[Sca-cooks] OT:?Tudor dollhouses

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 09:06 AM 1/4/03 -0600, you wrote:
>*twitch, twitch*  Very nice sites.  One question, I noticed the Tudor has a
>unique building structure, how can the bottom level support the higher
>levels without being crushed?  I know why they had the higher levels bigger,
>but to support weigh of the third level is what gets interesting to me.
>Aurore

IIRC (and Ivar, if you are lurking- you know more on this than anyone I
know...) the timbers for teh mainframe are sunk quite far into the ground,
and teh frame is heavier in the lower floors, and lighter as they go
upward- Not unlike multi-level buildings even now. And the cantilever of
the upper floors isn't really as great as we might imagine.

Something that fascinates me, that I just saw in Colin Platt's _Medieval
England_ (pg 163, the drawing of cottage-row development plans in
Tewkesbury) is the 'smoke-void' in the stairwell above the kitchen. I don't
know if this is in place of or to supplement the chimney. Very neat little
row houses, BTW, with a shop in the front of teh ground floor, and the
solar above overhanging just a bit- looks like just enough to protect the
customers from rain, if not from what is tossed out the upstairs window
when the goodwife yells "Gardy-loo!"

thoroughly grateful for modern plumbing,

'Lainie
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