Timber framing
This article is in the process of being merged with Half-timbered construction
Timber framing is the modern term for the traditional half-timbered construction in which timber provided a visible skeletal frame that supported the whole building.
The structure
The Main structure
The timbers, with their riven side facing out, were morticed and pegged together, often receiving triangulated bracing to reinforce other members of the structure.
The spaces between the timber frames were then infilled with wattle-and-daub, brick and rubble, with plastered faces on the exterior and interior which were often “ceiled” with wainscoting for insulation and warmth.
This method of infilling the spaces creates the half-timbered style, where the timbers of the frame are visible both inside and outside the building.
[[Image:DoubleJettiedBuilding.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Projecting ("jettied") upper storeys of an English half-timbered village rowhouse]
The vertical timbers
The vertical timbers include posts (main supports at corners and other major uprights), and studs (subsidiary upright limbs in framed walls).
The horizontal timbers
The horizontals include sill beam (also called ground-sills or sole-pieces, at the bottom of a wall into which posts and studs are fitted using tenons), noggin-pieces (the horizontal timbers forming the tops and bottoms of the frames of infill-panels), and wall-plates (at the top of timber-framed walls that support the trusses and joists of the roof).
The sloping timbers
The sloping timbers include the trusses (the slanting timbers forming the triangular framework at gables and roof), braces (slanting beams giving extra support between horizontal or vertical members of the timber frame), or herringbone bracing (a decorative and supporting style of frame, usually at 45 ° to the upright and horizontal directions of the frame).
Distinctive features of modern timber frame structures
It is in the United States and Canada, however, that the art of timber frame construction has been revived in recent years, and is now experiencing a thriving renaissence of the ancient skills.
Timber framed structures differ from conventional wood framed buildings in several ways. Timber framing uses fewer, larger wooden members, commonly using timbers with dimensions in the range of 6" to 12" as opposed to common wood framing which uses many more timbers with their dimensions usually in the 2" to 10" range. The methods of fastening the frame members also differ, in conventional framing the members are joined using nails or other mechanical fasteners while timber framing uses mortice and tenon or more complex joints which are usually fastened using only wooden pegs.
Recently it has become common to surround the timber structure entirely in manufactured panels, such as Sips (Structural Insulating Panels). This method of enclosure means that the timbers can only be seen from inside the building, but has the benefits of being less complex to build and offering more efficient heat insulation
History and traditions
[[Image:Mill street, Warwick.jpg|thumb|270px|left|Historic timber framed houses in Warwick, England]]
The techniques used in timber framing date back thousands of years, and have been used in many parts of the world during various periods such as ancient Japan, Europe and medieval England.
Half-timbered construction in the Northern European vernacular building style is characteristic of medieval and early modern England, Germany and parts of France, in localities where timber was in good supply and building stone and the skills to work it were in short supply. In half-timbered construction timbers that were riven in half provided the complete skeletal framing of the building.
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.
Elaborately half-timbered housefronts of the 15th century are still remaining in Bourges and Rouen and in Thiers (illustration, right).
In North Germany, Celle is famed for its 16th century half-timbered housefronts. In the later 16th century, timbers are often elaborately carved and spaces infilled with smaller timbering not only for reasons decorative but also structural.
Molded plaster ornamentation ("pargetting") further enriched some English Tudor houses. Half-timbering is characteristic of English vernacular architecture in East Anglia, Worcestershire and Cheshire, where one of the most elaborate surviving English examples of half-timbered construction is Little Moreton Hall.
In the Weald of Kent and Sussex, the half-timbered structure of the Wealden house, consisted of an open hall with bays on either side and often jettied upper floors.
Half-timbered construction went with colonists to North America in the early 17th century but was soon left behind in New England and the mid-Atlantic colonies for clapboard facings (another tradition of East Anglia).
Called colombage pierroté in Quebec as well other areas of Canada, half-timbered construction infilled with stone and rubble survived into the 19th century and was consciously revived at the end of the century. In Western Canada it was used on buildings in the Red River Settlement; the Men's House at Lower Fort Garry is a good example of colombage pierroté.
When half-timbering regained popularity in Britain after 1860 in the various revival styles, such as the "Queen Anne style" houses by Richard Norman Shaw and others, it was often used to evoke a "Tudor" atmosphere (see Tudorbethan), though in Tudor times half-timbering had begun to look rustic and was increasingly limited to villages houses (illustration, above left). In 1912, Allen W. Jackson published The Half-Timber House: Its Origin, Design, Modern Plan, and Construction, and rambling half-timbered beach houses appeared on dunefront properties in Rhode Island or under palm-lined drives of Beverly Hills. During the 1920s increasingly minimal gestures towards some half-timbering in commercial speculative house-building saw the fashion peter out.
However, in later revival styles the load-bearing timber frame structure was often replaced by walls of brickwork or other materials, to which a decorative pattern resembling timber framing was added on the outside of the walls.
In Germany, too, the Deutsche Fachwerkstraße, the “Route that links Germany’s Medieval Timber-framed Houses”, that runs from Lower Saxony in the north of the country, via Hesse and southern Thuringia to Bavaria is an area renowned for its highly picturesque half-timbered buildings.
The ancient craft of timber framing has had a resurgence since the 1970s. This is largely due to such practitioners as Jack Sobon and Ted Benson who studied old plans and techniques and revived the technique that had been long neglected.
The assets of timber framing
The use of timber framing in buildings offers various benefits including aesthetic ones and also structurally, as the timber frame lends itself to open plan designs and allows for complete enclosure in effective insulation for energy efficiency.