Heritage building conservation | Replacing a jowl post on grade II* listed Old Wymondley Hall, a timber framed house.

The lovely late 16th century Old Wydmondley Hall, a building that has seen so many alterations throughout it's long life I would't know where to begin! For those interested, a little more information about it's history can be found here.

Those chimney stacks need a little attention!

So many alterations over the years where do you even begin!

It looks like whoever installed this upper bay window has just cut through the tie-beam in the gable end, I guess it was in the way!

Anyway, on to the project..

We were asked to come in and to replace the Jowl post. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but I had heard the main floor beam dividing two downstairs reception rooms had partially collapsed and a small team of builders had been in and made it safe with acrow props. The clients had been advised by insurance people that it would mean knocking down the house and re building with some quotes for multi millions of pounds! Suffice to say, it was quite shocking what was actually left of the Jowl post once we had removed the lathe and plaster upstairs and downstairs and taken a look...

The jowl was of course made of elm, a popular framing material back in the day because of how readily available it used to be. It's downside of course being that it is susceptible to being eaten by bugs and, in this case, can rot over time if wet.

The hollow shell remains of the upper floor jowl post. It was hanging there on what remained of the tenon in the top of the jowl - the tying joint, between the jowl and the tie beam. The wall brace was also helping the fragile remains to hang there.

The view from the upstairs looking down, through the first floor beam tenon, all the way to the ground floor and the dust that was left. Luckily the floor beam was made of oak and it hadn't had any of the rot transfer into it. Scary what can be hiding behind the plaster work!

The view from the outside of the house, it looks like a badly maintained valley and some dodgy repairs had meant that water had been leaking in for many years and slowly rotting the elm jowl post.

The back of all that was left of the original jowl post which spanned two floors of the house!

Right then, time to cut a new jowl and put it in there. Obviously there were a fair few complications with fitting it into the space and incorporating the remaining tenon at the end of the floor beam.

First job was to get them off the truck, mark out where the jowl shoulder would sit and cut the mortices. Jonny had milled up the oak posts and left us with plenty of timber to cut the jowls out of.

Roughing out with the adze..

Finishing with the compass plane..

To fit the new lower jowl in we knew we would have to have an open top mortice so as to allow us to offer it up and around the floor beam tenon. We then wanted the lower jowl to come up just above the floor boards allowing us to slide the upper jowl into position on top of it. We could use this open mortice for both the floor beam and for the upper jowl. We angled the top shoulders of the bottom jowl to give us a more stable connection between the two.

Bottom jowl complete, including holes drilled to peg into the existing tenon, awkward working out the draw on those pegs but we got it close enough!

Couldn't resist..

We drilled in a lifting hole in the bottom of the lower post and got it lifted into position and propped it up until it took the floor beam tenon and the beam was sat down on the shoulder.

The view from upstairs.

To get the top jowl in and secured to the tie-beam we had to have a loose tenon. This allowed us to cut the tenon and get it up into the old mortice in the tie-beam and pegged up. We could then bring in the top jowl from the side, with an open backed mortice, and slide it on to the lower jowl and on to the tie-beam at the same time.

Sliding in the jowl post..

Lovely stuff.

All that was left to do was to drive home the pegs, chop out for the original iron strap and let the brace back into the mortice I had already cut in the jowl. I cut the mortice over sized on the top edge so as to allow the brace space to drop it, it was then wedged from the top and the wedge was pinned in place.

We rebuilt the wall with all the material that survived the demolitions from the builders and then used some spare scraps of timber the client had around to batten out the remaining parts ready for the lathes to be nailed on.

Our work here is done!

Time to hand over to the traditional lime plasterers.

The only other remaining job was for the builder to come back and build in a footing underneath the bottom of the lower post.