HINGED HATCHES
However, in the Lowlands during the sixteenth century,
there existed a related device which, judging from the frequency
of its appearance in the illuminations of the Grimani
Breviary and other Franco-Flemish manuscripts of the
same period, must also have been a common feature in late
medieval house construction. A considerable number of
houses represented in the landscapes of these manuscripts
have smoke holes covered by wooden hatches hinged to the
ridge, which could be raised or lowered by means of pulleys.
This device appears in three different places in the Grimani
Breviary: the July representation (fig. 366), the March
representation, and the well-known February representation
(fig. 367), in which a wisp of smoke can be distinguished
rising in gentle spirals into the chilly winter air from an
open fire burning directly below the smoke hole on the
simple clay floor.[238]
Again, it is depicted in the September
representations of the breviary of the Museum Mayer van
den Bergh at Antwerp[239]
and in an illustration, which depicts
the lying together of Ruth and Boaz, from a Dutch Bible
illuminated around 1465 (fig. 368).
[240]
The technical details
of how such roof flaps were operated are well explained in
the sketches of a vent of a Frisian farmhouse of the eighteenth
century, published by K. Uilkema (figs. 369 and
370).
[241]
A wooden hatch or lid of this kind would be in complete
accord with the term testu ("lid"), but the dimensions of
many of the testu squares of the Plan of St. Gall, some of
which are as large as 10 feet square (Hospice of the Paupers,
House for Distinguished Guests), speak against this being
the type used. Hinged lids of such dimensions would be
unmanageable. The saddler roof is the simple and the earlier
form, and for this reason in our reconstruction of the guest
and service buildings on the Plan, we have chosen the latter
version.
