Help with Listed Building Terminology

[tipperl]

Hello all! Haven't posted much but am hoping you can help. Hubbie & I, having finished renovation of our Victorian home, are looking for a bigger challenge. We've been looking at a listed building near us and are unfamiliar with some of the terminology in the listing. Hope you can help!

Here are some of the tems giving us problems (and google isn't helping!)...'very large inglenook fireplace with large bressumer and heck wall'. So, we understand the inglenook fireplace bit but what is meant by 'bressumer and heck wall'?? I've attached (I hope) a picture of the fireplace (with ugly brick monstrosity now sitting inside the inglenook). Is the listing referring to the beam across the inglenook?

And secondly, '...2 chamfered beams with cyma stops' and later a description of 2 chamfered beams with run-out stops. What is a cyma stop and how does it differ from a run-out stop?

Your help is greatly appreciated! If we end up buying the place, I'll be needing LOADS more help I'm sure. I'm not sure we're ready for a renovation AND dealing with English Heritage!
~Laura

 

[JoceAndChris]

Hello and welcome Laura! I'm afraid I don't know the answers to your questions so I'll be interested to read other replies.

"The Old House Handbook", by Roger Hunt and Marianne Suhr, is a lovely and definitive read for a project such as yours.

Good luck with it all and do keep us posted.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Welcome Laura.

Bressumer is the whacking great beam over the inglenook fireplace, I believe. The "stops" on your beams relates to the shape of the ends of them. Often they are not square for the whole length - the bottom corners are often rounded off or otherwise "shaved". How this is then shaped back to a square beam as it the wall or another beam is the "stop". I have what I understand are "chamfered" stops. I like them.

You will spot from these garbled responses that I am not an expert, but pick this up as I go along.

Proper experts will be along shortly!

Any pics of your current Victorian project to titillate us with? We like pics on here!!!

 

[MdB]

Hi Laura,

I can't help with your terminology questions I am afraid. I do have a little note of warning though. The fireplace brickwork to me looks like it is modern and not particularily in keeping with the room. This makes we wonder if its construction was done with listed building consent. If it wasn't and you buy the property, you will then become liable to return it to a more fitting style at your cost. I wouldn't worry too much about the fireplace as this probably wouldn't be too expensive to do but more importantly, it would make me wonder what else has been done in the property without the proper consent. If other work has been done, you may well have to pay to put somebody elses mistakes right.

I'm sure you know all of this anyway and have this all covered but it is something that has caught other people out in the past.

On the other hand, the house may have been listed recently after the fireplace was built. In this case, you would need consent to change it back to its original form - though my understanding would be that this would very likely be agreed to.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

The heck wall is the wall on the left of the fireplace in the photo - it (theoretically) stops a howling gale blowing into the room whne the front door's open.

 

[tipperl]

Thanks so much to everyone for your prompt and informative replies! I'll let you know if we get this house (or whatever other 'project' we end up with when all the house-hunting is complete). Will see about posting some pics of the Victorian semi we've just (mostly) completed, though will post those under another thread. I, too, crave pics of other people's houses. Maybe I'm just nosey!
Cheers!! ~Laura

 

[Moo]

it (theoretically) stops a howling gale blowing into the room.

Or, to use the vernacular, a heck of a gale.

 

[essexbearhunter]

Cyma refers to the shape. Often used for mouldings, it comes as either a Cyma Recta or Cyma Reversa.
One has the convex (or bellied out) bit at the bottom surmounted by a concave section whereas the other has them the opposite way round.
Sometimes referred to as an Ogee.

 

[biffvernon]

The heck wall is the wall on the left of the fireplace in the photo - it (theoretically) stops a howling gale blowing into the room whne the front door's open.

The space between heck wall and fire is where you parked your aged parent in the days before old peoples' homes were invented.

 

[Penners]

As I understand it, "bressumer" is a contraction of "breast summer" - a summer being any supporting beam (possibly itself a corruption of "member"). So a breast summer supports a chimney breast.

 

[Feltwell]

As I understand it, "bressumer" is a contraction of "breast summer" - a summer being any supporting beam (possibly itself a corruption of "member"). So a breast summer supports a chimney breast.

I didn't know that. Possibly just a later usage of the word once it's original exact meaning had been forgotten, but in Victorian context I've always heard the term bressumer used to describe the large wooden beam above a bay window that supports the first floor brickwork above.

They can be prone to rot if the bay roof is not maintained - especially if like mine, the water drains to a channel at the back of the roof, against the joint with the wall and therefore the bressumer. Mine happens to be a wacking great cast iron beam rather than timber - can't think why cast iron might have been popular round here....... :wink: