What can be learnt from a 17th century American town

the years 1627 this is Plymouth Colony an English town set up by Reformed Church people from Leiden and also tradesmen out of England these people hope to own land they are struggling on the edge of a wilderness they stayed on the Mayflower until they were able to build simple shelters the simplest house in the town is Holland house and that is built with a Cratchit frame structure you find Forks in the woods natural forks and trees and you use that as support support posts it's very simple very very simple children can do it with the utmost ease so up at the ridge line up there there's a fork and we call it a Cratchit so the whole structure is held together with the fork natural fork in the tree the roof joist all meet that ridge line either all just small saplings in the green the bark is still on them they're less than six inches in diameter you just go out into the forest and you cut it down and you put it right up it's very very easy and it's a very quick way to get yourself out of the winter out of the rain out of the summer heat this is a place where people are coming from middle class backgrounds and they're taking a much more impoverished lifestyle than they're used to you have some some kettles brass kettles and when you have a rare dose like this you are cooking on a tripod this is called a rare dose and it's just large field stone that has been strategically built to create an armchair to contain the fire it contains the heat acts as a thermal mass which can warm the house because the stones absorb that heat this is the simplest house you could find something like this in England but it would be beast house for cattle it'd be a hay barn it'd be too said it'd be like today living in your garage in England a lot of homes would have this wattle and daub construction wattle being the vertical or horizontal sticks and the dog being a clay mixture that packs it in axes insulation this here is Dobb and the sticks here are are known as wattle this is called laughs Oh clap it's a horizontal thin piece of wood that stretches across the wattle is just hard wood sticks of a thin diameter that have been found just brush that gets cleared the Dobb is clay earth silt sand it's a picture that changes from place to place there's no formula and it's applied very easily children can do it let me just get a little bit of water on it not very much it's now try it that might work yeah she's still here now smooth it on and make it look pretty there are ways to make table look very fun and very fair and this is a method that is still done in many many places in the world like in West Africa in India South America wattle and daub is a common construction really serves as a good insulator when this is finished some of these panels can be as thick as three inches or six inches thick and that's a massive amount similar to modern drywall and plaster most of these resources can be found on your land clay the vast majority the United States has clay soil oops I'll just go in we'll do all this needed is small diameter sticks some kind of laughs material and sand and dirt and clay very simple and in England you use a lime wash that distinctive white color when people think of English homes and the lime wash is what protects the dog from rain so it doesn't melt they don't have that here they don't have any lime no mortar no lime wash and no one who makes it either so instead they arrive they rival a birds the way that these are made is using a bolt a big log that has been split you take a fro a horizontally bladed tool you strike a mallet with it and you literally cleave the wood fibers apart it works in the same way that celery works when you tear the little fibers apart it's the same concept except on a massive scale so if you think of a collaborate it's really just a small fiber of celery so you have this oak board it literally just gets tagged up and nailed in and they all lap on top of each other so that the water runs down over them instead of under them in the same way the shingles work on roofs and this is how Viking ships are made this is the beginning of a vernacular architecture that is previous to them fairly unknown especially because wood is very expensive in England so they come to this place and it's a free-for-all for a commodity that is scarce to them and like a lot of human populations when confronted with something you've always thought of as scarce you over consume you overindulge the roof is made from thatch in England thatch is a country solution to roofing and the city's thatch isn't used it's banned because of the danger of fire in cities they use tile but in the country they use Oh water Reid thatch or they use a wheat straw from fields see these uh the roof here and the way that it's sewn together so you can see the horizontal laughs along the roof joist see that fiber wrapped around that is what ties those bundles together so they're literally woven through with a giant needle usually you work in tandem one person on the roof one person on the inside so the person on the roof passes the needle through the person inside catches it and removes the line and sets it up for the next course and you work your way all along it's literally sewn within the rafters the joist it's like a giant quilt made of grass this is hundreds of bundles of that which makes a watertight roof that essentially acts as a massive sponge it absorbs water and it laps it off so the water drips from the ends of the reeds but it doesn't drip downwards through the roof if thatch is maintained it can last as long as there are thatched roofs in England that are over 700 years old if it's maintained if the crown of the roof is is replaced every few years the whole structure can can be ancient it's a very clever way to build this sort of grid pattern is very simple very crude it doesn't take an enormous amount of skill and in fact if you were to do it in the modern world wheat straw and most marsh Reed you could use invasives like Phragmites and cleanup ecosystems or you can use the agricultural byproduct of wheat production that is just going to be wasted anyways use the wheat straw this house represents a fairly good picture of a middling life that is fairly comfortable at this point it has hewn beams and Timbers so you can see instead of cratchits like in the old house that I showed the first house set of the forks these are actually joined together using Morrison tenon tongue-and-groove it's like Lincoln Logs this whole place is built that way in a very simple form of timber framing because they're trying to get these houses up fast efficiently get out of the weather but also they're aware that they may not be here in seven years they may leave so they aren't necessarily building their dream home forever they're not quite up to the point of using wooden floors it's not a thing yet partially because sawing is not yet an industrial thing here the forge is this way this is called the early modern period the early 17th century this is the village forge in this period what we know of as consumer culture receiving a daily wage going to the store buying everything you need is something that is still gaining traction it's not quite established this place represents the first forge of Plymouth Colony it's much more economical for them to produce things here than it is to import it from England this place is a little strange because we are rebuilding our chimney you can see the big the great bellows connected through the Twitter it is pumped up with this lever when the air feeds the Forge fire making the fire much hotter than it would be otherwise hot enough to forge iron and steel but one person can do this by themselves see you can tend the fire at the same time and so the fire is done you bring the iron red-hot to the envel and you Forge it and while you're doing that the rest of what you're working on the temperature will get ready they don't know temperature science is just beginning to explain phenomena in their world so they know color they know feel and texture they know that a white-hot iron means welding heat and that you can join iron and steel together that heat but they don't know that the molecules literally join or that there are molecules so these are some of the hammers that we use this is the primary forging hammer almost identical to modern blacksmithing tools I have hinges that I've made gate hooks a staple I'm a full-time professional blacksmith my attraction to this craft is that it is the most difficult craft that I have ever put my hand to this is what's needed for one garden gate that's a grindstone it's fitted with a handle two people have to be evolved so one person spins while the other person sharpens a blade a knife or an ax or a sword and in the bottom tray in the trough you would put water the water keeps the stone from being completely eroded by the blade it smoothes the surface and lubricates it and it also prevents the blade from losing its temper by keeping the temperature down so one person spins probably a child that's another thing child labour is the thing and this time children work they don't go to school and they don't play they go to work my whole life revolves around this stuff but that does not equate that I want to go back in time and be in English blacksmith I think you'd be dreadful I don't consider myself a Luddite because if you do the research the hard research into this period it is not a pleasant time to live these trades are brutal the world of labor is a brutal world it is not a time of bucolic natural wonder and appreciation it's a very hellish time from a modern American perspective they say that a carpenter can only work for 10 to 15 years professionally before his body is broken and he can't work any longer these people are done at age thirty thirty-five they're done so it may seem tedious it is and that's because iron nails then very easily if they're not driven perfectly they'll what they will Bend so something that I have to do occasionally is to straighten some for Carpenters usually everything is done by yourself in this period and that means everything I have a lot of respect for DIY culture and the idea of becoming less dependent on extractive or oppressive systems but you don't want to go full 17th century because then you will also be farming fishing and hunting all the time and producing what you need now most of these people don't know how to produce things on their own so you would think well why don't they just make it these are people who come from a place where you buy a lot of things and so they will just go without a lot of the time you don't have the knowledge base to do it yourself so you just go without it's an American idea I think to solve problems all the time or to even want to solve problems so I'm not nostalgic but what I am is someone who appreciates the past and I appreciate my forebears and as a modern blacksmith you have to appreciate your roots to know who you are and where you're going um I'm a little bit different because people assume that you're a reenactor because you you want to live in the time and and some of us are but I know if I were to go back in time I wouldn't do well I'd probably I wouldn't live very long I don't think

Channel: Kirsten Dirksen

Views: 361,837

Rating: 4.9112945 out of 5

Keywords: self sufficiency, self reliance, DIY home, owner built house, wattle and daub, thatch, pilgrims, plimouth plantation, 17th century english village, 17th century construction, simple living, carpentry, 17th century carpentry, plymouth colony

Id: yeCyO_hX8lQ

Length: 15min 46sec (946 seconds)

Published: Sun May 31 2015