litotes on some oltr IJcilJgsfjirc (lEottagcs. 



By Percy Cukrey, Esq., Architect. 



MONG all the works that have been written on the 

 architecture of the middle ages, very little attention has 

 yet been given to the timber buildings which for so 

 many centuries comprised the great majority of the 

 smaller class of houses. Messrs. Turner and Parker's invaluable 

 work on the domestic architecture of the middle ages illustrates 

 many timber buildings, but gives no details of their construction 

 and gradual development, and confines itself almost exclusively to 

 the larger buildings, besides which it concludes with the fifteenth 

 century, after which period the majority of the buildings of this 

 class now in existence were erected. The fine timber houses of 

 Cheshire and the West of England are often illustrated, but a well 

 studied historical account of the development and characteristics 

 of timber construction seems to me to be much wanted. For 

 this reason I have thought that it might not be altogether 

 uninteresting to the readers of the Derbyshire Archaeological 

 Society's Journal, if I were to give a few brief notes which 

 I have made from time to time on some very primitive timber 

 buildings of the humblest class in this county, and I am the 

 more induced to do so by the fact that they are very rapidly 

 disappearing to give place to the modern builder's six-roomed 

 cottages, a great gain no doubt from a sanitarian's point of 

 view, though one cannot help wishing that they might be spared 

 to relieve the deadly monotony of pressed brick fronts and cast- 

 iron palisades ; if kept in repair they would probably long outlive 

 their modern successors. 



