Nearly done with the damn plastering.

Getting tired of seeing photos of plastered walls? Yeah, me too. Having been away a bit over the past month, progress has not been huge, but most of the plastering for levelling out the walls prior to insulating them is now complete. Just some larger holes to pack up with insulation, then patching with plaster, and the south and west sides, the only sides that need internal insulation, are done.

Last wall in living room. Rails up, and rough cast done.

And done!

Looking southwards, down the living room.

And north.

 I left one small bit in the middle of the wall unplastered, as that's where a beam in the floor needs to come out. Some time...

The bedroom above the living room was far easier, as the walls were already relatively straight, although the windows are standing proud of the wall, meaning I couldn't form nice, sharp corners. Once the insulation is up, they'll have a small inset and place for a sill.

Second floor, above the living room.

And done!

And finally, the top floor. A slight bow in the wall is now evened up, but holes remain over the windows that need to be packed up. I can't help but feeling that the brickwork would be nice to leave visible, but with a low-temperature heating system, we can't leave this uninsulated. Maybe I'll put fake brickwork up later.

In other, more interesting news, the man who took wood samples months ago finally came back with some initial dendrochronology dates, which were quite surprising, adding over half a century to the age of the house. He has to write a final report, but his reasoning (not to mention the dates) are compelling. That'll need a post of its own, as it changes our understanding of how the house developed considerably.

1937

We really haven't found much in the way of datable "stuff" in the house. The previous owners were not hoarders, and apart from a child's shoe up under the eves, there's been little material showing what life was like over the years in the house.

However, today I found a balled-up sheet of newspaper that was stuffed into a hole in a door post, presumably used to pack the hole before the post was plastered over (there was also bits of tiles on the other side of the hole). It turned out to be the front (and back) pages of the Volksgemeinschaft / Heidelberger Beobachter, from the 1st of October, 1937, found 74 years later, almost exactly to the day.

What's interesting about this, apart from the historical aspects of the headline, with Adolf Hitler being invited to visit Rome shortly after Mussolini's September 1937 visit to Germany, is how it ties in with other documents we have from that year.

I've already posted about the various planning documents we have, and one was also from 1937, when part of the eastern gable was rebuilt in brick, and a new chimney was inserted on the western side of the house.

The stamp on the back attests to the regime in power at the time.

So, they applied for permission to do major works in March 1937, and by October they had re-plastered the walls in the kitchen, using a sheet of newspaper to plug a hole in a post. Just another piece of life.

The other, everyday stories in the few pages we have are interesting. Adverts, cinema listing, a piece about the Morning Post being taken over by the Daily Telegraph. History through a keyhole.

Leaving their mark

A bit like modern graffiti, I guess there's always been a desire for people to leave their mark somewhere. We've seen a few initials carved into bricks outside our house, but some recent finds made me lough out loud, just from the pleasure of finding something new, and personal.

Just inside the door on the brick machine room, to the right, between the house and barn, we saw KW, OW and EL. I didn't pay much attention to it, knowing that at least KW was the father of the people we bought the house from, and being pretty sure the machine room wasn't really all that old.

It wasn't till I stuck my head out one of the small windows, right up at the third level, that the initials took on greater significance, simply in terms of the lives that were led in this house over a long time. On the sill, I found 19 OW 52. So we know that the OW on the machine room was making their mark around that time. I spoke with the previous owner today (it was really nice they just popped by to say hello while I was gutting the attic), and she thought OW was her grandmother, but I would guess OW was fairly old in 1952, so not sure if she would have been making her mark then.

It could be 18OW52, but pretty sure it's 19OW52

Nevertheless, we'll talk to the previous owners about the family tree and try to piece that together. But it seems reasonable that the KW, OW and EL from the machine room are fairly contemporary, along with the 19 OW 52 one from the attic.

KW was the father of the previous owner, and it's likely he marked the bricks. But we know a (different) KW was the grandfather and a third KW was the great-grandfather. So imagine how tickled I was to find, on the same window surround, as the 19 OW 52, a much fancier KW, complete with serifs, and the year 1880.

I think we might have a photo of this man, but I'll ask permission to reproduce it first. But this made me laugh out loud. The thoughts of a young man, or perhaps a boy, carving this into the window frame with such care, three stories up in a grain storage room, where practically nobody would see it in the 131 years that passed till this photo was taken. Brilliant!

This wood had been covered by corrugated sheeting for the past 25 years, but I'm still amazed at how fresh it looks, protected as it is by being near the top of the frame before the cladding was put up. I was so intrigued, I had to climb up the scaffolding outside to get a better impression. It was the first good look I've had of the half-timbered construction from the outside, and it certainly looks like it's been there a long time, being well-weathered.

As well as lots of carpenters marks on this gable wall, there was one more, fairly recent inscription, presumably put there by the man who erected the corrugated sheeting that covered this gable till a couple of months ago. 1986 Adolf Gruber, written in pencil on the whitewash, 11 metres above ground level right at the apex.

Presumably his helpers had certain opinions of him, as I doubt the sketch below was a self-portrait!

A House of Two Sides

We've known for quite a while that the house was originally split in two halves, each with it's own stairwell (loads of evidence for that!), and presumably entrance door (the two centre ones, obviously). What we don't know, is when it became one, with the stairs on the right hall removed and doors opened between the halves. It was still separated in 1937, according to the plans we have from then. We've theorised about whether it may have been built in two stages, as the fachwerk, the timber construction on the facade, shows differences in style between left and right. We thought perhaps the left might be a little older, but  last Saturday morning, while talking with a expert restorer (Thanks Franz Geiger!), a bunch of clues that we'd alreeady noticed clicked into place.

The facade on the right has diagonal cross-bracing, the facade on the left has horizontal bracing. We were told that the facades are usually symmetrical, so if you look at the facade from the right edge, the diagonal braces go down, up, down, up, down... no up to the left of the window above the former entrance door. It's like something is missing.

The left facade, June 2011. Note horizontal cross-bracing.

The right facade, June 2011. Note diagonal cross-bracing.

One of the more subtle clues is the fact that the upright timbers on the right of the facade have carpenters marks on them, following a numbering system that has been used since the medieval period. The uprights on the left have none. Moving from right to left, the uprights are numbered in descending order, We have ... XIII, XII but no XI as expected left of that same window.

Hard to see, but the central post is XII, the one to the right can be seen as XIII. Note also the different thickness.

The photo above shows that the base beam on the right is thicker than that on the left (not so conducive with one building phase where they might have taken care, or perhaps even tried to use one single beam).

Measuring between the edge of the door frame and the inner wall surface on each side of the dividing wall, and taking into account the usual symmetry in such facades, the distance from the edge of the right door to the dividing wall tallies with what one might expect given the spacing of the timbers on the far right of the facade. There's a bigger distance on the left side which suggests that it's not "in harmony".

Right corner, and new upper wall from 1937.

The corners of each side have differences. The gables on each side are currently masonry, however on the left it has sandstone blocks on the edge while on the right is a large oak post. On this side, there's an oak beam running as a footing under the brickwork. Another clue here is that on the 1937 plans for works, the gable on the right is marked as red, meaning it was new (well, it replaced something that was already there). We now suspect the entire right gable was originally half timbered and one level of this, and the rear wall, was replaced with masonry in 1937. In fact, these walls are made of red bricks, not stone like the rest of the outer and lower walls.

To cut a long story short, we think the right side of the building is older than the left. We think there was a smaller building here, with upper levels entirely half-timbered, and some time in the past the left side was added on, with a stone gable, and that at this time the entire roof was replaced to make a single roof structure. The room layout is almost perfectly symmetrical on each side, but it is odd that no such attempt was made to make the facade symmetrical.

This is all based on clues above, but we'll need an expert opinion, and maybe some dendrochronology to get some harder facts. We'll also do a little more documentary research to see if we can get some earlier maps. It just occurred to me that I found some charcoal while digging a test pit in the stalls on the right of the house (it's damp there, and I was trying to see if the groundwater was a bit high), and this could be carbon dated. If I could find some on the other side...

This is what happens when you have an archaeologist (my wife) and someone who worked in archaeology for almost 8 years (me, but I never called myself an archaeologist). Old habits die hard. Still only a theory though!

Since then, Franz gave us contact details for an expert on putting together the historical story of such houses, so looks like we'll have a better idea later this year.

The Lay of the Land

Before taking a closer look at the outbuildings, I thought it'd be useful to set the scene with a look of how the complex has developed over the past 100 years (well, about 90) based on plans we were given by the previous owners.

Lageplan from February, 1922.

In 1922, the then owner had applied to extend the barn (the extension marked in red on the plan to the right shows the planned extension to the barn, 179), so we have a general plan of the lands immediately surrounding the house from the planning application. Those plots of land and buildings marked as 179 were part of the property (I've shaded out everything else to make it clearer). Bearing in mind that this was a working farm, it seems small, but we know there were other land holdings nearby, and indeed these were still part of the overall property till we bought the house and immediate surrounds. The corridor marked by the two parallel lines at the bottom of the plan is a small stream. The building, marked 180, was another barn owned by the neighbour. Access to the house and the barns was via a small way, just leading left of the neighbour's barn. It's also interesting to note the little extension at the back of the main house. The current extension is wider than this, but it shows that there was something there before. In fact, this was a bake house, something the previous owner had mentioned, but we hadn't realised how important a part of the house this was till we saw another plan from 1937 that shows the house still divided into two separate halves (note no doors between the halves, and still two sets of stairs, one of which is now gone), and a Backkueche in one.

Floor plan of 1st floor, March 1937.

Lageplan from March, 1937.

It's odd that the ground plan in 1937, shown below, doesn't include the barn extension that was planned in 1922, but we know from later plans that it was most certainly extended, but we'll take a look at the development of the barn in another post. Perhaps plans were not being updated during the war years. The 1937 plan we have was for other works on the main house (a new chimney, and we think new windows on the eastern gable), so the extent of the barn was not essential to the planning.

Lageplan from March, 1960.

By 1960, the property boundaries had simplified considerably, between exchanges of land and a general straightening of boundaries, presumably as the lands around this area were, and indeed still are, part of a Flurbereinigungsgebiet - a rural land consolidation area where slivers of land are exchanged to simplify borders. We have a ground plan because there was yet another application to extend the barn. This time, the adjoining barn of the neighbour (shaded in yellow), and the accompanying plot of land on which it sat, was bought, and the older barn demolished to build an extension for stalls to the barn, which by this time has already been considerably extended. We don't know what the smaller building to the west, also shaded yellow, was, but it was probably knocked down at the same time. Access to the house at this time was still via the small "Weg". By now, the stream may have been partially covered, as it is today. We don't know when the access road at the back of the property dates from, as it was not shown in any of the earlier plans, but it provides a decent access to the land behind the house.

Lageplan from December, 2010.

Not much has changed to the boundaries since then, but the current plan shows the extent of the barn as it is today, more or less three times the size of the original footprint. As a former surveyor, I also have to laugh that the extension to the house (Whs - Wohnhaus) has still not been updated since 1922, as the "new" extension that replaced the former oven is actually twice the width. The biggest change seems to be access, as the former Weg which approached the house at an angle is now a straight road running north-south (and we own part of the paved street).

In total, the plot of land is just short of 3,000 square metres, or about 3/4 of an acre (unless it's an Irish acre). It feels bigger, especially when contemplating cutting the grass.