Tree-ring dating to 1530

In 2019 a full survey was carried out by Dr. Andy Moir. The summary is reproduced below and the results are referenced in a 2021 index of tree-ring dated buildings in England by the Vernacular Architecture Group, and the full dendrochronology report is available by kind permission.

Summary

The main range of the house now comprises two long bays, oriented east-west, with the purlins extending a short distance beyond the east wall of the hall, where a later two-bay parlour crosswing has replaced the inferred third bay. A former cross-passage at the west end of the hall range also suggests the possibility of a further bay beyond it. The hall occupies one and a half bays and has an original ceiling with heavy transverse and longitudinal beams, chamfered with pyramid stops.

The roof trusses have clasped purlins and raking queen-struts, with curved windbraces, but most of the common rafters have been replaced. All the original timbers over both bays and those extending to the east are substantially smoke-blackened, despite the existence of the original hall ceiling. It seems likely that part of the westernmost section of the ceiling held a smoke-hood from which the smoke simply rose into the roof space.

Most of the structural timbers are of elm, but the main range roof trusses are of oak. Measured tree-ring series from five timbers sampled are matched together to form an 85- year site chronology, which is dated to span 1445 to 1529. Three timbers felled in the spring of 1530, together with a compatible felling-date range produced from two other timbers dated, provide good evidence that construction occurred in 1530, or perhaps soon after. Thus, the house dates from the very earliest period of modernisation, converting medieval open halls to ceiled houses with chimneys, typically in Warwickshire during the sixteenth century.

All the accessible timbers in the cross-wing are of elm, so could not be dated, but it seems likely to have been added later in the sixteenth century.