University of Virginia Library

C. ELEVATION

principal members only, shown; for more complete
assembly see exterior view on next page.

B. CROSS SECTION

A. PLAN

detail of plan at jamb of doorway

313.A. B, C
JEMGUM, LEER, GERMANY

AISLED HOUSE, 7TH-5TH CENTURIES B.C.

[redrawn from W. Haarnagel, 1957, 21, Plan. No. 7]

The site is on the left bank of the estuary of the river Ems. The house was small, no more than 15 feet wide and 25 feet long. It was used
exclusively as a dwelling and gave no evidence of ever having sheltered animals. In the middle of each long wall, slightly off center, were
opposing entrances protected by projecting porches.

The roof was carried by two pair of inner posts (unscantled oak trunks, dia. 20cm) dividing the house into a central area of roughly 6½ × 13
feet asymmetrically placed, and with aisles all round it. The hearth lay in the axis of this center space, in the western half of the house which
had a simple clay floor and must have served as kitchen.

The floor of the space between the eastern pair of posts and the eastern end wall was covered with wooden planks cut from alder trees; this
area, better insulated from dampness than any other in the house, must have served as living and sleeping quarters. All structural members of
the dwelling that were posted into the ground, or that lay atop the ground, were found to be in good condition, many of the boards forming the
wooden floor of the presumed sleeping area were still in place.

314. EXTERIOR VIEW

JEMGUM, LEER, GERMANY

AISLED HOUSE, 7TH-5TH CENTURIES B.C. [redrawn from W. Haarnagel]

Drawings and models are in the Niedersächsisches Landesinstitut für Marschen- und Wurtenforschung

The walls of the house were made of squared ash logs, of which the bottom course was still well preserved. They were held in place at distances
varying between 5 and 6½ feet, by paired saplings pointed and driven into the ground to a depth of about 2 feet, with five pairs in each long
wall, and three in each end wall. At their meeting points in the corners of the house, the ash logs had rotted away, and for that reason, it could
not be ascertained in what manner they were jointed. It seems reasonable to assume that they were notched into each other at right angles,
since otherwise these timbers would have been subject to displacement from the thrust of the rafters.

Since the free-standing inner posts were only set 15¾ inches into the ground, they must have been framed crosswise at their heads by tie beams,
and lengthwise by longitudinal plates serving as footing for the rafters, or supporting them in midspan. There were no roof-supporting posts in
the end walls, indicating that the roof was probably hipped over the building's narrow ends. The construction of the walls, although common in
heavily wooded areas of Scandinavia and Alpine regions, is atypical for this part of Europe.

315. FEDDERSEN-WIERDE. PLAN [after Haarnagel, 1957, fig. 2]

AISLED HOUSES OF WARF-LAYER II B, 1ST-2ND CENTURIES

Haarnagel's exploration of this Warf, conducted from 1955 onward under the auspices of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, was the
German counterpart to van Giffen's excavation of the Warf of Ezinge (figs. 292-99). The site, on the right bank of the estuary of the Weser,
was carefully selected after many sample drillings from a chain of nine dwelling mounds running in an almost straight line south to north over a
distance of 15 kilometers. The Warf encompassed seven settlement horizons, a new one every 50-80 years, to compensate for the steadily rising
innundation level.

The earliest settlement was a flatland farm built around the birth of Christ. The Warf was abandoned around 400 A.D. when it had reached
a height of about 13 feet (4m). The dwellings buried in its various layers were as well preserved as those of Ezinge and for the same reasons
(see caption, fig. 299); and were of the same construction type. The plan above shows the Warf in the stage it had reached toward the end of
the first century A.D.

FEDDERSEN-WIERDE, NEAR BREMERHAVEN, GERMANY

316.B AUTHORS' RECONSTRUCTION (DRAWN BY WALTER SCHWARZ)

SEE FIGURE 175. PAGE 216, VOL. 1, FOR A LARGER INTERPRETATION OF THIS DRAWING

316.A PLAN [after Haarnagel, 1956, Pl. 3]

AISLED HOUSE OF A CHIEFTAIN, Warf-LAYER II B, 1ST-2ND CENTURIES

With the cattle barn of Ezinge (figs. 298-99) this is one of the finest examples of a house type widely diffused in the Germanic territories of
Holland and Northern Germany during the first millenium B.C. and throughout the entire Middle Ages. The house was 97 feet long (28.50m)
and 21 feet wide (6.75m). It combined under one roof the owner's living quarters and the stables for his livestock. In the area used by animals
(eastern 52½ feet of the house) the roof-supporting trusses were more narrowly spaced, leaving in the aisles between each pair of posts a stall
for two head of cattle (32 head altogether).

As in the chieftain's house at Fochteloo (fig. 304) stables and living area were separated by an entrance bay accessible through doors in the long
walls, while animals entered through a gate in the eastern end wall. The walls and all the internal cross partitions were done in wattlework,
daubed with manure. The stable area had the traditional mats of wattlework on which the manure was gathered, with cess trenches beneath to
allow for drainage. The walk between these mats was paved with turves laid between floor beams running parallel with the trenches.

317. FEDDERSEN-WIERDE, NEAR BREMERHAVEN, GERMANY

HOUSE OF THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT HORIZON. DETAIL

[photograph by courtesy of W. Haarnagel]

These are remains of two of the principal roof-supporting posts of the house, for which the builder used the round trunks of relatively young
and slender oaks without debarking them. The superb state of preservation of both timbers and the wattlework of which the walls and cross
partitions in the aisles were formed owes to the fact that whenever a house was abandoned because of floods and then rebuilt on higher ground,
its remains were soon covered by layers of fine silt deposited during floods, thus sealing its contents against air and bacterial decay.

ELISENHOF, NEAR TÖNNING, SCHLESWIG, GERMANY

319.

320.

AISLED HOUSE, 9TH CENTURY A.D. [excavation photos courtesy of A. Bantelmann]

The overview (fig. 319) of the Warf shows the remains of the houses; below (fig. 320), the detail shows a portion of the wattled walls of the
house with inclined posts carrying a peripheral course of poles on which the rafters were footed.

The great historical significance of the excavation of this Warf is that it closed the gap between the Iron Age and Migration Period houses
(shown in figs. 293-318) and their medieval derivatives (figs. 339-354). The settlement was started on flatland in the 7th century; its subsequent
development could be traced clear into the 11th century. In layout and construction its houses were virtually identical with those of Ezinge
(figs. 293-299), and Feddersen-Wierde (figs. 316-317). They were in some places preserved to a height of 7 feet.

321. ANTWERP, BELGIUM. UNAISLED AND AISLED HOUSES

PLANS, EARLY 11TH CENTURY A.D.

[after A. Van de Walle, 1961, 128, fig. 35]

The house plans and reconstruction shown here and in fig. 322 are in themselves of no particular architectural distinction. But they do mark the
historical point at which the aisled and bay-divided timber house, the premedieval history of which has been briefly traced in these pages,
attempted to gain a hold in the new and rapidly developing medieval cities.

Excavations conducted in 1955-1957, in what was then the old city of Antwerp (and is now the center of the modern town) brought to light
three medieval habitation levels in an average depth of 5 to 7 feet (1.50-3.50m) beneath the present street level. By pottery and other artifacts
these strata could be dated: the lowest to about 850-976, the middle to about 976-1063, and the top level to 1063-1225. On each horizon the
excavator found three houses in a row, side by side, gable walls facing the street. The houses shown here belong to the middle level. The larger
one to the right is aisled; the others, narrower and shorter, are unaisled. These two are divided internally into a main hall with hearth, and with
one or more partitions to the rear perhaps serving as private or storage rooms.

Aisled houses were well suited to the open terrain of the nonurban countryside. But in the densely built cities, with open land at a premium, the
aisled structure of one story had limited utility and future. Some wealthy individuals or institutions could, to be sure, acquire enough urban land
upon which to build expansive aisled houses on one level, and could afford the expense of their maintenance. Such was the case with ecclesiastical
overlords (see figs. 339-340) or corporate bodies such as the Church (figs. 341-343) or the guilds. But for the most part, aisled dwellings were
impractical in, and proved antithetical to the function of the city. The type came to be replaced by narrower structures of multiple stories
providing space above ground level, set with gable walls toward the street and side walls almost touching, a picturesque and early characteristic
of new urban architecture.

322. ANTWERP, BELGIUM

AISLED HOUSE, EARLY 11TH CENTURY

[the reconstruction illustrated is redrawn from A. van de Walle, 1961, 129, FIG. 36]

This isometric rendering, conjectural in detail yet fairly
certain in general lines, illustrates more persuasively than
the plans of the preceding figure why it was that aisled
houses could not survive the pressures of dense urban
development. The low, aisled house of the open country, in
the struggle to adapt it to urban row-house conditions,
soon proved to be a wasteful use of costly and limited
city space. Therefore this house type was, in the cities
quickly discarded.

In process of adaptation, the remaining nave (after
aisles were eliminated) could, to be sure, have been raised;
but the skeletal construction of the old northwest European
all-purpose house was never intended to bear the load
of superincumbent stories. A new type of timber framing
with strong load-bearing walls evolved to make timber
framing possible in construction of narrow urban houses.
But because of its total vulnerability to fire, the timber
house eventually came to give way, as the cities grew, to
masonry houses.