page_title: Ephraim Hawley House
section_title: Structure
hierarchical_section_title: Ephraim Hawley House / Structure
caption_attribution_description: Picture of Ephraim Hawley House taken before 1881
context_page_description: The Ephraim Hawley House is a Colonial American wooden post-and-beam timber-frame saltbox house situated on the Farm Highway, Route 108, on the south side of Mischa Hill, in the historic area of Nichols, a village located within Trumbull, Connecticut, in the New England region of the U.S. It has been said the house was built in 1683 and was expanded to its present saltbox shape by three later additions, but this has not been verified by dendrochronology. The oak framing was carbon dated to 1710. The house is unique, it has been located in four different named townships in its past, but has never been moved; Stratford, Unity, North Stratford and Trumbull.
context_section_description: Began as a Cape Cod cottage
  The house was built as a ​1 ¹⁄₂-story Cape Cod cottage thirty-six feet wide by twenty-six feet deep with an eight-foot-wide central stone chimney with three fireplaces. There were three rooms on the first floor; a parlor, dining room and kitchen. The second floor was an undivided loft.
  Oak frame and siding
  The white oak post-and-beam frame has eight by ten inch girts, eight by eight inch plates and eight by ten inch splayed posts. The common rafters are eight by eight inches and taper to six by six inches at the ridge and have six by six inch chamfered collar beams. The floor joist are six by six inches and are twenty inches apart. The six inch by ten inch summer beams, or tie beams are parallel to the façade, dovetailed into the girts and concealed within the plaster ceiling.
  The roof sheathing and flooring is vertically quarter sawn one-inch-thick oak boards with random widths between twelve and thirty inches. The flooring is laid directly over one-inch-thick oak boards that were not suitable to be used as flooring. The mortise-and-tenon joints are held by wooden pins, and the flooring is nailed with large hand-wrought iron nails (see image).
  The four- to six-foot-length hand-riven oak clapboard siding is nailed directly to the oak studs with large flat rose-headed nails which was the typical material and application for the earliest New England homes (see images).
  Stone chimney
  The first floor of the house is at ground level. There is a partial dirt cellar located on the south side of the house. The eight-foot-wide stone fireplace has three flues with clay mortar. The kitchen hearth is nine feet six inches wide by five feet seven inches deep. There is a one-foot crawl space around the chimney foundation below the first floor and a fieldstone foundation.
  A forty inch deep brick beehive oven is built into the right rear wall of the kitchen fireplace and its opening has a wrought iron lintel. The brick are seven and one-half inches long by three and one-half inches wide by two inches thick. In October 1685, because a variety of sizes of brick were being used, the Colony of Connecticut ordered that all future brick be nine inches long by four and one-half inches wide by two and one-half inches thick.
  There is a small tinder box in the left wall of the kitchen firebox. The fireplace inside dimensions are four feet four inches high by six feet ten inches wide and is spanned by the original ten-by-ten-inch oak lintel, which rests on oak blocks. The side walls of the kitchen firebox are roughly dressed granite. Cooking pots were hung from a lug pole. Above the ridge, the chimney flue outside measurements are forty eight inches wide by thirty eight inches deep with a course of three inch thick dripstones in the front and back.
  Interior finish
  The original stairs are parallel to façade of the house situated behind the wall between the parlor and the kitchen. There is poplar paneling alternating in width of thirteen inches and fifteen inches. The ceilings and walls are calcined oyster shell lime plaster on riven oak lath attached with small hand wrought iron nails. The ceiling heights are between six feet two inches and seven feet two inches on the first floor. The rear exterior door opening is five feet three inches high. An original casement window opening located on the east rear wall, in the kitchen, is twenty two inches square and is fifty four inches from the floor. This small opening was plastered over when the lean-to was built behind the wall in 1840. The upstairs ceiling height is six feet. The surviving oak sash window frames have dimensions of twenty eight inches wide by forty six inches high. The original interior doorways are twenty eight inches wide by five feet eleven inches high and the interior partitions are made of ​1 ¹⁄₂-inch-thick vertical oak boards.
  Additions
  The first leanto was built after the main house was completed, and is used as a buttery (room) or pantry. The exterior walls are solid two inch thick oak planks. When the leanto was built, the roof was extended, without a 
caption: Image before 1881
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