Dear Editor,
With reference to the ‘Historical Snippet’ feature on St George’s Cathedral in your November 7 issue, please be advised that half-timbering is not a kind of decoration. Half-timbering is a structural system common in the Middle Ages, in which a timber frame (sills, studding, lintels, braces, etc) was filled in with brickwork or other masonry material. Normally, at least the inside of a half-timbered building would be plastered. But, plastered or left un-entirely unplastered, as in the case of St George’s, the timbering inside and out is the same, and is structural; there is no outside timbering distinct from inside timbering. It follows therefore that to remove it would mean demolishing the building.
St George’s in 1894 was, in my view, a quite attractive building on the outside. Its interior however, is, in my opinion, busy and unpleasing, in marked contrast with its ethereal exterior. All this, of course, a matter of personal opinion.
The problem with St George’s as built, was that it admitted water unacceptably, both at roof and walls. Eventually the wall failings were mitigated by applying a double wrapping of greenheart (square-edged underneath and weatherboarding outside); the leaking roof however persists. If the greenheart on the walls were to be removed we should be faced again with the half-timbered exterior of 1894.
Yours faithfully,
E D Ford
