When asked to think of the defining characteristics of buildings in the low countries,
what springs to mind? Gables with ornate curves, or simple steps? Red bricks
and red pantiles? Large windows, not screened by curtains but by greenery
or posters? The timber framing of great barns?
In 1744 Alexander Hamilton, in
New York observed many of these features:
the houses are more compact
and regular and, in general, higher built, most of them after the Dutch
model with their gravell (sic) ends fronting
the street. There are a few built of stone, more of wood, but the greatest
number of brick, and a great many covered with pan tile and glazed tile
with the year of God when built figured out with plates of iron upon
the fronts
of several of them. The streets, in general, are but narrow and not regularly
disposed. The best of them run parallel (sic) to the river, for the city
is built all along the water. In general this city has more of an urban
appearance than Philadelphia (Alexander Hamilton, 1744, reprinted 1992)
Wall
anchors in the shape of numbers
(Courtesy
of Wikipedia)
What Dr. Hamilton saw, but many did not, was the iron wall anchors—in Dutch muurankers. Like the framing technique celebrated in barns, the
wall anchors are part of a distinctive framing technique which is originated
in the low countries, and spread with Dutch colonies around the world. It
also diffused around the North Sea and Baltic, and into French Canada.
A short
wall anchor is a wrought-iron fitting in a building. ‘Dutch’ short wall
anchors have two parts: one, on the exterior face of the wall,
is an iron bar or motif which is slotted through a loop in the second part,
another iron bar (the tongue). The tongue is encased in the wall and is
fixed to a timber in the wooden house ‘skeleton’. These anchors are inserted
during
construction—they are not remedial. They associate each transverse beam
with the wall, or, in the case of a gable, associate the roof structure
with the gable. In construction, the side walls are erected first, and after
the
roof structure is inserted, the gable walls are erected.
I first became aware of this intriguing piece of building hardware
when in 1992 I began to work for English Heritage (the English equivalent
of the US’ National Park Service), cataloguing a collection of architectural
fragments at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk—just
across the North Sea from the Low Countries. The collection had been acquired
during the late 1940s, when
a quarter of the town was being levelled prior to redevelopment. The area
had been earmarked for redevelopment by the local council since early in
the century, as the housing stock was thought to be of poor quality. The
houses had, in addition, been greatly damaged in their use as a training
area for hand-to-hand combat during the war, and the local council had
long wanted to clear the neighbourhood.
However, the area
was known to contain a great number of medieval and early modern buildings,
two of which were taken into the care of the
state. The foreman of works engaged on the repair of these houses in the
late 1940s and 1950s, Mr Rosie, salvaged many items from the surrounding
buildings. Initially, the idea seems to have been that they could be used
in the restoration of the two houses, but the collection of windows, doors,
mouldings, panelling, tiles, and other fragments grew beyond this, to a
collection to act as a memorial to the craftsmen who had built Yarmouth.
I
had been brought in to catalogue this collection because I had expertise in
door furniture.
I found some other areas of the collection quite unfamiliar.
I was particularly intrigued by the iron wall anchors, a building component
I had never met before. Unlike the rest of the collection, where there
were reference books, comparable collections and comparable material in situ,
to help me catalogue the collection, the wall anchors seemed to be as isolated,
solitary and strange as the two historic houses, now marooned in a sea
of maisonettes. The contract completed, I continued to notice wall anchors,
and to wonder about the people who had built with them. This wondering
has lead me to undertake a PhD on the use and meaning of wall anchors in the
Department of Archaeology, University of York.*
The earliest, medieval
anchors, were all plain bars of wrought iron. Around 1550, however, the potential
of wrought iron to form diverse shapes
was exploited. These decorative anchors. As Alexander Hamilton noted, they
could form an alternative to the dating stone. They could also be formed
into the initials of the builder/owners, and merchants’ marks.
When Classical façades
became fashionable in the 1800s, the technique was still used, but the anchors
were now hidden, behind pilasters, or hacked
back into the walls and rendered over.
When cast iron was
discovered in the 1800s, the Dutch foundries began to produce wall anchors
which echoed the forms of the wrought iron versions.
Rosettes were also popular. The use of wall anchors lent itself to the
new iron framing, too: whereas in England, home of the new technique, the iron
beams were commonly anchored within the walls, in areas where wall anchors
were used, the beams were also anchored on the outside, again with rosettes
or other forms harking back to the 1600s and 1700s.
About the author:
At
the time of composing this, Pat Reynolds was writing a PhD thesis on the
use and meaning of wall anchors in the
Department of Archaeology, University of York. She would
be delighted to hear of the use of anchors outside the areas described
above.
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