The sinking saxon House

That happened in Jarrow Hall, a lovely green bubble, an open air museum where experimental archeology is a thing. With Gorgeous Marc and Cheeky Marco and alot of fantastic musuem voluteers. Newcastle Area.

This period of construction (Before Guillaume -William- in 1066), has left us mostly geometrical archeology excavations of where posts holes (where posts were planted in the ground). Every thing else has rotten above, and there's not many evidences of Saxon settlements above ground.

That reproduction called Thirlings has been built by competent archeologists and carpenters 25 years ago. The picture above shows what happens to the foot of an internal planted post (30cm diameter) after a quarter of a century. Most of them are in the same state. But not much worse outside than inside, which is curious. 

This being a common problem, there are various hypothesis on how it used to be dealt with. From a conversion into an animal barn until it becomes too dangerous, to the fiesta-burn-the-house-down and a grand reconstruction. Archeology shows that some improvement might have happened under the shape of raking posts (and not racking). 

More planted oak. We've decided to notch the posts away from rot and fix the head of the raking posts with a square peg. A vast majority of the joints done with an axe, sometimes with the help of a chisel and a mallet. 

Saxon people probably being sensible people, with similar cold feet syndrome as we could have today, we've introduced a proper floor, on top of the well packed earth floor.

Sawn Douglas, yes. But local !