For more details of the house, and more and better pics, please visit my website:

http://www.theyorkshireman2003.com/about_me.html

and

http://www.theyorkshireman2003.com/house.html

It is a mock English cottage, complete with an authentic 16th century oak timber frame imported from Wales that has been dendro-dated to 1540.

Not only that, but academic research by two professors at Oxford University, England, has unearthed the name of the man who originally built the frame almost 570 years ago, one Morgan Ap Sion.

He built a farmhouse at Llanhaylow, and that building was demolished in the 1970s. The timberframe was dismantled and put in storage 30 years ago and was forgotten about until my wife and I bought it in 2006 and shipped it here to the US.

It is the focal point of our cathedral-ceilinged Great Room, which also features an inglenook lined with 17th century English oak paneling, and a mock Tudor firesurround topped with an original 17th century carved oak mantelshelf from a coaching inn.

The inglenook has seats at each side cut from one long Victorian gothic carved oak church pew, with Gothic sconce lights above them.

The Great Room windows are Georgian Regency period antiques, whilst the doors leading out from that room to the rear deck are solid oak church doors with their original, huge and ornate iron hinges.

The kitchen has its share of imported antique features too - the beams on the ceiling are from an English farmhouse and date to c.1600, whilst the floor is tiled with terracotta 'pammetts', a type of thick, rough-cast tile, that were lifted from another English farmhouse, and date to c.1700.

The kitchen windows are Victorian masterpieces of wrought iron with all their original and wavy diamond-leaded glass panes.

The tea-bar is a Victorian sideboard that has had a sink cut in, and the island is paneled with Victorian pine paneling.

The back door from the mud room to the screened-in porch came from an English Victorian convent, as did all the door jambs throughout the house, all in carved quartersawn oak.

The Mock Tudor quartersawn oak doors to the basement, office, 1/2 bath and master bedroom came from an English hotel.

The foyer is accessed through the huge front door, a Mock Tudor example from the 'Tibbenham House', erected at the Ideal Home Exhibition at Earl's Court, London, in 1926. The foyer has many antique architectural features, including a solid quartersawn oak Victorian Gothic sweeping grand staircase from an English hotel.

Further, the foyer is lined with quartersawn oak paneling from the same hotel, and also features a Gothic oak firesurround filled with Delft blue and white picture tiles.

The foyer main window, some 7' by 6', is Edwardian, dating to c.1910, and is of leaded stained glass with a central panel of the Coat of Arms of Hull, my home city in the UK.

I used to pass a tailor's shop on my way to school when I was about 7 or 8 years old in the early 1960s, and I used to stop every day and admire the stained glass window in that shop. Imagine my surprise, then, when I was able to buy that self-same window in 2005, and now it is in my foyer!

Over the hallway door leading off the foyer is a carved oak Victorian Gothic lamp, French in origin, fashioned as a gryphon with a lantern hanging from his mouth. We have named him 'Pierre' for obvious reasons.

Under the stairs in the oak paneling is a small doorway, about 2' high, that used to be used for storage. We have installed a smaller door alongside it, just 4" high, complete with brass knob and hinges, for the mouse we occassionally see that obviously moved-in during construction.

In the foyer too is a small coat-closet, the door of which is a Georgian Gothic Revival church door, again in quartersawn oak, complete with its original wrought-iron hinges.

The bathroom vanities are all antiques, the nicest being a carved mahogany sideboard or credenza in the upstairs main bathroom, that has its original maker's label and is dated 1906 inside it.

The windows in the master bathroom are of oak-framed leaded glass, and they came from a British Victorian banking hall, whilst all the closet doors throughout the house are English early Victorian ledged and braced plank doors.

Many of the light fittings in the house are antique, some converted from Victorian gas lights, and even the garage doors in the basement are of oak, date to c.1930 and were imported from England.

We bought many more items than we did not use, and some of them will be offered for sale here on my website. The star of those has to be the original oak mantelpiece beam that came with our Welsh timberframe, and hence has provenance dating it to 1540. It is approx 11' long by 12" by 10", and is massively heavy. It has a chamfered side that encouraged the smoke from the fire to rise up the chimney instead of escaping into the room.

Victorian oak sells for around $30 per board foot, but I will have to guess at a price for 16th century oak, as I have NEVER seen any offered for sale. Assuming that it is worth only twice that price, i.e. $60 per board foot, that gives that beam a value approaching $7500..!

The house is almost complete now and, for those who are interested, I have posted photos on the 'Housebuilding Photo Album' page.

Please enjoy them as much as we do. Regards, Rick