On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 15:54:09 -0500, Duane Bozarth wrote:
Dave Hinz wrote:

Well, given that you'd have to disassemble a house to get at it, it's
probably not negotiable.

Yes, actually I suspect they were far more prone to reuse things then
than now since every beam had to be hand sawn and hewn. It wasn't so
easy to go get something from the sawmill...

I would imagine it was from a tree right on the property. Hella big log
to move around without power.

It has a loverly nearly black, but visible grain and figure look. Easy
to replicate if you have 1000 years to do it, I suppose.

Any idea what species it is? I would expect that it would be hard but
would probably work like a dream underneath the exterior...

I'm not sure if they told me it was oak, or if I assumed it was oak.
Oak trees definately grow in that part of Norway; they have a "King's
Tree" on the property today that's proabably immensely old.

I recall last time I was in Rochester, Kent, England that the "new"
touristy attraction was Dickens and the "new" castle was roughly 1100 as
opposed to the "old" castle ruins from which it was built.

There ya go.

And, there
are places where the first Roman wall are still visible dating from
roughly AD70 or so, if I recall correctly.

Yes, quite a bit of that in London as well - big piece of it visible
over by the Tower of London, and St. Albans (20 minutes north by train)
has an excavated Roman town (Verilamium is close to the spelling).

Dave Hinz