In Northamptonshire the half-timbered houses are commonly called studded or framed houses, because the framework is put up before the spaces are filled up. The studs are upright between the posts, which are larger than the studs. There are also “wattle,” and “dab-houses,” and sheds, which are constructed of studs, sills, and wall-plates. Between or into the studs are laid, horizontally, plaited or wattled strong hazel twigs, or other underwood, and on both of these a thick coat of plaster or mud is laid or dabbed. A wattle is a hurdle made of four or five upright stakes, and hazel branches woven closely and horizontally into the stakes—Anglo-Saxon, watel, a hurdle or covering of twigs; in some counties they are called “flakes,” merely from their being thin and flat. In Sussex and Devonshire, and in the South of England, wattled hurdles are called “Raddles.” In a little Dictionary for children of the date of 1608, we find “a hartheled wall or ratheled with hasile rods or wands.” The word hartheled is the same as hardilled, and the Dictionary spells hurdill hardill, Ang.-Sax., hyrdel, Low Germ., hoidt, Dutch, horde. Germ., hurde. Ratheled is from the same derivation as raddled. What in one county is “wattle and dab,” is in another “raddle and dab.” Dab is here used as a substantive, but it is properly a verb—to dab on, to sprinkle, or bespatter. In French, dawber, or dober, to smear, hence “to daub.” These mud cottages are very common even in the richest counties of England. In South Northamptonshire are red sandstone houses frequently possessing stone mullions in the windows, and dripstones.
Further northwards, as in Shropshire, Cheshire, and Lancashire, we find a better description of the half-timbered houses in many of the manor houses built there. Lord Liverpool’s seat at Pitchford, near Shrewsbury, illustrated by Habershon, is a fine and a very large example, although the pattern is not so elegant as many of them. Joseph Nash and other artists have made the best of these familiar to us by their publications. Cheshire is the county most abounding in them. In the southern part of the county of Lancashire they are called “post-and-pan houses.” Post is an upright piece of timber, used in various ways, such as gate-post, door-post, a jamb-lining. The word “post” is found in many languages, commonly meaning an upright. In Ang.-Sax., post, a post, Frisic, post, a beam, German, pfost, French, poste, Latin, postis, a post.
“Pan,” in Lancashire, certainly means a beam, and is the common name for it (beam not being used), although we do not find the word pan, a beam, noticed in most of the glossaries as it deserves. In the Craven Glossary, “post and pan” a building of wood and plaster alternately. Pan, totally to fit: “Weal and woman cannot pan, but woe and woman can,” is the complete old English proverb, in which the word pan is used. In the glossary of Tim Bobbin, “Pan” means to join or agree. In Hunter’s Hallamshire Glossary “pan,” properly in building, is the wall-plate—the piece of timber that lies on the tops of the posts, and on which the balks rest, and the sparfoot also. To pan, to apply to closely. In Brockett’s North Country work, pan means to match, agree. The idea of a pan for a beam would seem to be a shortened word for span, but it comes, it is said, from the old word pan, denoting to close or join together, to match, fit, apply, agree. From this, or the origin of which, came pane, or panel of wood, or wainscot, pane of glass. Ang.-Sax., pan, a piece, hem, plait; pan hose, patched hose, because pieces are fitted into them.
In Warwickshire and Oxfordshire they call a post-and-pan house a brick-pane house, because the wood-work divides the building into rectangular spaces, filled with panes of brickwork.
In Forby’s Suffolk Vocabulary pane is a division of work in husbandry, also strips of cloth. The slits in Elizabethan dresses are called panes. Du Cange, in his Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis, has panna, a carpenter’s word, signifying a square piece of wood of 6 or 7 fingers on a side, which being placed on the rafters of the roof, and retained by wooden supports, carries the asseres. The “Glossary of Architecture” construes a pan as a lathe; but of this there seems some doubt.
There is a remarkable example of the word Panna in the Close Rolls of the 9th of Henry 3rd, membrane 5, page 65, though the word in the printed copy is erroneously spelt pauna.
De postibus
et pannis
datis.
Mandatum est Hugoni de Neville quod habere faciat Baldivinium de Veer duos postes et duos pannas in bosco nostro in Deresle, de dono nostro ad se habergandum apud Thrapston. Teste rege apud Westmonasterium XV die Octobris, anno nono.—That is: The King orders Hugh de Neville to give Baldwin de Veer two posts and two pans out of the Royal forest of Deresley to build a house at Thrapstone.—“Habergandum” is from habergo, to build a house, which seems to be derived from the old German habe, goods and possessions, and bergen; in Ang.-Sax., boergan, to defend, keep, and protect. Habe, goods, is from the German haben, Ang.-Sax., habban, to have and possess. In Du Cange we find “Habergagium vel habergamentum, domicilium domus,” that is, a place to keep goods in. This account is given us by the writer in the “Cambridge Portfolio,” who adds, “That it is probable the house alluded to in Thrapstone was merely a shed.” He gives a great many derivations from the word pan in French. He says that pan or post is a post and pan wall, perhaps with boarding in the panes instead of brick or stone. A post-and-pan house therefore signifies one formed of uprights and cross-pieces, and this appears to be the most rational name for them. The patterns of the woodwork are sometimes extremely elegant; at Park Hall in Shropshire, one represents balustrading intermingled with quatre-foiling, while the plaster ceilings inside the building are of excessively rich character. In many of the old post-and-pan houses, the windows are between every post, running the whole length of the house in each story, rendering a remark of Lord Bacon’s true, that in such houses you did not know where to become to get out of the sun or the cold. They are now sometimes called “bird-cage houses,” from the effect at a distance. Some of these old mansions had the hall extending to the roof, and this was carried down to a very late period. At Kirby in Northamptonshire, a seat of the Lord Chancellor Hatton, built by the architect, John Thorpe, Inigo Jones altered the timbers of the hall roof and gave them an Italianized character. He was, previous to his visit to Italy, one of the chief and most celebrated masters of the then fashionable Elizabethan style, which was carried down to a later period than is generally supposed.
The superior class of wooden houses were for the gentry, the wattle and dab houses for the hind. This cottage, then, must have been little better than a miserable shed. Cottages still exist in the north of England, amid the northern counties, that are bad at the very best. The tenants have to bring everything with them, partitions, window-frames, fixtures of all kinds, grates, and a substitute for a ceiling. Certainly the improved concrete cottage, if it could be erected at a small expense, would be a great advantage to them. Its partitions, and even its roof, the latter covered with slate, might be securely formed of strong hurdles, and a cistern for water easily placed just below it. The walls, if covered with a good Portland cement face, will last for many years, and, if the roof be so formed as to protect them, for warmth, comfort, and cleanliness such cottages are unsurpassed.
It is to be regretted that the combination of workmen forming the various Trades’ Unions, has so raised the price of labour that it has reacted against themselves, and the workmen’s houses, roomy, and formed of sound, lasting materials can no longer be constructed at a cost that would allow a fair percentage on outlay.