The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0404  Friday, 5 May 2006

From: 		John Briggs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: 		Friday, 5 May 2006 14:34:08 +0100
Subject: 17.0394 Stratford
Comment: 	Re: SHK 17.0394 Stratford

David Kathman wrote:

 >Peter Bridgman wrote:
 >
 >I suspect the "local tradition" came from the fact that in the 19th
 >century the western half looked something like a half-timbered
 >Tudor building while the eastern half resembled a brick building
 >with Georgian bay windows (see the early 19th century illustration,
 >Plate 3, in Anthony Holden's biography).
 >
 >
 >That brick facing was added on the outside of the eastern part at the
 >beginning of the 19th century, when that part was still an inn called
 >the Swan and Maidenhead, and was removed in the mid-19th-century
 >renovation.  It was always the same building underneath.

Dave Kathman is letting his enthusiasm outrun his expertise, in this 
case in the field of English vernacular architecture.  The front wall of 
the eastern building may or may not be a 'skin' (it is impossible to 
tell from the photographs what happened to the other three walls), but 
at the very least it replaced the complete timber frame of the front 
wall.  (The brick wall is flush with the timber-framed wall of the 
western building, so it cannot just be a 'skin' - it is structural.) 
The roof pitch is different, so the roof has been reconstructed at the 
same time as the brick wall was built.  The present timber frame of the 
facade of the eastern building is therefore a complete 'reconstruction.' 
  How much of the rest of the structure of the eastern building is also 
a confection is a separate question.

The timber frames of the two shops which made up the western building do 
not look obviously sixteenth-century in the photographs - they could 
easily be seventeenth-century.  The only obviously sixteenth-century 
feature is the relatively close spacing of the upright timbers on the 
ground floor - I do wonder if that could simply be the blocking of an 
earlier doorway.  The western building may well always have been two 
separate dwellings.

 >No, I don't like "demolished", because it implies that the original
 >structure was destroyed and replaced with something else, which
 >clearly did not happen.

It may not have happened - to say that it "clearly did not happen" is a 
wild exaggeration.

John Briggs

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