North Yorkshire, (North Riding) NZ 90041106 WHITBY No.s 162, 162A & 163 Church Street No. 12 & Julia's, Grape Lane Owners... 162 Mrs Edwards 162A ......... " 163 .......... Mr & Mrs Gill 12 ........... Not recorded Julia's, 11 .. Not recorded Visited 25.4.92 Recorded by: Joyce Bishop, Don McLellan and John Woods ______________________________________________________________________ DESCRIPTION 1) BUILDING TYPE / PURPOSE No. 162: is a lock-up shop, formed by the partitioning of the ground floor of: No. 162A: a two storey house with attic. No. 163: is a two storey house with attic. No. 12 Grape Lane: is a further two storey house, the attics, however, are no longer in domestic use. This has appeared on some mapping numbered as 164 Church Street. Julia's Shop, occupies the ground floor of a two storey No. 11 Grape Lane: building. There is a store room on the first floor and this is open to the roof. The houses on Church Street, in spite of having different roof levels. appear to be of a single build, a continuous jetty running along the full length of the street frontage. Julia's Shop has features which suggest it may be part of the same build though eaves levels are dissimilar and jettying is not present. 2) MATERIALS Jettying is a technique associated with timber framing, however, none of these houses presents timber in any overt form to the street, being completely rendered over (drawing no.3). The rear elevation offers a little more information (drawing no.5) and, although most of the walling is either rendered or brick, a wall plate and several sections of post are apparent. Closer inspection of the building as a whole reveals that: i) in certain areas, the outer walls have been made from stone and that ii) the passage, at least in the lower courses, has been constructed from a particularly small type of brick (19 by 4cm). There is evidence to suggest that where stone has been used mass walling techniques have been adopted. Roofs are of pantile throughout. Page 1 3) EXTERIOR DETAIL As stated above, little structural detail is visible on the Church Street elevation, the whole being rendered over. Only three sections of timber are to be seen, all transverse members designed to support the jetty bressummer: i) that furthest to the south; ii) that furthest to the north and iii) that directly above the doorway to no. 163. All other details of the jetty are encased. A through passage exists to this day and this is situated between nos. 163 and 162A. The doorway presented to the street has a false four centred arch but this is not a timber feature, it is cut from stone, though it does have a secondary lintel of timber behind. The door leaf itself appears to be of some anqiquity. It is of simple, but heavy, plank construction, the three full and one half width planks giving a door which is close to a metre in width and 175cm in height. Lateral strength comes from three heavy batterns. Detail of the hinges with their related pintles may be seen in drawing no.7. It should be noted that although the doorway has a flattened arch the leaf itself is quite square. Fenestration follows no regular pattern and seems to relate to the building as it stands today and not the original structure. The positioning of the two red brick chimney stacks does need to be stressed - they stand to either side of the passage, each one having a reredos of particularly small bricks as mentioned above, only one of these rises fully to first floor height, that to the north being only a metre or so high before the small give way to a larger common brick. Entrances have existed to the rear of each hearth though the one to the south is now blocked. That to the north is in current use and again the door leaf seems to be of some considerable age. It is neither so tall (160cm) nor so wide (70cm) as the main passage door; as a consequence, only three planks have been used. However, an effort has been made to produce a superior fitting, the door being fully double planked, those on the inside being set horizontally. Walling material (well shaped blocks of stone) is visible front and back at this point. Comment needs to be made about the nature of the floor structure above the passage for the bridging joist which supports the inner ends of the common joists (which in turn help to support the jetty bressummer) lies only a metre or so back from the front of the house. Three common joists are to be seen projecting forwards while four may be seen reaching back some appreciable distance to be set in the masonry at the back of the passage where no horizontal timber is to be seen. The two outer joists are set centrally on the passage wattls. It is clear that two phases of construction are represented here, the two sets of joists being i) of differing cross sections, ii) jointed in different ways and iii) set on different alignments. As those to the rear of the house are a little deeper then the bridger itself it would appear that these were inserted some time after the house was built. The jetty support joists are more obviously contemporary with the timber frame for the following reasons: i) they provide essential support for the jetty bressummer; ii) they have a square section; iii) they have soffit tenons (mortises cut along the centre-line of the binding joist) and iv) a certain amount of smoke blackening is visible. Page 2 On the rear wall of the house some framing is visible (drawing no.5). Details of the wall plate may be noted over the length of three full bays. Where windows have been inserted the mortises in the soffit may be seen. Along with peghole evidence, these help to establish stud spacing at around 40cm centre to centre with four studs per bay. In all visible sections of plate this does not vary, the only exception being the bay which houses the passage and the two hearths; this has seven studs rather than four and as a consequence is somewhat wider. Two posts have survived in part and these each present two sets of paired pegholes suggesting that braces were present to either side. However, the complete lack of paired pegholes in the wall plate above makes it clear that down braces were used. The wall plate is further lacking in evidence of fenestration; pegholes being resent without a break, this can only mean that there were no windows at first floor level at the back of the house, certainly in the three visible bays. A scarf joint may be seen and this is illustrated in drawing no.8. 4) INTERIOR DETAIL Because these houses are in multiple occupancy, information could not be gathered in a wholly consistant way. Access to no. 12 Grape Lane was not possible and although we were very kindly invited into Julia's the shop was open at the time and the information gathered can at best be considered sketchy. The recorded properties occupy five bays of the whole and although full access was not possible the dimensions of the remaining house suggest that the total length of the existing frame is seven bays. For the purposes of the report, these will be numbered from the south. Standard bay width is in the region of 2.6m, though the hearth / passage bay (no.5) is a little wider at 3.5 metres. Rooms to either side of the passage extend into the longer bay. Julia's is little more that a single bay, quite square on plan but built at an angle to the main range (along the line of Grape Lane) giving a wedge shaped void between the two frames. In terms of area this approximates the space occupied by a firehood. There is an obvious discontinuity in the roof structure at this point. A connecting doorway has certainly existed between the two ranges in the recent past. Although now blocked up this may be seen in the north east corner of Julia's, it had led up a single step into the north west corner of no.12. All of the visible roof trusses have truncated principal rafters to offer support to a single pair of purlins. No vertical components are visible within the living space and this is more than a little surprising as it means that the post heads are completely hidden within the width of the walls (two courses of brick). Where the underside of the tie-beam may also be seen there are no mortises to house teazle tenons. These would be clearly visible if the posts had been manufactured in the normal way and the jowls hacked back at a later date. It can only be assumed from this that the posts ran quite straight to wall plate height and that they were not jointed to the tie-beams in any way. Page 3 Also unexpected is the lack of jointing evidence in the tie-beams for arch braces, and lateral bracing must therefore have either descended to the binding joist or been lacking altogether. The latter option would have given a building with a serious tendency to rack across the frame while the former would have structural components reaching into the floor space. As the building stands, few of the recorded interior walls falls beneath tie-beams; neither is there jointing evidence to suggest that partition walls have occupied any position other than that in which thay are now seen. Within bay no.7 the best zone of framing (a floor) is to be seen. Here, cross walls have been built against the outside faces of the binders rather than directly beneath. This ought to be fortuitous as it allows the underside of each component to be inspected. However, there is nothing to see, both of the soffits being completely smooth. The only conclusion which can be drawn is that neither stud walls nor storey posts were integral parts of the frame at ground level. This visible section of frame is not, however, completely devoid of feature. 40cm back from the front of the southern binder is a plain chamfer stop - the corresponding stop at the back of the building is only a matter of a few centimetres from the wall which is not timber but stone. The asymmetry can be explained if it assumed that all of the walls at ground floor level were of stone, the 40cm representing the thickness of the masonry which was removed when the present shop window was inserted. Attention should be drawn to three other features in this bay: i) the bridging joist is set at half depth (unlike that in the passage); ii) there are four sets of common joists between the binders and these correspond directly with the pegholes for four studs which may be seen in the wall plate; iii) the upper arris of each binder is almost as devoid of feature as is the soffit, only paired pegholes for down braces being present. Floor framing is also present in bays 3, 4 and 6, though nowhere can details be observed, the rooms having been ceiled. A binder may be seen running E/W across cross-frame no.6 and this may have served a dual purpose doubling as a bressummer for a firehood. This is, however, at ceiling height unlike the fine moulded example found in bay 4 (see drawing 6). This latter is, it should be pointed out, of an extremely light construction and because of this may be seen as a purely decorational feature, the main structural member being at ceiling height exactly like that in cross-frame no.6. Immediately behind the early plank door which leads into bay no.6 a newel stair may be seen. This has been let into the thickness of the west wall to a certain degree and may well be an original feature. None of the other stairs within the main range have any apparent antiquity, though it is interesting to note that flights of steps may be seen to either side of the passage rising outside the limits of the frame. Although these are symmetricaly places, that to the south has a quarter landing and corresponding ninety degree turn before it reaches full height. This stair is now completely within the living space and thus may not have always been the case. The other is external. Page 4 5) PLAN FORM It is apparent that at least one of the firehoods was part of the original frame as it would have been otherwise un-necessary to re-align the bridging joist over the passage. Further to this, the increased width of bay no.5 suggests that there was a clear intention to house two firehoods, one to either side of the passage, from the start. From this it can be argued that the building, in its original form, adopted a three unit cross passage plan form and that smoke hoods existed to either side of the passage. However, if this was the case then communication would be expected, at first floor level, between those rooms adjacent to the pair of smoke hoods and standing evidence suggests that such was not the case. The only feature of any age which connects living space to the north to that to the south is a narrow area of flooring. It is, of course, possible to argue that this served a dual purpose, not only continuing the jetty line but also acting as a gallery. This is unlikely, however, as access to the first floor is behind the hood at a point where there is ample room for a more conventional landing. Further to this, the blocked opening from the passage into bay no.4 is too wide to have been nothing more than a doorway and it is possible to infer that a newel stair was present at this side also. The lack of evidence for intercommunication and the clear duplication of features suggests that two quite seperate dwellings have been built within the one frame. Once this has been decided, however, the question of plan form becomes doubly complicated as the two parts of the buildings are asymmetric, there being four bays to the south of the passage but only two to the north. There would seem to be three possibilities: i) the two dwellings have always been asymmetric; ii) two bays from the north of the structure have been lost; iii) there were three rather than two dwellings. The difficulty of establishing plan form is compounded further by the way in which only two of the interior walls can be related to the frame, cross-frame no.1 (the south gable) is one and cross-frame no.3 (the partition between 12 Grape Lane and 163 Church Street) is the other. In spite of the fact that no.12 has suffered some appreciable degree of collapse in recent years and has been largely rebuilt as a consequence, cross-frame no.3 not only appears to stand on its original alighnment but also appears to have been closed for some appreciable time (no signs of rebuilding whatsoever being visible from the other side). As no sign of intercommunication is visible between the two dwellings it may be inferred that points i) and ii) above are invalid and that point iii) is in fact the true position. This view is supported by the fact that no.12 has an address on Grape Lane and not on Church Street and by the way in which the jetty would be somewhere in the region of only 1.3m in height at the north end, had two extra bays been present. It would seem from this that there were indeed three dwellings in the one frame and that these each occupied two bays, giving six altogther in domestic use with a further one housing the cross passage. The plan Page 5 form appears to have been basically single cell with one room on each of the three stories (all of the existing floors are framed in). This must be seen as an over simplification, however, for although access to 12 Grape Lane could be achieved through the gable entry there is no principal hearth. In terms of structure there are obvious similarities between the long jettied range and the smaller single cell (Julia's). There are also differences - the frames being quite seperate and there being no relationship between the heights of the various component timbers. It is possible that the latter is a wing of the former. It should be remembered that a connecting doorway has existed and that the wedge between the two frames does approximate to the space occupied by a firehood. This gives an acceptable arrangement (principle hearth with communication space behind) for the most southerly dwelling). To conclude: The range of buildings in question appears to have originally represented three dwellings. These have been half timbered, the ground floor rooms having walls of stone, those of the first floor being jettied and of timber studs at relatively close centres. Along the main range further accommodation was available in the attics. The two most northerly houses had a single cell on each of the three floors, each cell consisting of two whole bays and one third portion of the passage bay. Heating and cooking facilities were provided by a firehood and this has a reredos of brick some two metres in height. Newel stairs gave access to first floor height and these stood in the traditional position behind the firehood and beyond the main entry from the passage. The third dwelling had a greater ground area, having an additional cell (this time a single bay) reaching to the west. The principal hearth occupied the space between the main frame end and the wing (which did not have an attic), entry way through the gable. Fenestration in all cells appears to have been in the principle elevations only. 6) MAJOR EXTENSIONS OR ALTERATIONS The structure as a whole has been altered little in the ensuing three centries, partition walls have been inserted, a newel stair removed, firehoods replaced by brick stacks, a doorway blocked, etc. Cosmetic changes have included the removal of timber studding and refenestration all round. Along the east front much of the original masonry at ground floor level has been replaced. In spite of these changes the structure occupies more or less the same ground area as it did when originally built. 7) DATING There are several contradictory features to be considered here. The jowl-less nature of the posts would make an extremely early date seem possible (fourteenth century) as would the presence of smoke blackening in the passage. However, firehoods have apparently been part of the original structure and these were unknown at the time; moreover, the roof is constructed to a later pattern (fifteenth century at the earliest). Reconstruction cannot be argued in Page 6 explanation here as peghole evidence is so inconspicuous. The nature of the most northerly wall (which butts up against the Friends' Meeting House) suggests that construction took place in a still more recent period. Pegholes are present only for down braces and mortises for studs are, seemingly, non-existent. A sixteenth century date would explain this, there being a fashion in that era for walls to be made up from single, huge panels of wattle and daub. The diminutive nature of the timbers used here negates this argument completely and the only conclusion which may be drawn is that the house originated during the final phase of timber construction, ie in the seventeenth century. Two minor features reinforce this view. Recent research into doors and their fittings suggests that both the plank doors seen within the passage are coeval with the frame itself while the flattened arch over the main entrance is, quite simply, typical of the period. With these points in mind it is possible to propose a date of construction in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. 8) SETTINGS The angle of the south gable suggests that Grape Lane was already an established thoroughfare when these houses were built. No. 163 is also known as Crossgate Cottage and from this it may be implied that the section of thoroughfare south of Bridge Street has only become known as Church Street in comparatively recent times, being previously known as Crossgate. In light of this it must be asked whether the principal elevation was the one along this street or the one on the prestigious Grape Lane. 9) RELATIONSHIPS Nothing apparent. 10) INITIALS or DATE STONES None present. 11) ORAL INFORMATION No. 12 Grape Lane is said to have suffered some appreciable degree of collapse in recent years and has been largely rebuilt in consequence. 12) APPENDIX Title deeds for 162/162A confirm a building date of 1638. Page 7