Butser Ancient Farm

[poliphilo]

Ailz said she thought square buildings must have developed from round buildings but the man who was remaking the chalk floor in one of the houses said, no,  it was the other way. First we built square but then- having chopped down all the older trees- we had to start using immature ones- and you can only build strong with flimsy materials if you build in the round. Apparently Britain is the only part of Europe to develop round houses. Elsewhere the forests were bigger and they didn't run out of trees.

I'd seen round houses on TV but there's nothing like going inside one and walking around and taking a seat by the central fire. Round houses are welcoming.  They're cosy. It felt like coming home.

Tell you one thing, everybody in the iron age must have stunk of woodsmoke.



Iron age round houses



Neolithic long house



Prehistoric pig

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

The lack of any chimney hole in such dwellings struck us when visiting the Chiltern Open Air Museum recently. Wouldn't a bit of a thinning of the thatching by the apex serve to keep the air a bit less smoky? (Without, of course, opening the place up to the elements overly)

Quite an interesting place, actually - it covered dwellings from the Iron Age to the present day, with examples either constructed (as above) or painstakingly rebuilt brick by brick, giving a peculiar feel to the place, quite out of time, like The Village, but without any Rover. Intriguing, needless to say - I really ought to pull up a few example photos sometime, as I did manage to get a few reasonable shots.