Why did the Victorians raise the walls ?

[masochists-r-us]

We live in a 17th C farmhouse that had its thatch removed late 1800's. The walls had several courses of stone added to them and a shallow pitch slate roof with two dormer windows replaced the steep thatch. The house was also split into two cottages at the time and one farmer became two large families with lodgers so we assume this was when the attic accommodation was first created. What we don't understand is why raise the walls ? Yes, some additional width was created, but with very little headroom to it, but overall headroom in the centre of the attic was lost due to the shallowness of the pitch.We keep asking ourselves what was the point of adding the extra stonework. Was it so that a shallow pitch roof requiring less slate could be added i.e. a money saving exercise or did the many victorian kids sleep side by side right into the underside the purlins ? Any ideas anyone ?

 

[chuckey]

My first thought is that the thatched roof caught fire and the timbers were damaged, so some serious work had to be done on it. At the time the owner thought this was the best solution. Perhaps there were no dormers in the thatch roof? If the ridge line stays the same, raising the walls always increases the width of the headroom, until they are level with ridge, then the headroom is uniform everywhere.
Frank

 

[worms]

Perhaps I am not following this... Are you suggesting that the ridge height stayed the same, but that the front and back walls had a couple of courses added? Any evidence that the attic floor/downstairs ceiling was raised at the same time?

 

[masochists-r-us]

Perhaps I am not following this... Are you suggesting that the ridge height stayed the same, but that the front and back walls had a couple of courses added? Any evidence that the attic floor/downstairs ceiling was raised at the same time?

No. The ridge height was lowered, but the front and back walls had maybe four courses added.No evidence of the first floor ceiling being raised at the same time, but it clearly was later when the house was 'modernised' in the 1960s/70s.

 

[robgil]

I dont think you can put a slate roof on the same pitch as thatch can you? There wouldnt be any point.

 

[Lime]

We keep asking ourselves what was the point of adding the extra stonework.

Living accomodation standards back then were nothing like ours today.
In the country particularly, houses were often bursting at the seams with family members.
Family fortunes changed quite quickly in the country too.
Overcrowding in my relatively poor rural area was normal with growing families right upto the 1960s.
Therefore if adding a few inches to the walls produced more sleeping area then there is your reason.
Remember beds were a luxury, most poor people slept on the floor with whatever and whoever they had with them.

 

[Penners]

one farmer became two large families

My, my - he was a busy chap, wasn't he? :wink:

A number of sensible theories have been advanced already, and of course you're never likely to know the actual truth of it. Raising the walls and lowering the ridge height would certainly have reduced the surface area, and hence the cost, of the replacement roof, while increasing the useable headroom in the bedrooms. They may still seem to have low ceilings to you, but you're likely to be taller than the average poor-earner in the 19th century.

Of course, the above cost saving ignores the cost of increasing the wall height, but maybe the owner had a brother who was a brickie!

I can't help feeling that the reason for this modification was something along the lines of this theory.

I dont think you can put a slate roof on the same pitch as thatch can you?

I don't see why not. A steep pitch is no problem - it's only when the pitch becomes very shallow that you start to encounter limitations.

 

[robgil]

Wont it put too much downward pressure on the walls?

 

[Penners]

That depends on the walls!

I'm no expert, but so far as I know both masonry and timber-frame are excellent in compression. Many thousands of houses have had their thatch replaced with tile/slate without problems. If any reinforcement has been done, I suspect that it's been the roof timbers rather than the walls that have needed beefing up, in order to support the greater weight and to prevent the walls from spreading outwards.

 

[chuckey]

Recently I viewed a 1930s bungalow for my retirement home. I looked around it and thought too much work, then the Estate agent said I must show you this. He dropped the loft hatch, extricated the wooden loft ladder and invited to to go up to have a look. Never thought about it before but these loft ladders were slightly narrower then my shoulders and once at the top I was in a passage, wide enough for the ladder but too narrow for my shoulders, so I shuffled along this passage (only 6' long or so). When the passage opened up into a greater space, I felt around and found a light switch and turned it on. Blow me down! I was looking at a conventional loft where all the normal surfaces had been boarded over (with hardboard?) and painted gloss white, even the purlins and struts and underneath the purlins were mattresses made up into beds with duvets on with their head ends pushed right into the eaves of the roof angle - three in all. The area was used as there were piles of magazines next to the "beds", an alarm clock and hanging rails with clothes on them. Well!, what do you say? Sufficient to say we did not buy the property but for a very different reason.
It was a cracking bungalow in its day, but it is beyond redemption now.
Frank

 

[Penners]

It was a cracking bungalow

You were wise not to buy it, Frank. Cracks can be a warning of serious problems. :wink: