Hello, and some chimney questions.

[Brothernumberone]

Hello all, first post on here.
My partner and I have recently bought a cottage which needs work so they'll be lots of probably stupid questions along the way. We've been told the house is about 500years old with a later extension just over 300years old.
My questions are regarding the chimney. We were told the house originally had an open bay arrangement for the fire, with the chimney built later. I'd like to find out a rough time line of alterations, just for interest and wondered if there is anyway to date brickwork?
Also, I'm concerned about some cracks in the chimney in the roof space, do I need to get a builder or a structural engineer to look at it, and if so how can I find the right person who knows about old buildings?
Lastly, we found we had a partition wall upstairs which hides the fireplaces for the rooms. It's a small cottage and this boxed in arrangement loses quite a bit of space so we'd like to remove it eventually. The plaster looks old to me and needs repair, is it possible to keep the good stuff and do localised repair? And how old is plaster with straw in?
Thank you!

 

[Zebra]

Hello brothernumberone, welcome. Sounds like an exciting house, and we look forward to seeing more pictures. There are no stupid questions, so ask away.
Dating brickwork: the bond pattern is one way, though of limited accuracy perhaps.
Cracks in the chimney - be careful indeed who you ask. If the bricks are that old, it will almost certainly be better off with a lime mortar, and skills in this area are not ubiquitous. If you are an intrepid sort, you can learn to repoint it yourself, The structure may well be more resilient than you think. Any movement probably happened long ago, and the structure has probably resettled in its new position without further risk of movement. Of course, I wouldn't advise against being careful, you must assess the risks for yourself, but here I had a hole in the side of the chimney which I could have crawled through, had I been so inclined. I simply pulled out one loose brick after another, figured the weight was being transferred down elsewhere, got some appropriate mortar and laid them back in.
That's an unusual arrangement, that panelling. When do you think it was done?
As for the plaster, yes you can repair it, if what is left is firmly attached. If it has straw then could the wall be made of wattle and daub?

 

[Zebra]

Sorry, I'm a div. Forget that about wattle and daub. The plaster you're talking about is on the chimney breast? Does it have straw in it?

 

[Brothernumberone]

Thanks for your reply zebra
I should have made things a bit clearer, sorry. The first pic shows the area that boxes in the chimney stack as it passes up through the house. You can just about see the chimney through the hole which is an old access panel for a water tank which was mounted in the space behind, now gone.
I think maybe it was done in the 60's or '70's at the same time as the beams were painted black unfortunately. It's just plaster board on a 2x4 frame. The chimney itself has the straw plaster on it.
You've reassured me regarding the chimney, there's a few holes in this one, although none quite so big as yours

 

[livias]

Tudor bricks tend to tbe thinner and perhaps larger then modern bricks. Georgian ones start to look more like modern ones in shape, though a bit larger and are softer so the arrises have worn away. Victorian ones are similar but crisper and harder. Modern ones are slightly smaller and hard with crisp edges. They will be laid with lime mortar until some time in the 20thC and certainly with cement mortar after the 2nd war. My first guess is that yours are Georgian though more photos would help.
Massive chimney stacks with inglenooks and bressemur beams replaced the open fireplace in your average house in Tudor times so say 1550. In timber frame houses the stack was sometimes built of wood with a daub lining but that quickly went out of fashion for obvious reasons. Plaster with straw in was done for cheapness. Normally hair was used but straw gives a perfectly sound plaster though a rougher finish. That could be any time up to early 20thC

Disclaimer: My experience is mostly in East Anglia. Elsewhere could be different Where are you based? If you want a second opinion on the chimney then I know a good structural engineer in Bedford who understands old houses and will not suggest unnecessary work

 

[malcolm]

Mine also had a smoke bay which was replaced with a chimney at a later date. They left some of the timber frame in place and built a chimney around it. I found a chart put together by some folk who date the wood in buildings which might be helpful: http://www.tree-ring.co.uk/BARD.htm I'm quite tempted to have some wood dated to help work out my own build date.

I have found dating areas of the building based on construction and materials is made more complicated because people (including me to be fair) couldn't leave any part of it alone for more than about 100 years. You'll look at a bit of it and guess the age, like my inch thick straw plaster ceiling which must be very old, then you notice later on it is supported by tall thin joists which can't be much more than a hundred years old.

It's worth searching the internet for historical brick bonds and sizes. I found some good information but can't seem to find it at the moment. My 'new' chimney is built in English bond which was used a lot before 1700 but replaced by Flemish bond after that, and is built with wide mortar gaps because they didn't make bricks in very regular shapes in those days.

The thing to be very careful about is to never allow any material to be used on your house that was invented in the last 100 years. I've been stripping out concrete, cement, gypsum plasters, removing impermeable paints etc and replacing all of those things with lime. The modern stuff traps water and has caused a lot of damage. It is easy to make localised repairs in lime plaster using lime.

 

[Penners]

Welcome to the forum. Don't hold back from asking any questions. You may regard them as stupid, but we won't - we've all been beginners.

You have a good guide to identifying the age of bricks from livias, above.

As regards your chimney cracks, it would be helpful to know whether the cracks are in the mortar between the bricks, or in the bricks themselves. Can you post one or two photos of the cracks?

Plaster with straw in it could be anything from original to the house up to early 20th century - or even later, if the place has been renovated by someone with a purist attitude to such things!

 

[MatthewC]

The plaster looks old to me and needs repair, is it possible to keep the good stuff and do localised repair?

Yes, you need to remove the bad stuff completely without making good stuff loose - I used a long Stanley blade to give a decent chamfer. We then lime plastered the bare bits and did a skim over the top of old and new with some fine lime plaster, having first painted the old with some stuff called DG27 which is breathable. You can't see the join. Check the Mike Wye website for DG27.

 

[Brothernumberone]

Thank you for all your replies. It's taking a while for my posts to get past the moderators, because I'm new I think, I'll post some more pics later.

 

[formerly known as]

hey! nothing rough about lime plaster with straw in it - you can get just a good a finish with that as you can with hair. My mix - which is easy to use and very robust is 1 part non hydraulic lime, 1 part 5mm down sand amd 1 part chopped up barley straw. Try it - you won't use anything else. Histotrically, this has been used more than you might think.

 

[agbagb]

Hi BroNo1,

Looks familiar. Ours needed a fair bit doing to it, especially after seeing the state of the brick work under the plaster.

You might want a look at http://www.idostuff.co.uk/sections/Property/Cottage/Chimney_Jenga_repairs.html. With luck yours isn't as bad.

Andy

 

[Brothernumberone]

Thanks again for the replies
Agbagb, that looks scary! Well done.
I've got some more pics. I hope the chimney doesn't need to be rebuilt because I think they'd have to disassemble the house to get to it.
Viewed from one end.


From the other end.


The bit that troubles me is in the following pics. The area on this face above the roof line is rendered and a large chunk of render has crack off. When it rains the section of chimney below the roof line under the render gets soaked and I guess this has been going on for a while. The bricks are cracked and crumbling.

 

[DJH]

We had a similar situation when we bought our house with a chimney boxed in to hide it and the hot water cylinder and storage cistern...

The day we bought the house..





Today with adornments by courtesy of Mrs DJH..



The black dog is Scottie her toy when she was young and the dear left over from Christmas...and the ducks... :roll:

Doug

 

[Penners]

the dear left over from Christmas

That's no way to speak about your wife!

Or did you mean deer...?

:wink:

 

[DJH]

Ooops... no difference really, they are both dear...

 

[Penners]

Dear oh dear...!

 

[DJH]

Deer oh deer maybe? 8)

I must find something else to do...I've been on here most of the afternoon as Imogen is keeping me indoors. She's just blown down the only length of plastic gutter that I have on the house (it's not seen from below) except for now as it's on the ground...grrr

I've even run out of Whatsits as well.

Doug

 

[Penners]

I've even run out of Whatsits

Surely there must be an auction coming up in the near future, Doug? Local agricultural auctions are usually rich pickings for Whatsit hunters!

 

[Kearn]

Mine also had a smoke bay which was replaced with a chimney at a later date. They left some of the timber frame in place and built a chimney around it.

Going back some time Malcolm, but hopefully your stack is still standing…!

Just curious what you have and what’s visible / how you reckon it evolved?

I ask as we’re going down the rabbit hole with our latest project, trying to get to grips with the original timber frame and later evolution - possible hall house with early smoke hood and cantilevered smoke cap at ridge, now big quoin and rubble stack beneath, but we’re not quite sure which came first!

Your comment struck a chord - when you say timber frame, are you talking about the smoke hood construction or the frame of the bay itself?

 

[malcolm]

@Kearn I'm not sure what my house had to begin with. The first record I have of the house is from 1646 when it became a pub. I did some reading and it seems houses were normally built with brick chimneys by around 1600 and wooden chimneys were outlawed in the late 1600s.

My timber frame passed through the chimney and had pamment tiles on edge on the inside and outside of the timber frame. The floor on the inside was made from huge bits of timber with random mortice joints that I guess started life elsewhere. There weren't any clues what might have been there originally but it looks like the brick chimney was an addition to the house. Bricks are wide and short so probably from some point in the 1600s.



The timber frame had been covered in concrete render for 100 years and the beetles had eaten it. It had to be replaced. I replaced the timber in the chimney with brick but kept the pamment tiles.

I like the way the building can be read from this gable. The original timber frame would have been full height. A lean to with no foundations was added to the rear probably in the 1700s. The bricks remain up to the height of the gas meter. Then the lean to was raised to 2 story height around 1850, then the roof was raised further in 1920 when they put the new front on. You can see the diagonal line at the top of the extension where the brick colours change.