01. The skeleton that saves the forest
Half-timbering is a frame of vertical and horizontal beams. At the bottom lies the sill, in Skåne called the fotträ. The posts stand in it, and rails run between them. Diagonal braces in the corners keep the frame steady. The parts are joined with tenons in mortises.
The panels are filled with whatever is to hand. Hazel wattle daubed with clay mixed with chopped straw and sand. Clay blocks. Or fired brick, for those who can afford it. The surface is limewashed to stand up to the rain, and the roof is usually thatched.
The technique saves timber – which makes it perfect for the treeless farming plains.
Before 1645 and 1658, when Halland, Skåne and Blekinge become Swedish, there is hardly any half-timbering in the Swedish countryside, only in a few towns along the east coast. In Skåne, by contrast, it is how the plains build. Before 1850 most houses there are half-timbered with unfired clay infill. Brick has been fired since the late 12th century – but it is reserved for churches, nobles and burghers. Only in the second half of the 19th century does brick become common.
In the towns the rich build in style. Ystad, around 1500. A merchant raises Pilgrändshuset. The upper floor juts out over the street, carried on carved brackets. The panels are laid in red brick, and the braces are placed symmetrically, as decoration. The house is restored in the 1940s and listed in 1967. Parts are reconstructed – what we see is also the 1940s' idea of the 1500s.
Then come the sawmills. In the second half of the 19th century more and more half-timbered walls are clad in boarding. Half-timbering comes to be seen as a sign of poverty. Many houses are plastered over or demolished.
Today they are a source of pride. Ystad has kept an unusually rich stock of half-timbered houses.
02. How to spot it
- 1.A visible timber frame in a grid
- 2.Diagonal braces stiffening the frame
- 3.Panels filled with brick or wattle and daub
- 4.Often whitewashed panels and tarred, black or red timber
- 5.In towns: an upper floor jutting out over the street
- 6.Ranges around a closed yard in the countryside
03. The giveaway
The diagonal braces. Slanting beams in an exposed timber frame set half-timbering apart from every other way of building in wood.
Read the façade
- The diagonal brace
- Infill of brick or wattle and daub
04. Where to see it
- Pilgrändshuset, Ystadaround 1500, listed building since 1967
- Ystad old town
- Kulturen, Lundincluding Locus Virtutum, with its posts set straight on foundation stones, and the Burgher's House with tarred timber and patterned brick
- Halmstad
- Visby old town
05. Often confused with
Log house. In a log house the logs themselves carry the wall. In half-timbering the frame carries the load, and the panels are only infill.
Plank-in-post walls. At the same time, the more wooded districts build skiftesverk, where planks are slotted into grooves in the posts – the wall is all timber.
Sources
- Kulturen in Lund: "Korsvirkeshus – från medeltid till 1880-tal"
- County Administrative Board of Skåne: "Tegelbruk" (cultural environment programme)
- County Administrative Board of Skåne: "Pilgrändshuset i Ystad"
- Nationalencyklopedin (ne.se)