How to Build a Plymouth House

The blockhouse at Plimouth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts,

The settlers at Plymouth, Massachusetts, built lean-to shelters, constructed wigwams and even dug cave houses to live in for that first hard winter. In 1621, the first small house was build in Plimoth Plantation using split wood lumber planks, wattle-and-daub and roof thatching. Once all the chinks were filled in with mud and the fireplace lit, it was surprisingly warm and dry. Over the next 100 years, houses grew somewhat larger, but most homes were built using the same construction materials and techniques.

Things You'll Need

• 12"x12" or larger block-style timber - 1 length for each side of your house, and 4 7-foot lengths for the corners of your home.
• Mud or clay
• Small branches
• Split wood planks
• Leather for hinges
• Nails or wooden pegs
• Grease
• Straw
• Twine

Instructions

1. Mark the dimensions of your home's interior. Dig a shallow ditch for the foundation outside the marked-off area wide enough for your block timbers. Drop the foundation block timbers into the ditch, leaving a 1-foot-square hole at each corners. Dig the corners down deeper, at least a foot. If your soil is soft, dig a deeper hole. Drop corner posts into the corner holes, filling in the hole around the post and packing it hard. For a harder pack, pour some grease down as you're filling the hole. Pack your posts until they stand by themselves.

2. Clear the floor inside the foundation area of any debris or stones. Fill the foundation area with crumbly dirt and pat this earth down. Once the dirt floor is as flat and smooth as you can get it, pour grease over the whole thing. Smooth the floor with your hands, patting it down as flat as you can. When the grease dries, repeat until you are satisfied.

3. Create a hearth by using flat stones to shape another 6- to 8-feet wide, 3-feet deep foundation inside your house. Fill this foundation with clay. Embed flagstones into the clay to make a flat surface. Using clay and other flat stones, build up your fireplace to about waist height.

4. Frame walls using split wood planks. Nail or peg planks to the outside of the frame. Leave one space open for your door in either wall adjoining the chimney wall. Fill the inside of the frame with dried branches, and then fill the spaces in around the branches with clay or mud. This is wattle-and-daub construction. Allow the walls to dry on the inside, and then fill in any holes or chinks with more clay. Smooth clay over the inside for a flat finish to the walls.

5. Lay long planks over the top of the walls for rafters. These can be left bare to the room, so that vegetables or clothing can be hung from them, or they can be topped with more planks to make a loft area. Nail or peg these planks down to the wood left at the top of your walls.

6. Climb into the rafters and build an A-style roof frame, keeping your chimney on the tall side of the walls. Be sure to keep your roof at a steep pitch so that snow and rain slide off the roof instead of collecting and collapsing it later. On the ends of the roof, finish the walls to the top with wattle-and-daub. On the roof frame, nail narrow boards lengthwise to attach your thatching.

7. Thatch your roof by laying flat bundles of straw (not hay) in rows on the ground and stitching or tying them tightly into flat sheets about 1 to 2 inches thick. Cut the ends off these bundles so that the bottoms are even. Attach these bundles to the roof with twine. Start at the bottom so that top bundles are layered over lower bundles. At the top, lay bundles over the peak and attach them to lower bundles on either side.

   Before your roof is completely thatched, finish your chimney. It should be a foot higher than your house peak, and to protect the thatch from fire you can build the side facing the house as much as a foot higher than the other side.

8. Make a door out of split-wood planks. Nail leather to the hinge side of the door on the outside, then fit your door to the doorframe and nail the other end of the leather to the frame.

Tips & Warnings

• While original construction used wooden pegs to attach the wood, it's much easier to use nails today.

• The chimney is very close to the thatch, making it easy for sparks to set fires. You may be able to minimize this problem by coating the thatch in that area with clay.

References

• Ancestry.com: Home Building at Plymouth
• Plimoth.org: Building a Home (with a great picture of a house under construction)