Materials and mode of construction
In contrast to the Abbot's House,[316]
whose typological
roots lie in the South, the House for Distinguished Guests,
as has been demonstrated, is a descendant of a strictly
Northern building type. It may have been built entirely
in wood, or it may have had its circumference walls constructed
in masonry. In our reconstructions (figs. 397-399)
we have chosen this latter solution in order to demonstrate
the possibility of mixed materials on this higher social level
of building. In the interior the roof must have been supported
by two parallel rows of wooden posts, framed into
weight- and thrust-resisting trusses with the aid of tie
beams and post plates. If the roof belonged to the purlin
family of roofs, its basic design cannot have differed greatly
from what we have suggested in figures 397 and 398. For
the thirteenth century this type of roof is well attested, at
least on the Continent, as has been demonstrated by the
examples discussed above on pages 88ff. It may have been
as common in Carolingian times.
That royal timber houses with masonry walls existed in
Carolingian times is known through the Brevium exempla,
for it is doubtlessly to this mixture of materials that the
author of this work refers, when describing the domus
regalis of one of his anonymous crown estates as a house that
was "externally built in stone, and inside all in timber"
(exterius ex lapide et interius ex ligno bene constructam).[317]
