Part 3 (2/2)

In addition to these frail and temporary shelters were more substantial edifices, which may be cla.s.sified, according to present knowledge, as ill.u.s.trating at least five chief methods of English Medieval construction. These may be listed as follows:

1. The palisade 2. The puncheon 3. The cruck 4. Timber framing, including half-timber work 5. Brick

Now the first of these, _palisading_, was common in England for two thousand years and more, and, as we have already seen, was employed by the Virginia Indian, who invented it entirely independently of European contact. The first palisade on the James River, that of James Fort of 1607, comprised strong planks and posts placed close together four feet deep in the earth. They rose above ground about fourteen feet. But there was nothing, to our knowledge, which was unusual about that palisading, except, perhaps, its triangular shape. Most forts of that kind were square, but on Jamestown Island the fort was a triangle, supposedly forced into that configuration by the topography. At any rate, the customary bulwarks or watchtowers rose at the three corners of the fortification, and there was the usual moat and drawbridge.

English forts of this kind, with stockades and ditches, were common to Virginia, as for example, at Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke Fort of 1585 in North Carolina, formerly Virginia; at Old Point Comfort in 1609; in City of Henrico in 1611; at Claiborne's Kent Island trading post of 1621--now in Maryland; and at the ”Town” on the Eastern Sh.o.r.e in 1623.

One of the longest palisades in all Virginia in the seventeenth century was Dale's ”Dutch Gap” on the James. Its two-mile-long moat was lined by palisaded walls accented by towers.

After the Ma.s.sacre of 1622, the Colony of Virginia ordered (1624-25) all dwellings and plantations to be palisaded in, that is, to be enclosed by ”Park-pales,” as the English called them. Ordinarily walls about seven and a half feet high were tall enough for protection from sudden attack.

Even churches were palisaded in, as for example, the first church on the Eastern sh.o.r.e. In the 1630s one Stephen Charleton threatened to kick the Reverend Cotton over the paled fence--the ”Pallyzados”--around that sacred edifice.

The second medieval method is _puncheoning_. It seems that the English made puncheons or ”quarters” pretty much like the Indians, that is, they fas.h.i.+oned upright timbers or posts, set apart in the ground so that the s.p.a.ce between them was the same as the thickness of the timber or post.

Then they filled the interstices with ”wattle-and-daub,” a basketwork of branches, twigs, and roots, coated on both sides with loam and lime, mixed with straw. Back home in England, this filling of the s.p.a.ces was named ”post and pan.” On James River there is record of the Berkeley settlement of 1619 having most of the dwellings built of ”punches” set in the earth and with boards for the roofs. Other huts were flimsy shelters merely ”covered with boards,” so that one spark could easily set them off. But when the English employed thin turf or sod for their roofs, the structures were safer from fire.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Puncheoned Cot with wattle filling and clapboard roof]

In connection with this wattling and daubing of Virginia buildings, the two early churches on Eastern Sh.o.r.e are believed to have been puncheoned edifices. The second church (c. 1638), near Fis.h.i.+ng Creek was described as ”of insignificant dimensions” and constructed of two materials: ”roughly riled logs”--that is, vertical timbers, since log cabins as we know them were virtually unknown in the English colonies before 1660; and ”wattles.” A reference to ”daubing” the first church (c. 1623), on King's Creek, leads us to believe that it also was built on ”punches”

and was woven with wattles.

Now, about the third construction type, the _cruck_. No one has seen today an original cruck building in this country, but early Virginia possessed hundreds and perhaps thousands of cruck fabrics. Like the palisade and puncheon methods, the cruck was medieval down to its very core. In describing the James Fort church of 1607, Captain John Smith stated it was set upon ”crotchets,” covered with rafters, rushes, and earth. When he spoke of crotchet, he probably meant cruck, of which it was a later derivative. At all events, a building set on crucks means that it is supported or hung upon pairs of curved or bent tree trunks placed together in the shape of a Gothic pointed arch and s.p.a.ced one ”bay” apart. It was the custom in medieval England to erect buildings in bays for the sake of convenience. A bay was the standard unit of length, generally sixteen feet, although it could vary. A four-bay cruck church on Jamestown Island means that there were five pairs of bent trees, or crucks, in total length some sixty-four feet, arranged in the following manner: : : : : : Then, upon the crucks were hung the side walls and the roof.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Hypothetical Three-Bay Cruck House in Virginia]

Yet in this era of Virginia history before the ”Mayflower” landed in New England, the most common of all the medieval types of construction is _timber-framing_. A building which was timber-framed was a substantial one, comprising a framework of posts set _far_ apart, of diagonal braces, and of studs, sills, plates, and girts--the ensemble fastened together securely with tongues and grooves and wooden pegs. It was the custom to cut and adz the timbers so that they would fit together neatly; and in order to do that, Roman numerals were cut into each timber to identify it. In that way the whole framework could be a.s.sembled properly and efficiently--the first pre-fabricated house in Virginia. So good were these timber-framed structures that the English in the Old Dominion called them ”fair houses” and ”English houses.” In 1611 James City boasted of two fair rows of dwellings, all of framed timber, two storeys and garret, or corn-loft, high. At Berkeley, in 1619 there were two timber-framed habitations, and at the City of Henrico in 1611 three streets of well framed houses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Example of Timber Framing in 17{th} C. Va.]

The timber-framed dwelling is the most commonly erected today in this country, although builders and carpenters no longer bother to number or to peg together the timbers.

In this Cottage Period about which we have been reading the general manner of framing structures was to either cover the framework or make ”half-timber work.” In the former method, weatherboarding (clapboards), or s.h.i.+ngle tiles or slate nailed to weatherboards, covered up the posts and studs. In the latter method, the filling between the studding would be left exposed to the elements. And this filling could take a variety of forms: plaster; ”wattle-and-daub”; brick ”nogging,” with the bricks laid horizontally, in herring-bone, or helter-skelter; or mud and straw.

Contrary to popular opinion, there were undoubtedly _brick_ buildings in Virginia in the first thirteen years. It was at Jamestown in 1607 that President Wingfield visited ”ould Short, the bricklayer.” What do you suppose Short did in those early years of the Colony? He manufactured brick for chimneys, walks, walls, terraces, floors, kilns, and buildings--_brick_ buildings. Now brick for an edifice, usually laid in English bond, where the courses are alternately headers and stretchers, is still another English medieval method of construction, which became popular in Virginia. We know, for instance, that there were in 1611, in addition to the well-framed dwellings already cited at City of Henrico, some ”competent and decent houses, the first storie all of brick.” These were not purely brick structures but only part brick, which we have called buildings of ”half-and-half work.” The downstairs was brick, the upstairs timber-framed--another English medieval type.

Further, during the Cottage Period and for many a year afterward, the wooden chimney was the common method of smoke outlet. Strachey mentioned at James City not only the wattled buildings, but the ”wide and large Country chimnies”--in other words, the wood or ”Welsh” chimney, a medieval construction which dates back in English history to the eleventh century and before. Ordinarily the fire had its smoke and sparks sucked up a large wattle-and-daubed or lath-and-plastered hood resting on the garret floor, thence up a wood flue and out the stack, which might have been a barrel or wood box or some such contraption. At other times the whole chimney and fireplace were placed on the exterior, the better to protect against fire; and the boards were lined with crude lath and clay daubing. Still another kind of chimney was the ”catted”

chimney, made of ”cats” or rolled-up strips of clay mixed with straw, and placed closely together within a framework of wooden posts and rails. But you have to see these wooden chimneys to know how they actually appeared.

The story of this thirteen year period from 1607 to 1620 should not be concluded without mention of the influence of Indian building methods upon the English settlers. In 1608, after the great smoke of the fire had blown away from James City, the colonists under the direction of Captain Newport roofed some of their new homes with the bark of trees, which was cooler than their usual roofing clapboards or wooden s.h.i.+ngles.

Also they adorned their new rooms with mats woven into delicate colors and designs by the Indians.

Thatch for roofs did not go out of style altogether in favor of bark, because as late as 1638 there is record of a ”thatcht” dwelling on the Eastern Sh.o.r.e of Virginia.

Plowden noted the construction in 1650 in some of our East Coast settlements of ”arbour” houses, of poles and bark boards; and some of these _English_ arbor buildings were undoubtedly built in Jamestown and the other major settlements in earliest Virginia.

<script>