page_title: Architecture of Scotland in the Middle Ages
section_title: Vernacular buildings
hierarchical_section_title: Architecture of Scotland in the Middle Ages / Vernacular buildings
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Moirlanich Lnghouse taken 2004 by Willie Angus
context_page_description: The architecture of Scotland in the Middle Ages includes all building within the modern borders of Scotland, between the departure of the Romans from Northern Britain in the early fifth century and the adoption of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century, and includes vernacular, ecclesiastical, royal, aristocratic and military constructions. The first surviving houses in Scotland go back 9500 years. There is evidence of different forms of stone and wooden houses exist and earthwork hill forts from the Iron Age. The arrival of the Romans from about led to the abandonment of many of these forts. After the departure of the Romans in the fifth century, there evidence their reoccupation and of the building of a series of smaller "nucleated" constructions sometimes utilising major geographical features, as at Dunadd and Dumbarton. In the following centuries new forms of construction emerged throughout Scotland that would come to define the landscape.
  Medieval vernacular architecture utilised local building materials, including cruck constructed houses, turf walls and clay, with a heavy reliance on stone.
context_section_description: Medieval vernacular architecture in rural environments made use of local materials and styles. As in England, cruck construction was used, employing pairs of curved timbers to support the roof; however they were usually hidden from view. In rural areas there was extensive use of turf to fill in the walls, sometimes on a stone base, but they were not long lasting and had to be rebuilt frequently, perhaps as often as every two or three years. In some regions, including the south-west and around Dundee, solid clay walls were used, or combinations of clay, turf and straw, rendered with clay or lime to make them weatherproof. With a lack of long span structural timber, the most common building material was stone, employed in both mortared and dry stone construction. Different regions used broom, heather, straw, turfs or reeds for roofing.
  From the twelfth century, burghs, towns that were granted certain legal privileges from the Crown, developed, particularly on the east coast with distinctive urban building patterns. They were typically surrounded by a palisade, and many had a castle. They usually had a market place, with a widened high street or junction, often marked by a mercat cross. There were houses for the nobles, burgesses and other significant inhabitants, which were often built in a relatively elaborate style and by the end of the period some would have slate roofs or tiles. Very little has survived of the houses of the urban poor. They were probably largely located in the backlands, away from the main street frontages. From Aberdeen and Perth there is evidence of nearly forty buildings dating from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, with walls of planks or wattles.
caption: The Moirlanich Longhouse is a blackhouse built in the nineteenth century in the traditional manner with a cruck frame.
exif: {}