Surrounded by the past: carpenters, burn and witch marks at a Tudor holiday house

For nearly 500 years, an old farmhouse has nestled in a Warwickshire hamlet, next to the River Avon, deep in Shakespeare’s countryside. For centuries the owners and people who lived in the house made changes to the house as they saw fit, mostly adding layers of material over bodged alterations.

During the last 20 years the house, now known as Wisson Hill, has been lovingly restored, phase by phase, peeling back the layers to carry out the maintenance the house needs. This process has been rewarded by uncovering some of the languages used by past generations living in the house, since construction in 1530. The skilled carpenters who created the beams of the timber frame literally left their marks and there is a direct connection with the past to run your fingers over carvings made with a race knife, chisel or awl nearly 500 years ago.

I get the same feeling by pressing my finger into the smooth groove of a burn or taper mark. We may categorise them as superstitious markings but, in a world of very different beliefs to our own, and with an open fire and candles in a house made of wood, it seems entirely reasonable to use the best available ‘technology’ to try to protect your home and loved ones from what you most feared.

Carpenters and apotropaic markings are generally clearly one or the other, although one mark at Wisson Hill has not yet been assigned to either category…or neither.

Carpenters marks

Tudor timber frame houses were built by skilled carpenters, who shaped the necessary timbers from freshly cut trees – often oak but mostly elm at Wisson Hill – and carved markings into the parts making up joints, to ensure they were assembled correctly. Each joint would be assigned a number, which was carved into the wood next to the joint. These are sometimes called marriage marks.

Wisson Hill has many examples of earlier carpenters marks, which are more like a series of scores or tallies with a sharp tool:

The original 1530 structure (dated by dendrochronology) at Wisson Hill shows this sort of basic but clear marking on pretty much all surviving joints, mostly heavily smoke-blackened. This is consistent with the original house having been built with a smoke bay and first floor, with smoke wafting fairly freely around the building, particularly above the first floor space.

Whilst also timber frame, other parts of Wisson Hill’s structure were probably modified probably a few decades later:

• The timbers are all elm, whilst the original structure was a mixture of oak and elm
• The wood is a light colour, not smoke-darkened
• Carpenters marking of joints are in Roman numerals

Roman numeral markings can be seen on rafters in the attic and on a partition on the first floor:

The top left image above may also show a carpenters alignment mark too.

Whilst not a carpenters mark as such, I love the human aspect of this evidence of a (rare) craftsman’s mistake. It seems that the carpenter started to drill peg holes for a brace but stopped, perhaps finding they were in the wrong place, and a fresh set of peg holes were drilled.

This timber frame joint also shows a burn mark, which brings us on to the next type of mark to be found on old beams…

Apotropaic or protective marks

The most numerous apotropaic markings in this sixteenth century house are burn marks or taper burns, which are thought to protect against fire. These tadpole-shaped marks were made deliberately, usually at particular places in a building, where people felt most vulnerable to danger. There is a distinct cluster of burn marks inside what was the smoke bay, which is understandable:

And two bressumers – or beams – over fireplaces show burn marks:

It is hard to tell whether the burn mark on the pigmented bressumer was made before or after the pigmented finish was painted on.

Burn marks also appear apparently in other positions around the house, on posts, braces and partitions:

Another intriguing example is where the burn mark is bisected by the plaster (and wattle and daub) panel, suggesting that the burn mark was there before the panel: has a doorway been filled in?

Careful removal of thick, black paint, using Klingstrip alkali poultice, from a fireplace bressumer revealed a hexafoil marking, or daisy ring. It is very faint, but was clear as the beam was drying after paint removal:

This ‘witch mark’ would have been carved at a time when belief in the supernatural was the standard way to view life (and death) and woven into all aspects of public and private life. In 1530, when the house was built, the inhabitants would have been Catholics, and their daily life would have incorporated the power of saints, spiritual imagery, healing based on herbs and spells and a fear of demons. At the same time, it is perhaps possible to overstate the fear associated with markings intended to have supernatural powers. They may have been more routinely applied – almost a habit – like how we might knock on wood, have good luck charms or mascots, use alarms and insurance policies, or perhaps apply the principles of feng shui.

The daisy wheel is one of several apotropaic marking types which forms a endless line to confuse and trap evil spirits.

This last mark is mysterious. Is it a ‘mesh mark’ designed to confuse bad spirits, or a a different sort of carpenters mark – a plumb line mark, to do with setting out during construction?

Starting to research apotropaic marks that are diagonal lines, meshes, or maybe just clusters of scratches, I found these apparently deliberate marks on timbers all around the house:

It is obviously difficult to be sure that such scratches were made deliberately and with a particular meaning in mind, and the examples below show how hard it can be to distinguish between saw marks, deliberate scratchings, hacking for a plaster key and later accidental scratches. Hacks to create a plaster key are usually quite distinctive (deep, with the surface of the wood lifted) but it is possible that later workmen also created some cuts that could be confused with superstitious markings.

It is depressing to think how many carpenters, witch and other apotropaic markings will have been lost to sand-blasting of beams, sanding and other harsh ways of stripping paint off or tidying up old beams. At Wisson Hill, most of the marks shown were simply covered up for hundreds of years. When the layers of battens and lath and plaster were removed, the surface of the wood was unchanged from when marks were made.

In some cases, timbers had been lime washed. Loose lime wash has been brushed off, but no more than that, trying to leave evidence of lime washing, as this gives vital clues about how the house was inhabited.

In a few cases, timbers had been painted, either straight onto the wood, or over a layer of soot deposit. The treatment has been the same: gentle paint removal using alkali poultice. This will be described in more detail on Wisson Hill’s maintenance web page but it basically involves smearing a layer of odourless Klingstrip poultice – the consistency of cream cheese – onto beams and covering with plastic wrap for a day or so. The poultice and wrap can then be scraped off and disposed off, and the messy work starts: gently brushing and wiping the beams with water until no more poultice or paint residue is left. This is relatively straightforward, even with black paint, but when the paint was applied to a sooty surface, the process of wiping away brown water seems endless. In any case, it is a gentle process and leaves marks undamaged, even revealing them, in the case of Wisson Hill’s daisy wheel witch mark.

Taking all of these man-made marks and other information about the house, it should be possible to get a clearer picture of when marks were applied and therefore what people believed and when. Is it fair to say that in 1530, belief in the supernatural would have been near universal, and that by the end of the seventeenth century it was much more rare? If so, can all this information help to either tell us when changes were made to the house, or give some idea when marks were made?

• The inside of the smoke bay structure shows early (tally style) carpenters marks and burn marks, but also deliberate scratches, the latter apparently cutting through the sooty layer, so after the smoke bay was replaced by an inglenook fireplace…
• The inglenook brickwork was not done with a view to being on show: mortar on the outside wall has the lines for a render key and the sloping brick wall indoors is very rough. This roughly mortared chimney breast was enclosed in a space – now visible to holiday guests – which was formed when the tie beam was cut through to create a doorway to the gable room. The cut end of the tie beam seems to show deliberate scratches (see photo below), maybe suggesting that the practice continued through the seventeenth century or later? Or are the cuts actually just plaster keying slashes?
• Scratch and burn marks appear in large numbers on beams with Roman carpenters marks as well as apparently older timbers – does this give us a span of years for the practice?
• A burn mark is shown above on a painted (pigmented) bressumer, which has an ovolo moulding, which may provide an earliest possible date of late sixteenth century for that particular mark.
• The truncated ‘V’ at the junction with the original truss suggests that panel may have been repositioned, as does the empty mortice below it (joint ‘II’).

Wisson Hill’s 500-year history is shared in more detail, from Tudor construction to 20th century decline and change.

This post is written to share pictures of apotropaic and carpenters marks, as they currently exist and can be viewed at this sixteenth century holiday house. Marks of various sorts can be seen in every room. Interpretation requires expertise and the comments here are based only on the research carried out by a curious home owner – comments and insights are very welcome. Heritage England has published an authoritative guide to carpenters and apotropaic markings.

All of these marks can be seen by guests staying at this Tudor holiday house.

About the author

I have owned Wisson Hill, a sixteenth century farmhouse in Warwickshire, England, for 20 years. In that time I have learned how to carry out decoration and maintenance using traditional lime-based materials. Working with skilled craftsmen I have developed an appreciation of the structure of this Tudor house, and the clues that can tell us how it was altered over time by the families who lived here. I have learned to carry out documentary research, using the fantastic records at Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Warwickshire County Records Office, as well as online resources, such as the National Archives.

I have called in the experts when required, including Historic England, Dr. Nat Alcock (https://warwick.academia.edu/natalcock) who carried out research into the house’s owners, Dr. Andy Moir on dendrochronology (https://www.tree-ring.co.uk/contact.htm) and I have worked closely with Conservation Officers at Warwickshire District Council. Local detectorists have helped me broadly identify the small finds unearthed during restoration.

After 20 years I am still finding new clues and surprises at Wisson Hill. Friends and family have regularly asked for tours of the house and updates on finds, so I am looking forward to sharing insights with history fans who come to Wisson Hill on holiday.

Amanda Billingsley