cruck

Blade or inclined curved timber, meeting a similar timber to form an approximately triangular frame on which the subsidiary structure rests. A full or true cruck (c) has two blades serving as the principals of a roof, rising from near ground level to the ridge, and supporting both walls and roof. A cruck-truss has two blades with a transverse timber that could be a tie-beam (at or below the top level of the walls), a collar (at high level), a saddle (just under the apex), or a yoke (just below the apex). A cruck-framed structure is therefore one constructed of crucks instead of box-frames.

Types of cruck include:

base-cruck (e): rises from just above ground level to just under the first transverse member, and provides the main upright for the wall;
end-cruck: cruck-blade in the centre of a gable-wall of a cruck-framed building supporting the ridge-timber;
jointed cruck (d): cruck-truss made of two or more pieces of timber, the lowest of which rises from just above ground level and doubles as a wall-post at the top of which the cruck is jointed and changes direction to follow the slope of the roof;
middle-cruck: the same as a raised cruck(b);
raised cruck (b): cruck with its feet set in solid walls, with the blades reaching down the walls (if the blades reach half-way down the walls, they are middle-crucks);
two-tier cruck: supporting a small pair of cruck-shaped blades over the collar;
upper cruck (a): cruck with its feet resting on a first-floor ceiling-beam that is not a tie-beam.

Cruck (JJS)

Bibliography

• Alcock (1981)
• Alcock, Barley, Dixon, & Meeson (1996)
• Charles (1967)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)