TREE RING ANALYSIS OF TIMBERS FROM PASTON GREAT BARN, NORFOLK
Author(s): Ian Tyers
Paston Great Barn is a huge 20 bay stone-walled barn classified as both a Scheduled Ancient Monument, and a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The roof trusses are alternating tie-beam and hammer-beam types with arch-braces and wall posts rising from corbels on the walls. Queen struts rise from the tie-beams and hammer-beams to the lower of the two collars. The two trusses opposite the full height double doors on the east side are of a third type with stub tie-beams and arch-bracing from the walls to the lower collar. It is undergoing an extensive grant-aided repair programme, aimed at preserving the building so that it may continue to house its colony of rare bats. The tree-ring analysis reported here was funded by English Heritage to inform repair decisions. The results confirm the majority of the extant timber structure is derived from the documented construction by Sir William Paston in 1581. It had been thought possible some of the structure was from either later undocumented repairs or from re-used timbers obtained from several nearby demolished monastic properties also owned by the Paston family. The resultant chronology is of interest in that the site is both geographically remote from the other contemporaneous tree ring chronologies and likely to be of coastal origin. The poor state of preservation of the timbers makes the recovery of sapwood on the samples and the identification of the heartwood/sapwood boundaries especially difficult in this building. The surviving sapwood has been so extensively attacked by deathwatch beetle that there was no opportunity to obtain bark-edge from the sampled material.
- Report Number:
- 54/1999
- Series:
- AML Reports (New Series)
- Pages:
- 23
- Keywords:
- Dendrochronology Standing Building
