Sarah's Dollshouse

When I chose a period for my dolls house, I immediately wanted to make mine a tudor period property. But what constitutes a 'tudor house'.

The 'tudor' style represents a period in history rather than a particular style of architecture.

The Tudor period is accepted as starting with the reign of Henry VII starting in 1485 and ending with the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. The tudor monarchs were:

Design

The assumption is that a tudor house is a white plastered building based on an exposed timber fram. However, this is just one type of the period.

Timber buildings where often coloured - pink with dark oak, yellow with bleached oak, red with stained oak. Many of the most impressive buildings of the period were brick (Hampton Court, Richmond-upon-Thames - home fo Henry VIII) or stone (Mary Queen of Scots House, Jedburgh, Scotland). Many of the grander houses of the period even included glass windows.

My dollshouse is based on a timber frame building. These building are often refered to as half-timbered. This does not mean that the building is half built, but that the timber used to make the framework has been split in half.

The timber frame was usually prefabricated as panels and put up first. These panels were strengthened, often with bracers in a decorative pattern. Then the filler (wattle & daub was a popular choice) was applied. The outside of the building was given a smoother covering than the inside. In order to waterproof it, sometimes a layer of animal fat or cow dung was spread over the outside of the building.

The timber frames were often ornately decorated with carved reliefs to display the wealth of the home owner.

A superb example of a carved building is a hotel that I often stay at during the course of my job - The Feathers Hotel in Ludlow, England. Some other fine examples can be found in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Wattle & daub

Wattle was usually upright staves of hazel or oak inserted into the timber frame. Then lengths of hazel, stripped oak, reeds or even blackberry staves were threaded horizontally within the vertical staves. The daub is basically a plaster mixture made of mud or manure with cow hair applied over both sides of the wattled panels.

Roofing

It is often assumed that tudor houses had a thatched roof. This is not necessarily the case. Many examples of thatched cottages still exists around the British countryside, but many of the grander houses of the period had tiled roofs.

My dolls house has a plaster based roof meaning I have very few options for further development in this area so I guess that can stay as it is.