In 7-9th april 2017 I and my colleague Mattias Hallgren attended the fourth Conference of the Construction History Society in Queens College Cambridge. I presented a paper ”Techniques of Cleaving wood with an axe and Mallet. Deconstructing Present Craft knowledge, in order to reconstruct historic”.
In this paper I describe the ways we through the last years have done different fullscale experiments with cleaving. Most of the experiments has been done throug the reconstruction project in Södra Råda. But knew knowledge has also been recieved through tje ongoing diocese projects in the dioceses of Lund and Strängnäs.
After the end of the conference we went to several churches and Cathedrals. For example We went to Hadstock church to examine medieval wooden window frames and a medieval door in order to compare them with the window frames from the diocese of Lund that Im writing a paper about. We also visited Greensted stavechurch with the hope to find originaltool marks that could be compared to the archaeologically finds of Palisade churches from Lund. But we could conclude that the toolmarks on the inside was secondary and most of the marks probably from a big restoration in 1848. It could be discussed if it is a medieval stavechurch or in fact a church from the 19 th century with a great amount of reused medieval timber.
Another highscore on the roadtrip was the wooden Bell tower in Brookland. As far as I know it´s the only extant freestanding medieval wooden tower in England? Correct me if I´m wrong. The oldest structure of the tower is from the 13th century and is of great interest to compare with the 3 medieval bell towers in the diocese from Lund, Brönnestad, Norra Mellby and Perstorp, and the belltowers in Denmark and Germany. Ofcourse it is of great interest to compare it with the bell towers from Sweden also that are closer in time but built in pine insted of oak.
I and Mattias are preparing a ”roadtrip report” that mainly will have a lot of interesting photos and not so much text. When it´s ready it will be uploaded.
Timmermanskonst 