Page 11 - Guide_EN

The carpenters liked to leave their trademark in the form of decoratively carved beam ends which joined an interior wall to the outer wall. An example of this can be seen to the left (when facing the house) of the entrance door. The floorboards were connected to one another manually using the nut and feather technique. If you look carefully in the hallway you can see that these boards are not rectangular but tapered along the length like the tree trunks they were made from. This not only prevented waste but also meant that any shrinking of the boards could be corrected later. For this a “wedge board“ was used. A part of the floorboard was left sticking out on the outside of the house wall. This board was used to wedge the floorboards against the house walls in order to close any gaps that might have appeared. You can see this wedge board sticking out of the wall on the left hand side of the house (when facing). The floorboards are just laid loose on the beams and are not actually fixed to them. The farmyard is enclosed by different styles of fences. On the road side there is a closed fence so hens and livestock could not escape. On the field side there is an open fence so the hens could roam free. On the road side you can also see an example of the oldest form of fence, a stone wall constructed from the stones that were cleared from the fields. 9