The Park - A Rare Gem at Merrion - Part 8

A Rare Survival of a Seventeenth Century Cottage in the Parish of St. Twynnells, Pembrokeshire

The Roof....a little more revealed.

In part 7 I tried to describe the construction of the roof under the thatched part of The Park. In this instalment I said that I would try and explain the roof structure under the slated part of the house. However, new revelations under the thatched roof mean that the slated roof will have to wait! Since my last post I have been able to return to the cottage where the owner again kindly allowed me to look inside. Much work has been carried out to prevent the roof from blowing off in this winter's storms. Indeed, at times one corner of the roof was seen to lift by about one foot in the teeth of a gale!

Happily, the roof has been saved, but removal of the tongued and grooved panelling under the roof timbers has revealed how precarious the roof timbers are! It is excellent to see the efforts that have been made to preserve this fascinating structure.

Figure 1 shows that the roof timbers seem to have been repaired on several occasions. The rough, crudely shaped timber truss is probably part of an early roof. The truss behind this is of sawn timber and looks to be a late-19th /early 20thcentury repair by an estate carpenter, designed to relieve the strain on the earlier work. These trusses are bolted together.  It is surprising that the whole roof was not replaced instead of this piecemeal approach to repair. The timbers of the earlier truss are similar in nature to the slight and irregular pieces used as battens to support the thatch. These trusses are pegged.

Fig. 1 Roof timbers looking towards the parlour end of the house. These had been concealed behind tongued and grooved boarding.

Figure 2 again shows the hotchpotch nature of repair to the thatched roof. The rafters, in nearly every case have rotted where they meet the wall plate on the limestone walls. This is looking south-east.

Fig. 2. Another view of the mixed roof timbers under the thatched roof. Note the metal jacks used to prevent the roof collapsing during the last winter's storms.

In Figure 3 we can see how the trusses meet up with the upper wall of the lateral out shut.

Fig. 3. Looking south west at the roof timbers revealed by the removal of the "ceiling cladding".

Figure 4 seems to show a third effort at repairing the support for the roof. In the centre of the photograph is a nineteenth century truss, alongside a much earlier - (pre-estate?) roughly hewn timber truss. Beyond this a another truss of sawn timber, but of a much slighter design, possibly dating from between the times when  two other trusses were put in place. This truss is very similar to those at the north end of the house.

Fig 4. Looking north west from parlour door.

In Figure 5 the 19th/20th century roof timbers can be identified by the bolts holding them together. The roof timbers dating from an earlier period are slighter and have a chamfer. The earliest timbers are rough hewn with, in some cases, the bark still attached.

Fig. 5. A closer view of the truss discussed above, showing how it was fixed into the wall and the subsequent failure of this. This is the west wall of the house.

Fortunately, the date of some repairs made to the roof structure has been written, in pencil on a small piece of wood within the roof, formerly hidden behind boarding. The date is 1930. This may well correspond to the date that the tonged and grooved boarding was inserted or replaced beneath the thatch.


Figure 6 below shows some of the very modern looking pieces of batten that were affixed to the much older partition for the possible "crogloft" . These battens supported this tongued and grooved boarding. The boarding was then whitewashed.

Fig. 6. Battens (on partition) to support the (now removed) tonged and grooved boarding that ceiled the main living room of the house.

The figures below show some more detail of the fascinating structure of this rare survival of a vernacular roof!

Fig. 7

Fig. 8

Fig. 9

There will be many readers who know far more about old roofs than I do! Comments and thoughts would be much welcomed.

Next time, the roof structure under the slated part of the cottage.