Terrain, Half Timbered Houses

The half-timbered house is the quintessential component of the so-called ‘Chocolate Box’ English village.

From medieval times onward, half-timbered houses have been a feature of the English rural and urban landscape. A timber-framed structure usually with an infill of wattle and daub, they are described as ‘half-timbered’ because they were constructed from split rather than whole logs. In terms of outward appearance, other than the addition of glazing and guttering, such a house constructed in the 15thC might by the 19thC appear largely unchanged. 

Lavenham in Suffolk is considered to be England’s best preserved medieval village and the following images are from a research trip in early 2022:

This project is accumulating medieval houses, which comprise resin casts from ‘OSHIRO modelterrain’ combined with scratch-built elements. The finished houses are fixed to A4 MDF tiles that can be laid out in a variety of combinations, and as more tiles are finished more combinations will be possible.

For each of the three tiles of three houses so far finished, the ‘OSHIRO modelterrain’ resin casts effectively functioned as cornerstones with the area between being infilled with scratch-built elements. As supplied, each resin building comprises multilple layers (floors) such that the interior of the buildings is accessible. However, an advantage of this multi-layering is that it readily lends itself to mixing-and-matching the floors from different buildings for a greater variety of combinations. Glazing and guttering are omitted so that the buildings can also be used with other projects set in earlier periods.

From resin casts to assembled tiles with scratch built inserts: