For #MedievalMonday - the parish church of St Mary’s in #Haddington 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 has a timber heritage reflecting its strategic situation in a medieval royal power centre and burgh. I dendro-dated the nave’s oak timbers to early 1400s and provenanced them to the Gdańsk region. See: scarf.scot/regional/ses... - ThreadSky

dendrochronicle.bsky.social • 23 hours ago

For #MedievalMonday - the parish church of St Mary’s in #Haddington 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 has a timber heritage reflecting its strategic situation in a medieval royal power centre and burgh.

I dendro-dated the nave’s oak timbers to early 1400s and provenanced them to the Gdańsk region. See: https://scarf.scot/regional/sesarf/sesarf-case-studies/tell-tale-timbers-the-south-east-scotland-oak-dendrochronology-sesod-project/

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alistairblantyre.bsky.social•17 hours ago

🧐

hughpumphrey.bsky.social•22 hours ago

GDANSK?

Next time I have to crawl along that attic walkway I'll give the timbers a closer look. (Usual reason for doing so is to see when the remembrance ceremony at the war memorial is over so we can drop the bells while folk walk into the kirk: https://bsky.app/profile/hughpumphrey.bsky.social/post/3lalzgsu5qs26 @stmaryskirk.bsky.social )

dendrochronicle.bsky.social•9 hours ago

Hi Hugh, how wonderful that you ring the bells and know this amazing roof. There is quite a mix of different timber types up there, those early oaks from the Gdansk region show evidence of re-use with redundant joints and nail marks on their inner faces. That will tell you which ones they are.

brightpathtoursbpt.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Very interesting history snippets! I love pre-1800 churches. The older, the better!

dendrochronicle.bsky.social•10 hours ago

Thank you, yes I feel the same. I have a thing for medieval churches especially, not least because my PhD was on the dendrochronology of Exeter Cathedral

almagill.bsky.social•15 hours ago

I seem to recall that the Dumfries historian McDowall refers to papers in the Town Council Minutes including letters and receipts between the Burgh merchants and Chambers of Commerce in Flanders and the Hanseatic ports.
I wonder how many of our old kirks have Baltic pine timber...

dendrochronicle.bsky.social•9 hours ago

There are indeed historic documentary records for Haddington about work on St Mary’s including contracts with foreign merchants for timber. I think those records are 16th century, a bit later than the Baltic oak beams. There are other later phases of timber present too.

dendrochronicle.bsky.social•1 hour ago

Ps in dendro evidence for Scottish medieval buildings structural timber from E Baltic is rare. Only 2 sites, this one & one in St Andrews both c.1400 on cusp of switch from using native oak to imports. Most structural timber from Scandinavia after that. Most E Baltic oak imported as boards not beams

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