Greyfriars Church, Greyfriars Walk, off Southgate Street, Gloucester: Tree-Ring Analysis of Timbers Reused in the Adjacent Greyfriars House
Author(s): Alison Arnold, Robert Howard, Cliff Litton
Core samples were obtained from five different oak timbers originally belonging, it is believed, to an early-sixteenth century re-roofing phase of the former Franciscan Greyfriars Church, Gloucester, these timbers being possibly subsequently reused within Greyfriars House, an adjacent early nineteenth century building. The analysis of these five samples produced a single site chronology, GLOESQ01, having a combined overall length of 134 rings. This site chronology was dated as spanning the years AD 1321 to AD 1454. None of the sampled timbers retain a clearly identifiable heartwood/sapwood boundary and it is thus not possible to give a reliable estimate of the likely felling date range for the timbers. The timber with the latest dated ring is, however, unlikely to have been felled before AD 1469. It is possible therefore, but not proven by tree-ring analysis, that the timbers do belong to a pre- Dissolution phase of Greyfriars Church, which, on the basis of documentary evidence, is known to have been re-roofed by AD 1519. Other timbers, thought to have been removed from Greyfriars during stabilization works in the AD 1960s, are held in store at Toddington near Cheltenham. These timbers were also examined for possible tree-ring dating but all of them proved to be unsuitable for analysis.
- Report Number:
- 80/2007
- Series:
- Research Department Reports
- Pages:
- 27
- Keywords:
- Dendrochronology Standing Building
