QR Vic-le-Comte – Bourg 8
15th-century timber-framed houses
Ensconced in the heart of a walled town, the timber-framed houses were built on narrow plots of land. A fairly simple construction system was used. Wooden pieces would be fitted together and filled with various materials such as cob (a mixture of fatty earth and fibres), bricks or stone rubble. The vertical posts would be placed in runners. Lattice panels were then joined to the vertical structure to brace the building.
There were stalls on the stone ground floor of these houses that opened onto the street through arched bays. The floors were sometimes set back from one another. Corbels increased the surface area of the rooms and protected the stalls and shoppers from the rain, but they did make the streets quite dark.
1. Stall
2. Wall plate [Editor’s note: wooden structure that distributes the load exerted by a timber frame]
3. Filling [Editor’s note: wall infill between timbers].
4. X-shaped cross
5. Corbel