Excavations at Oxford castle 1999-2009

Abstract

within the series of all known surviving barns (mostly in the south east of England but including one in Yorkshire). In this way, the technological advances of the Wheat over the Barley Barn can be better appreciated, although Stenning maintains that developments demonstrate a ‘marked similarity of approach’, the main differences relating to size rather than detail. Even so, and most interestingly, the fifteen barns discussed do suggest two traditions at play. The ‘distinctive multiple triangulation of the trusses’ at the Barley Barn appears to relate more to a north European methodology, while others (such as the Great Coxwell Barn, Oxfordshire) seem to be more closely related to the mainstream French carpentry style. The Wheat Barn fuses some elements of both traditions. The fact that most of the barns were the work of monastic orders that were part of active European networks and, also, given that these barns were probably the product of ‘standard, workshop, laybrother practice’ (craftsmen brothers were a feature of Templar organization) will largely explain this application of continental practice to local situations (quotes from pp. 105–6). Other essays, little altered, have weathered the test of time. Oliver Rackham notes that, although the Barley and Wheat Barns represent an occupancy of woodland comparable to half and one-third of a cathedral respectively, they are made up of relatively small timbers, probably produced on locally managed coppiced woodlands together with some large hedgerow trees. Ian Tyers’s important note on tree-ring dating, which underlines the difficulties of working in a county of largely fast-grown trees, has been updated by John Walker and is reviewed at some length by Tyers in the completely new chapter on the seventeenth-century Granary (which incorporates re-used medieval timber), where some of Rackham’s earlier conclusions are refined. Other buildings are covered afresh while the brick and tile chronology by Pat Ryan and David Andrew still provides (as was noticed in a review of the first edition) ‘a model of how to set about such a typology’. Overall, the wealth of detailed analysis and new graphics makes this an important source for the understanding of thirteenth-century timber construction and site development over a longer period. It is also commendable in terms of accessibility, coming in at a price that in real terms is less than was charged when the original book was published in 1994.