Early hall houses had a sloped cross passage running through the building from front to back to drain rainwater. The passage was formed by wooden screens and included original doorways. Houses only had a few unglazed windows covered by wooden shutters. Doors were heavily constructed of vertical and horizontal planks with iron hinges. At the core were 4-5 heavy wooden trusses running to the ridge, some made from single tree trunks while others used jointed pieces. The trusses had horizontal collars and sometimes arch-bracing for strength and stability.

1. Early hall houses had a cross passage
running through the building from
front to back, with external doors at
each end. The passage was sloped to
allow rainwater entering one end to
run out the other!
The cross passage was typically formed by
wooden “plank-and-muntin” screens on either
side. The main timbers are still visible in some
Dunster properties. This one includes the
head of an original doorway into the main hall

2. The early houses had only a few
windows. These were unglazed, with
wooden shutters
Wooden doors were often heavily constructed ,
particularly external doors. One form was cross-
planked, the outer face consisting of vertical planks
with fillets to improve weather-proofing, and the
inner face having horizontal planks. Internal doors
would generally have been of lighter construction.
Doors and shutters were typically hung on iron “strap”
hinges and pintels.

3. At the core of the structure were a set – typically 4 or 5 in
number - of heavy wooden trusses set in the walls and
running up to the ridge of the roof. Some are “true crucks”
where each half (blade) of the truss was cut from a single
piece of timber – requiring a very big tree!
True cruck – cut from a single piece of
timber. The 1st truss - at the left hand of
the model – represents a true cruck

4. To avoid the need for large single pieces
of timber, many trusses were formed as
“jointed-crucks” – each blade consisting
of 2 pieces of timber, jointed and pegged,
near the top of the main vertical walls
The bottom end of the truss was set into
the wall, and in some cases may have run
all the way to ground level. The foot of
the truss was typical set on a horizontal
timber block

5. The truss incorporated a heavy horizontal collar,
jointed and pegged to the main timbers, to prevent
sagging and spreading under the weight of the roof
Some trusses incorporate further arch-bracing below
the collar to add further strength and stability. This also
adds an attractive decorative feature. The model
incorporates examples of typical arch-braced trusses to
be found in Dunster.

6. Particularly in larger buildings, elegantly curved wind-
braces were incorporated into the roof structure to
stabilise against lengthways deflection (“racking”) of
the structure.
Some trusses were filled or “closed” (eg with
wattle-and-daub) to form a partition between
the main hall and other parts of the house.

7. When cutting and assembling trusses,
carpenters made marks – often based on
roman numerals, scored into the timbers to
identify corresponding halves of a joint. Many
examples of these are still visible in the roof
timbers of Dunster houses.

8. Early Hall Houses did not have chimneys. The fire was burnt on a
simple hearth in the middle of the hall floor, and the smoke got out
through perhaps a small vent in the roof, or anywhere else it could!
Smoke blackening on old roof timbers can still be seen in many
Dunster houses.
Fireplaces and external chimneys (“lateral stacks”) were added later,
but probably not before a few serious house fires had happened!

9. Although most of the house was open from the
floor right up to the roof ridge, there was typically a
small 1st floor area (“solar”) to one side of the hall,
used for sleeping. The solar is partitioned from the
hall by filling the adjacent truss from floor to roof.
The solar was accessed through a small doorway,
via a simple ladder from the main hall. The picture
below shows the original frame of a solar doorway,
either side of later doorway on what is now a 1st
floor. Note the 2 vertical pins (pintels) on which the
solar door would have hung on simple strap hinges.