Ludlow, Shropshire

Wooden world (2)

The west of England (especially the West Midlands, Shropshire, and Cheshire) are full of the glories of English wooden building, timber-framed houses that are as bright and flashy as magpies. I could devote many posts to the delights of buildings such as Chester’s marvellous Rows or the dazzling Little Moreton Hall, whose structure I remember creaking like a leaky old fishing smack as I walked around it. But few places are as rewarding to the admirer of England’s ‘black and white’ buildings as Ludlow.

With most ‘black and white’ buildings the timber was used for the structural framework. It was the province of the joiner, whose skill was principally to make everything fit together properly, and who often incorporated ornament in the form of ogee cross-braces, quatrefoils, and similar designs with their roots in the Gothic architecture of churches and cathedrals.

In Ludlow, though, the timber is often also the province of the carver. And some of this carving is seriously high-status stuff, like this example, high on a building in the very centre of the town. The detail on this bargeboard and finial is simply stunning, the kind of thing that in the Middle Ages would have adorned the alabaster tomb of a grandee. On this urban building it seems to speak of the prosperity of a merchant, a member of the rising middle classes.

But it speaks too of the sheer flair and hard work of the craftsman, who could be bothered to go to all these lengths to create a riot of quatrefoils, spirals, stylized flowers, and snaking borders that could hardly be appreciated without the binoculars or telephoto lens of an age to come. In Ludlow’s world of wood, it is very close to the top of the tree.