It’s March 2025, exactly one year on from first breaking ground, and we’re moving on to the next stage of the journey for our beautiful oak timbers. Their journey started in the woods on this very site, then moved on to Whitney Sawmills.
The next destination for the timbers is Oakwrights in Herefordshire – a heritage firm renowned for their oak buildings expertise, which is why we’re here.
Dan, Production Manager at Oakwrights, explains the process of taking the sawn sections from Whitney and turning them into a finished oak frame.
This starts with the frame designer creating a 3D computer model, from which machine files are created. This tells CNC milling machines where to cut the pieces in order to get the most out of each piece. The jointing is shaped and tested, then the frame will be taken to site to be installed.
These oaks came from the client’s well-managed woods on site. Standard oak timbers come in 5-metre lengths, but the design required timbers up to 8 metres in length.
Before the design was developed, we worked with the client’s woodland management company to see if these were available. They were, which is very rare to find locally.
Modern oak buildings are often made of specially-grown oak from French and German forests. It’s ‘clean’, with no knots. However, less intensively farmed local woodlands produce oak with more character, colouration of timber, and knots from branches.
This gives a very unique character which clearly identifies them as English oaks, complete with all the marks that reflect the woods they grew in. These oaks are therefore part of the story, fabric and character of the build.
Part of this project is to demonstrate what makes a Herefordshire vernacular house in 2025. The Earth House responds to this by using oak from the woods harvested from the site, processed locally using modern technology but based on traditional techniques, and all carried out by local people.
It’s this fusion of hyper-local use of materials, innovation based on traditional techniques, and local talent that we believe delivers a 2025 vernacular Herefordshire house.
While architecture is often concerned with high-concept abstract thinking, in the Earth House it’s also defined by tools, people, fabrication, construction, earth, and oak. This is part of what makes this project special.
When we sit in the house surrounded by its dramatic oak frame, we’ll be looking out at the very woods where these oaks originated over 150 years ago. Having left those woods back in May 2024, these oaks will soon arrive home to become part of the Earth House. The 30-day countdown begins!
