CARRIAGE HOUSE

HARVARD MASSACHUSETTS

 

This is likely more than a carriage house; it probably sheltered a number of working farm vehicles, as it belonged to a…working farm.

This is the farmhouse.

                                                          Rear with Attached Kitchen

 

                                           Magnificent Front with Bays and Porticos

 

And this is the barn.

 

They really knew how to build barns back then, didn’t they?

But I digress, and after a plate of asparagus, that sometimes smells pretty bad.

Back inna goodle days, nails were expensive and often hard to come by. And if you wanted a piece of wood of a specific size, you made it yourself.

This circa 1800 carriage house in Harvard, Massachusetts (a small town north of Worcester, not the University in Cambridge) is about to be deconstructed by yours truly and accompanying Crew from Early New England Restorations. Once in pieces, we will bring the building down to Rhode Island where it will be reassembled in Avondale, next door to Watch Hill. The collapsing end is an addition and likely will not be rebuilt, but who knows?

Not I.

The land around the site will get developed, so it either gets moved or destroyed.

The timbers are hand hewn and squared using a broadaxe, which has a curved handle and a wide, curved blade. This tool is wielded from atop the log, and the curved handle allowed for even strokes without gouging the wood or cutting off one’s toes, which I’ve heard is a good thing both ways. It also leaves specific marks in the wood, some of which can be seen here.

 

 

After the timbers are hewn into shape, their ends are cut into tenons (they’re narrower than the timber and stick out) and mortises (holes to accept that which sticks out [oh my!]), then the two are drilled with a round hole and pinned together with tapered pieces of wood. These pieces are deliberately hand-whittled to give their surface many small angles that dig into the round walls of the drilled hole. It’s the square peg in a round hole philosophy; works pretty well in Colonial architecture and has been the mainstay of shipbuilding for eons. The pins are nearly impossible to remove and they hold the joint fast. I’ll give some examples of this when we do the job in the next few weeks.

 

 

These whittled pieces of wood, by the way, are known as ‘trunnels.’ ‘Trunnel’ comes from a shortened version of the term ‘tree-nail,’ and that is named for obvious reasons. I like the word trunnel. It seems so permanent. I just can’t pin down its origin, sorry for the pun. What pun? It seems Anglo-Saxon but my sources are unclear on the matter.

I just like the scallops in the wood. Knowing they were put there two hundred years ago by someone that just needed to do so, not by some sort of ‘expert,’ makes me even gladder.

 

 

Because we all were experts in those days. We were just working the land for a living.

And a hard living it was. But it gave us something we can only copy today.

Because who today could come up with a term like ‘trunnel?’