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Comment by cpr | Hacker News Reader

Some beautiful timber-framed tithe barns from the 800's survive in England.

https://www.google.com/search?q=english+tithe+barns+timber-f...

Build with massive timbers (no nails), keep the wood dry (and watch for beetles), and your beautiful, practical structure can last many centuries.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-oxf...

A friend of ours recently built a large tithe barn replica (including the masterful traditional English joinery, more complex than American) in North Guilford, CT at the Dominican Sisters' convent (unfortunately, can't find it on the web anywhere), and it's truly an eighth wonder of the world (at least in the timber framing business).

(Timber-framing is my (somewhat now dormant) hobby, and also a convenient hobby-horse here. ;-)

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Timber framing is beautiful and long lasting, but expensive, requiring fine workmanship and specialized skills, and more importantly, high quality wood - long, straight trees for beams.

It was more or less obliterated in the late 19th century with the arrival of inexpensive machine-made nails. Cheap nails allowed a shift from timber framing to balloon framing using 2x4 boards, using both cheaper wood and less-skilled labor. Until manufactured nails came along, nails had to be made one at a time, by hand, by a blacksmith. Nails were expensive. That's why 19th century and earlier furniture has such beautiful joinery - it was cheaper to hand-carve dovetail joints and other woodwork than it was to nail it together.

The history of architecture is a history of economics. Fascinating stuff! (None of this is meant as a knock on timber framing, btw - it's superior in every respect but cost.)

There's also survivorship bias here. Perhaps there were a lot of poorly made 9th century buildings and barns that didn't survive.

No, this is a little different. It's not "poorly made", it's that the technologies didn't even exist. Without nails, there wasn't a market for the other materials of the balloon-frame construction world.

I live in a neighborhood of century-old houses (my own house is either 104, 106, or 110 years old - it's unclear from the paperwork). Many of the houses in this neighborhood are in rapid decay, mostly due to inadequate foundations or inadequate maintenance. We're seeing a building boom, with developers buying up battered rentals, tearing them down, and building something new on the lot - trying to look old, but with modern construction and materials.

I wonder how the new houses will hold up in another century, relative to the sturdier of the now-old houses?

There are an absolute ton of poorly made 9th century buildings that did not survive, which is why it makes news when one is found and ones that exist are tourist attractions.

If our ancestors were anything like us, a lot of those got torn down because the needs of the community changed.

Read How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand, for more on that subject.

This is my theory about the amazing Victorian era bridges built before there was good theoretical understanding of how to build steel structures. All the crummy ones fell down.

Timber framed buildings that have survived are a different story, but again that's because they are the result of thousands of years of learning how to get it right.

All true, but my memory is that timber framing is only 20% more expensive when looking at whole-house costs. So it's not prohibitive by any means.

Nails were so expensive, I had heard that people would sometimes burn buildings down to recover the nails.

However, it appears this might by a myth: https://historymyths.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/revisited-myth...

English timber framing is cool and everything, but the Japanese really deserve the title for figuring out how to make more or less permanent wooden buildings a very long time ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C5%8Dry%C5%AB-ji

I am sometimes surprised, in my research into permaculture, at how many of these problems were solved by the Japanese a thousand years ago. In food, clothing, homes, tools, the level of efficiency and sophistication in the ancient techniques is astounding.

I've often thought Japanese culture strange, but lately I tend to conclude it's because they dealt with issues centuries ago that the west has only now started to think about.

Would you care to share some other Japanese practices that demonstrate efficiency and sophistication?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THcKJpXwqVM

Thanks!

Didn't the Japanese adapt these techniques from China? AFAIK Chinese joineries are very similar, but the Japanese were best able to preserve the culture (no foreign invasion until WW2, no communism).

Edinburgh Castle's great hall is like this. Though the story we were told by the guide was that it was built by shipwrights (who were the most skilled timber craftsmen in that day), and so they basically built an upside down boat frame for the ceiling. But seeing that other building makes me doubt this story!

https://www.edinburghcastle.gov.uk/discover/highlights/the-g...

https://www.google.com/search?biw=1276&bih=636&tbm=isch&sa=1...

Hammerbeam truss or roof, is the search term. There are some lovely examples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammerbeam_roof

I am thinking the Hammerbeam design was a later development of what we see in the tithe barn designs.

It's like the flying buttress before it was taken and turned inside out so that cathedrals could be built of stone.

Very interesting, thanks!

No, it's true that shipwrights were often involved in early timber framed building--there's a reason the "nave" of a church is called that.

Your comment reminds me of this, near the original Guildford (with a 'd' :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanborough_Grange

Although pronounced without the ’d’. Also, why have I never heard of Wanborough Grange? Will have to visit.

That's really neat, thanks for sharing.

They rather look like upside-down ships.

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