page_title: Timber framing
section_title: British tradition
hierarchical_section_title: Timber framing / History and traditions / British tradition
caption_attribution_description: English: The Royal Fusiliers monument and Staple Inn, High Holborn, London
context_page_description: Timber framing and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden pegs. It is commonplace in wooden buildings through the 19th century. If the structural frame of load-bearing timber is left exposed on the exterior of the building it may be referred to as half-timbered, and in many cases the infill between timbers will be used for decorative effect. The country most known for this kind of architecture is Germany. Timber framed houses are spread all over the country except in the southeast.
  The method comes from working directly from logs and trees rather than pre-cut dimensional lumber. Hewing this with broadaxes, adzes, and draw knives and using hand-powered braces and augers and other woodworking tools, artisans or framers could gradually assemble a building.
  Since this building method has been used for thousands of years in many parts of the world, many styles of historic framing have developed.
context_section_description: Some of the earliest known timber houses in Europe have been found in Great Britain, dating to Neolithic times; Balbridie and Fengate are some of the rare examples of these constructions.
  Molded plaster ornamentation, pargetting further enriched some English Tudor architecture houses. Half-timbering is characteristic of English vernacular architecture in East Anglia, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Cheshire, where one of the most elaborate surviving English examples of half-timbered construction is Little Moreton Hall.
  In South Yorkshire, the oldest timber house in Sheffield, the "Bishops' House" (c. 1500), shows traditional half-timbered construction.
  In the Weald of Kent and Sussex, the half-timbered structure of the Wealden hall house, consisted of an open hall with bays on either side and often jettied upper floors.
  Half-timbered construction traveled with British colonists to North America in the early 17th century but was soon abandoned in New England and the mid-Atlantic colonies for clapboard facings (an East Anglia tradition). The original English colonial settlements, such as Plymouth, Massachusetts and Jamestown, Virginia had timber-framed buildings, rather than the log cabins often associated with the American frontier. Living history programs demonstrating the building technique are available at both these locations.
  One of the surviving streets lined with almost-touching houses is known as The Shambles, York, and is a very popular tourist attraction.
caption: The timber-framed Staple Inn in Holborn, London
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