As the people of Leeds got richer, they spent more on housing and timber frame houses started to be built.
These timber frame houses were a bit like the ‘flat-pack’ we can buy today. The house would have come in sections and had to be put back together, piece by piece in a certain order. You had to follow this order carefully to make sure you got the house built properly.
There were no iron nails or bolts in the frame of a Tudor house to hold it together. The joints were mortised tenoned together and then secured with wooden pegs. A ‘Mortise and Tenon joint’ consists of a ‘tongue’ (the tenon) that slots into a hole (the mortise) cut in the piece of timber. The tighter the fit, the stronger the joint. The spaces between the beams were then filled in with wattle and daub, a mixture of hair, dung and clay, to make them air tight!
Many Tudor houses had furniture and fittings made out of oak. This is a golden yellow colour when it is first carved but turns dark with age.