Rotten timbers

[Penners]

a screens passage at the lower end of a former open hall

Gareth - do you really think this house (or part of it) could be early enough to be a hall house?

If so, would those quarter-round windbraces be original? I confess that I've always rather associated them with later "tarting up" of timber-frame structures.

 

[asenath]

Nothing to do with rotting timbers but my dad was born at Gainsborough Hall! My gran was among a group of pregnant women evacuated there from Hull. Don't think he's lived anywhere as grand as that since tho!

 

[Gareth Hughes]

a screens passage at the lower end of a former open hall

Gareth - do you really think this house (or part of it) could be early enough to be a hall house?

Not really (not in terms of what is there today), but I think it's possible that the earlier part of what's there now (ie the porch and the right hand wing) may have been built on the footprint of the lower end block of a hall, which itself was then replaced with a storied hall block and solar wing, which in turn has been replaced again with the (probably nineteenth century) left hand half of the house.

Alternatively (and perhaps more likely) the porch etc are the surviving part s of a lower end block built c.1600 as part of a house which had a storied hall block from the start.

If so, would those quarter-round windbraces be original? I confess that I've always rather associated them with later "tarting up" of timber-frame structures

I don't think they're incompatible with a date of c.1600 in the Welsh Borders.