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Abstract
This paper provides a summary of some of the key findings of a volunteer project undertaken by the Yorkshire Vernacular Buildings Study Group as part of Historic England’s early fabric programme, the purpose of which was to examine and highlight the types of early fabric that can survive in urban contexts. The group studied early buildings in Beverley, East Yorkshire, using a combination of building investigation and recording, and documentary research. Case studies are presented for a selection of timber-framed buildings for which dates ranging from 1330 to 1674 were obtained through a combination of dendrochronology and radiocarbon wiggle-matching. The carpentry of crown-post roof trusses of the two earliest buildings is compared with similar buildings of the mid-fifteenth century. Two multiphase buildings are examined and the early fabric and later changes identified. Finally, a late seventeenth-century building is considered as an example of a type at the end of the timber-framing tradition.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We give our thanks to Historic England for the funding towards the cost of the project to identify early fabric and also particularly the guidance and training provided by Rebecca Lane and Allan Adams. Historic England also facilitated and funded the scientific dating programme, and we thank Cathy Tyers and NTRDL’s Robert Howard and Alison Arnold for their work. We thank the YVBSG project team members, David Cant, Barry Harrison, Lorraine Moor and Jacky Quarmby, and many YVBSG members who took part in drawing, measuring and reporting on the buildings. Many owners, tenants and occupiers gave us access to their buildings, and we thank them for this. We also thank the anonymous reviewers who provided comments on the draft version of this paper, particularly the care and attention to detail they provided, and finally thank the editor of Vernacular Architecture.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Abbreviations
EDAS Ed Dennison Archaeological Services ERALS East Riding Archives and Local Studies
Notes
1 Historic Towns and Suburbs NHPP 4A1.
2 Cathy Tyers, pers comm., June 1, 2018.
3 For this and paragraph below, see Allison, Victoria County History Yorks. ER 6; Miller et al., Beverley.
4 Lamburn, “The Minster and the Reformation,” 51.
5 Poulson, Beverlac, 338.
6 Neave et al., Yorks. ER Hearth Tax, 23; Woodward, Descriptions of East Yorks., 30.
7 Woodward, Descriptions of East Yorks., 40–1, 48.
8 Information in this and the following paragraph is drawn from an article written by one of the present authors in 2000: see Neave, “The Precinct”. This was based on original source material and provides a fully referenced account of medieval buildings associated with Beverley Minster that have not survived.
9 ERALS, BCII/7/1, f. 166.
10 Allison, Victoria County History Yorks. ER 6, 190.
11 English et al., Cabbages and Kings, 12–13.
12 Dennett, Beverley Borough Records, 39, 44–5.
13 Foreman, Beverley Friary, 25–6.
14 Neave, Medieval Parks, 22.
15 Leach, “Fifteenth-Century Fabric Roll,” 67.
16 Neave, Medieval Parks, 9.
17 In the Weald, for example, an extensive area covering parts of Kent, Surrey and East Sussex, the percentage of woodland recorded in Domesday (1086) was 70% compared to only 4% in East Yorkshire: Rackham, History of the British Countryside, 78. Rackham notes that the distribution of woodland at Domesday ‘is entirely supported by documents from later centuries’ (p. 75).
18 Woodward, Leland to Defoe, 8.
19 Report on the Manuscripts of the Corporation of Beverley, 72.
20 Dennett, Beverley Borough Records, 99.
21 Leach, Early Yorkshire Schools I, 121–2.
22 Ibid.; Pevsner and Neave, Yorkshire: York and the ER, 301.
23 Miller et al., Beverley, 40.
24 Pevsner and Neave, Yorkshire: York and the ER, 29.
25 Ibid., 26; ERALS, DDBC/15/43.
26 Dennett, Beverley Borough Records, 147.
27 Ibid., 167.
28 ERALS, PE1/260 et seq. (St Mary’s property leases). The Minster properties were administered by the Corporation: see especially ERALS, DDBC/16 & 25; PE1/842.
29 ERALS, PE1/261.
30 Neave et al., Yorks. ER Hearth Tax, 119–30.
31 ERALS, PE1/260 et seq.
32 Vernacular Architecture Group, Index of Tree-Ring Dated Buildings in England County List: Yorkshire 2016. Accessed September 1 2017. http://www.vag.org.uk/dendro-tables/england/county/yorkshire.pdf.
33 Humber Archaeology Partnership, SMR ref. 5666 (1985).
34 Walker, The English Medieval Roof, 122.
35 Vernacular Architecture Group, Index of Tree-Ring Dated Buildings in England County List: Yorkshire 2016. Accessed September 1 2017. http://www.vag.org.uk/dendro-tables/england/county/yorkshire.pdf.
36 RCHM, City of York 5, lxii–lxiii.
37 Walker, The English Medieval Roof, 24.
38 EDAS, unpublished reports on 55–6 Saturday Market, Beverley, 1998 and 32–6 North Bar Within, Beverley, 2011.
39 YVBSG report no. 1783, 2010.
40 Copy of lease in private collection.
41 ERALS, PE1/117.
42 YVBSG report no. 1683, 2005.
43 Miller et al., Beverley, 23.
44 Allison, Victoria County History Yorks. ER 6, 56.
45 Poulson, Beverlac, 338.
46 Woodward, Descriptions of East Yorks., 48.