The Cornish Base-Cruck Truss

Abstract

Four Cornish buildings with base-cruck trusses are described, part of a distinctive group that share the feature of having the blades passing the tiebeams to clasp the arcade plates. They have been dated, using a combination of ring-width and stable-isotope dendrochronology, to between the late thirteenth and late fourteenth centuries, making them the earliest known secular buildings in Cornwall. The paper discusses how these trusses relate to the development of the base-cruck form nationally and sets the buildings into their broader historical context.