6 NOTES ON SOiME OLD DERBYSHIRE COTTAGES. 



These old labourers' cottages might be said to have no features 

 of architectural interest, but they display what was probably the 

 earliest form of timber construction. In their erection, two massive 

 pairs of rafters were first hewn out, usually selected with a slight 

 curve near their lower end ; these were either framed together at 

 the top, or else framed into a short horizontal piece of timber, 

 which formed a firm seat for the ridge beam ; the rafters were then 

 set up on the ground, or on a wooden or stone cill to form the two 

 gable ends of the house to be built, and across them horizontal 

 timbers of lighter scantling were notched and secured by oak pins, 

 longitudinal timbers (ridge, purlins, and wall plates) being notched 

 and pinned on to these, and stiffened by diagonal wind braces. The 

 whole formed, with a minimum of labour, a very rigid and strong 

 skeleton frame, whose durability and sound construction is attested 

 by the number of centuries which some of them have stood. In 

 the examples which I have been able to examine, the filling in of 

 the gables and side-walls appears to have been made with light 

 upright pieces of round timber let into the horizontal timbers, 

 between which willow rods were interlaced in the manner of basket 

 work, and the whole plastered with clay in which chopped grass 

 was mixed to give it cohesion ; but in almost all cases this fiUing 

 in has been subsequently replaced by brick or stone. The roofs 

 were formed of rough rafters and thatched, and the floors would 

 probably be also formed of clay beaten down and trodden hard. 



A very picturesque house of this class is still standing near the 

 station at Little Eaton, but as it now forms one of a row of three 

 houses, only one of the gable ends is visible. Another pair of these 

 houses still stands on Morley Moor, close to the picturesque old 

 Sacheverell Almshouses ; they are now uninhabited, and rapidly 

 falling to pieces. Each house appears to have originally consisted 

 of a single room, about eighteen feet long by fourteen feet six 

 inches wide, the walls being about seven feet high to the level 

 of the wall plate. There is an upper floor at the level of the 

 eaves, forming a chamber in the roof, but this is evidently a 

 subsequent addition, as the joists rest on the brick filling in of 

 the walls, and not on the wall plate, which indeed could scarcel}^ 



