Underground Sole Plate

[malcolm]

I'm curious why a sole plate might have been placed underground in an internal wall. Most sole plates in this building are at least a foot above ground level, but I found one today under an internal wall that seems to have been placed below floor level. It is a weeny sole plate - only 6" x 3" and after 400 years it is no longer doing a very good job supporting the posts.

My internal ground levels could well have risen by 3 inches which would have put the sole plate on the ground when the house was built, but not raised on a plinth. The sole plate seems to stop at a door opening so it is possible that it always stopped there rather being designed to run underneath the door.

It's only the single surviving interior wall here that has this problem. Everything else seems to have been built correctly to Jacobean building regs. Could it have been normal practice to forget the plinth for internal walls or should I restart my cellar hunt?

 

[MikeG]

In classical timber framing, all the plates were generally at the same level. Could this be a newer wall? Or could it be that the external sole plates have been repaired/ replaced by cutting back the studs, raising the plates, and inserting a plinth underneath (thus this wall is the only one left with a plate at the original level)? So many buildings were built with sole plates straight on the ground.

As so often in trying to answer questions on-line, the lack of an over-view of the building is the biggest hurdle.
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[malcolm]

The building has been much modified and I am finding it difficult to second guess. My thought was it started off as a timber framed building with a wooden chimney on the end wall possibly built around 1600. It was in use as a pub by 1646 when it probably had a 4m by 12m footprint.

The doubtful wall in question is about 4m from the north wall so would probably be an original internal wall. It is timber framed with wattle and daub. Most of the rest of the original structure has been replaced apart from that one room which retains it's low ceiling height. The adjoining room had lower windows in early photos so maybe the ground level may once have been lower or the two parts could have been built at different times. I don't know if the plinth was built later - I'll measure the brick size. The joints from the posts to the sole plate on the outside wall that I did expose looked original.

The photo of the original outside wall (from the original outside) is the most I have exposed. The doorway was hacked in by Georgians not me, though I have reopened it. Problem wall is through the opening then to the left.

Forgot to mention - we did remove some wood from under the doorway in the photo above. It was around the same size and depth as the wood we removed today so could be a clue.

 

[malcolm]

I think it might be a newer wall after all. There is no post where it joins the kitchen wall, just a stud, and the post sizes and configuration are different. The timber frame was knocked around a bit when the chimney was built and possibly the wall was moved at the same time.