green oak framing work and heavy framing. When discussing the people who do this work, we are introduced to: carpenters; framers; fabricators; frame fabricators; modern hand builders; frame suppliers and oak frame manufacturers. Looking through the drawings I have been sent from architects, engineers and building contractors reveals their ignorance of who we are and what we do. We are variously referred to as oak frame specialists, timber repair specialists and timber specialists. (Even more troubling are the terms used by these folks to describe the many different parts of a timber frame building. For example, I have come across principle rafters and wall or top plates called edge beams and eaves beams. ) Perhaps most confusing is the direction taken by Ted Benson, one of the original members of the American timber frame revival. Reading through the Bensonwood Homes Timeline of Innovation one can only be struck at how quickly the company moved away from many of the simple

craft principles its founder, Ted Benson, so passionately outlined in his 1980 book. After fabricating a portable mortising machine in 1985 that made it possible to rapidly create timberframe joints with great precision, Bensonwood Homes went on to pioneer a number of labour-saving, computer-driven methods of production that took much of the carpenter’s craft out of the carpenter’s hands (and his head) and moved it onto the screens (and fingertips) of CAD designers. What role does the carpenter or even the timberframe craftsman as conjured by Benson in his 1980 book play in these sort of high-tech shops? Is there a new designation for the people working in these computer and machine driven places? Where does all of this leave us? Do we have any clearer picture of who we are as carpenters or timber framers? Take a look at the photograph on the cover of this issue. I originally chose to use that image because I thought it represented the sort of no-nonsense stud framing carpentry that many timber framers have chosen over the last 40 years to define themselves against. In my mind, a carpenter should be able to take on all of the aspects of the building of a house that involve wood. That means, shuttering, 1st fix and 2nd fix. Or in American terms: formwork, rough and finish carpentry. Most of us timber framers have resigned ourselves to doing what I would call the structural fix (even though sometimes, because the oak is just for show, this fix isn’t even structural anymore). We show up after the foundation is completed, we put up a lovely oak frame and then we pack up and leave the 1st and 2nd fix to the builder. The photograph on the cover of this issue shows a bunch of guys in the process of building a stud frame. This is the sort of all-round carpentry that, for a variety of reasons, many timber framers have left behind. It is the sort of knowledge and skill that the carpenter’s carpenter, Larry Haun, managed to gain through a life of production framing. Haun, 80 years of age when he died in 2011, was born in Nebraska and endured a hardscrabble life on the western plains before heading west to southern California to join his brothers, all of whom started a residential construction company in 1953 which, because of the post WWII housing boom, became one of biggest framing subcontractors in the area. Haun was a union carpenter, who while knocking out frame after frame (it is said that Haun could drive a 16d or 3 ½ inch nail with just two licks of his Hart framing hammer, one to set and one to sink) regularly wrote articles for Fine Homebuilding magazine After he retired, he taught carpentry and built houses with teams from Habitat for Humanity. Just before his death, Haun published a book titled a Carpenter’s Life as told by houses. The first part of the book recalls Haun’s life growing up in Nebraska and the

variety of houses he saw while living there: The Soddy, The Straw Bale, The Old Frame House, The Dug Out and The Precut House. The rest of the book covers the many other houses Haun encountered and built in his travels: The Adobe, The Manufactured House, The Quonset Hut, The Tract House, The Habitat House, Small Houses and The Greenhouse. In his Chapter on The Precut House, Haun describes how soon after the Oglala Lakota Chief Crazy Horse was defeated by the US Army in 1877, the Plains Indians of South Dakota and Nebraska were forced by the US Government to abandon their traditional nomadic way of life and settle down on reservations. Instead of tepees, the Indians were encouraged to build and live in Precut Houses. The picture on the cover of this issue, titled Ten Men Building a Wood Frame House, shows what appear to be nine Indians being overseen by a white man, the guy on the left with his hands on his hips, building a braced/ balloon-hybrid Precut on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska. So these guys aren’t the all-round carpenters I thought they were, they are a group of men fortunate to have some work who are unfortunately busily engaged in the destruction and/or transformation of their tribe’s traditional way of life. So, what’s in a name? It depends on who you ask. While some of us may care more than others about what we are called, there is little doubt that names and naming make a big difference. Essentially, what we call ourselves and what others call us is about the power of creating meaning and purpose through the construction of identity. The misnaming and continuous renaming of American Indians is just one example of the significance of what is in a name. Our own experience as carpenters, while far less dramatic and tragic, is somewhat similar. Because we have defined ourselves, and have been defined by others, in so many different ways and for so many different reasons, there is a certain sense of confusion among ourselves and our clients. We should help clarify things by being clear, consistent and unified about who we are and what we do. Trawling through the recorded history of what we have been called and what we have chosen to call ourselves, I have come to the conclusion that it is best to keep things simple. We should go back to calling ourselves carpenters. If pushed for more detail, we should – like architects, lawyers, doctors, engineers, plumbers, bankers and farmers, to name just a few occupations in which there are many subspecialties – specify the type of carpentry we do as timber framing. Easy. And with just two licks of the pen. One to set and one to sink… David Leviatin is a carpenter who specialises in the repair and construction of timber frame buildings.

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