Loving the local
Almost as good as GPS, the look of the rural architecture can tell you just where you are in Britain.
IF YOU’VE A soft spot for black and white movies then Herefordshire on a misty winter day is the place for you. Every aspect of the scene at Weobley is an arresting monochrome. A hoar frost has sugared the dark trees with pale crystals, the low sky is a pastel grey, and nearly all the buildings are black and white.
The black is timber-frame, the white is limewashed wall, and in places it makes a grid like a chequerboard, with just enough crooked to make it utterly charming. Some of the cottages date back to medieval times and the village is a fine example of vernacular architecture: houses made using local materials and local methods that give Britain’s built landscape such fascinating variety. Just think of the thatched cob cottages of the West Country or the low stone blackhouses of the Highlands.
This reliance on local materials means the built landscape tells you all about the natural one too. Timber-framed houses show an area was once forested, even if it isn’t now – and the ley in Weobley means woodland glade. Stone was used wherever it was readily available and the hue of the houses reflects the underlying geology, from amber-coloured limestone in the Cotswolds to dark granite in Aberdeenshire. Brick was popular where there was plentiful clay to fire, like Sussex. Vernacular extends to the top too, with slate roofs common in north Wales, and even regional variations in thatch material from heather in the uplands to water-reeds in Norfolk.
Herefordshire is home to nine of these picturesque timberframed villages, linked by a 40-mile drive called the Black and White Trail. On foot, our eight-mile walk connects two, Weobley and Dilwyn, via a lattice of dark hedges and frosted fields. The stark contrast between black timber and white wall means they’re sometimes known as magpie houses, but when first built the oak was often left to weather to a natural silvered hue. Painting the timber tar-black developed in the 18th century, by which time many homeowners were plastering the whole facade with lime, stone or brick, to disguise its construction altogether. Timber framing was by now considered old-hat and a sign of poor fortune; if you had money you’d be importing materials and designing a house with an architect, a form of building known as ‘polite’.
The fact these Herefordshire villages survive tells a tale. It suggests the area was down on its luck at that time, with no resource to flatten the black and white cottages and build something more fashionable in stone. Their poor fortune is our good luck, though, as it’s preserved one part of the varied vernacular jigsaw that adds such variety and particularity to the views we love to walk. WALK HERE: Turn to Walk 9 in this issue