page_title: Timber framing
section_title: History and traditions
hierarchical_section_title: Timber framing / History and traditions
caption_attribution_description: Anne Hvides Gaard is a town museum in Svendborg, Denmark.
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: The techniques used in timber framing date back to Neolithic times, and have been used in many parts of the world during various periods such as ancient Japan, continental Europe, and Neolithic Denmark, England, France, Germany, Spain, parts of the Roman Empire, and Scotland. The timber-framing technique has historically been popular in climate zones which favour deciduous hardwood trees, such as oak. Its most northernmost areas are Baltic countries and southern Sweden. Timber framing is rare in Russia, Finland, northern Sweden, and Norway, where tall and straight lumber, such as pine and spruce, is readily available and log houses were favored, instead.
  Half-timbered construction in the Northern European vernacular building style is characteristic of medieval and early modern Denmark, England, Germany, and parts of France and Switzerland, where timber was in good supply yet stone and associated skills to dress the stonework were in short supply. In half-timbered construction, timbers that were riven (split) in half provided the complete skeletal framing of the building.
  Europe is full of timber-framed structures dating back hundreds of years, including manors, castles, homes, and inns, whose architecture and techniques of construction have evolved over the centuries. In Asia, timber-framed structures are found, many of them temples that have stood for centuries.
  Some Roman carpentry preserved in anoxic layers of clay at Romano-British villa sites demonstrate that sophisticated Roman carpentry had all the necessary techniques for this construction. The earliest surviving (French) half-timbered buildings date from the 12th century.
  Important resources for the study and appreciation of historic building methods are open-air museums.
caption: Anne Hvides Gaard, Svendborg, Denmark, from 1560
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