I live in an old (Georgian) house, with a ‘coach house’ in the garden (that’s what it’s called in the deeds, but for all anyone knows, it could have started life as a farmyard barn). I suspect there’s been buildings on this patch for hundreds of years, and the coach house certainly looks pretty ancient, but it isn’t the sort of building that would have public records. Being build of stone in a style that probably hasn’t changed for hundreds of years, I couldn’t tell whether it’s 150 years old or 500.
I’ve been idly wondering if I could find a rough date for its construction by sampling the wood from one of the beams inside and sending it off for carbon dating - but is this even a thing that non professionals can access? Any other way to date it, short of calling in an architectural historian? I’m curious, but not enough to shell out loads of money on it.
Yes, you can carbon date wood that is only 500 years old, and it wouldn’t cost you that much ($400-$600 US), but you would need to find a lab willing to do it. I would check out any local universities and see if they would be willing to do it for you. You might get lucky.
You could also try dendrochronology on the wood. This involves taking a core sample of the wooden beams and examining the growth rings to match them to known patterns of growth rings for your area. I’m not sure who you would contact to do this, maybe an architectural history specialist.
Radiocarbon dating can certainly be done on wooden parts but the accuracy on the scale you are looking at will be poor, generally no better than ±50 years even with location calibrated decay curves (14C atmospheric content varies with location and era, so even though it is represented as the Libby half-life constant getting an accurate estimate requires applying site-specific calibration).
@zimaane’s suggestion of using dendrochronology can get more accuracy (potentially down to the year the lumber was harvested, provided you can find a section that is on outside of the trunk (you don’t mention if these are rough cut or milled) and a match to seasonal records, but if you genuinely believe that the structure is over 200 years old its very likely that those beams have been replaced at some point.
I suspect your best bet is actually having an architectural historian take a look at building and take a sample of the mortar, which is the most likely way to accurately determine the era of construction. If the building is genuinely several hundred years old it may be of interest to someone at a local university or historical society, so you can probably get this done at cost or even for free.
Unfortunately ancient old barns/out buildings are ten a penny here! I’m in the most rural county in England so they don’t get knocked down for development, and being on the border with Wales we’re surrounded by much more interesting medieval castles.
The building is a patchwork - it’s clearly been mended, added to and rebuilt over and over, but parts of it look very old indeed - whatever ‘old’ means. The local sandstone crumbles pretty easily so it could look older than it is, although the bricked-up archways in the photo I posted are rather curious. There’s even evidence of human habitation at some point (maybe the coachman?) - there’s an old hearth and cupboards downstairs and rooms divided by wooden partitions upstairs.
Do you pay property tax there? There should be a record of when the taxes went up indicating a building was added. The local historical society can get you started on that quest.
You could have a go at it yourself. I’m no expert, but he brickwork I can see looks like Flemish bond, which wiki says is commonly Georgian. Of course, if the brickwork isn’t what you’re trying to date…that’s another issue.
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ETA - I’m sure I’ve found historic map websites. Worth a look?
I take it you’re wanting to date the ashlar part, right? The brickwork part looks decidedly early Georgian - segmental arched windows, regular/simple red brickwork, that iron anchor plate (possibly even later for that detail). But the ashlar part might be earlier: that gothic-arched window -possibly Tudor or Stuart? However, the regularity of the ashlar makes it look like imitation of brickwork, which puts it in a later context than if it had been less regular stonework.
In any case, I don’t think dating the wood is going to do you any good, any beams probably date much later than the first stonework.
It also looks like the same mortar is used in the brickwork and some of the the ashlar, which means the ashlar has been repointed at the same time as the brickwork. But some of it looks different.
When we moved into our new house here in Luxembourg, there was a mortar-and-stone barn across the street that had been built in 1710. (It had those embedded iron bars with the year of construction, as is done in these parts — e.g. our local town hall, built in 1798.) No big deal, just another barn. They knocked it down about a year and a half ago and are building a condo in its place.
To quote Eddie Izzard: Europe is “where history comes from.” It takes a lot more than a couple-few hundred years for something to be historical.
I’ve seen this sort of mish-mash before - the stonework on the end wall could be a remnant of a much older building, with Georgian (or later) brickwork on the side wall. You can see how the brickwork is ‘keyed in’ to the stonework, so it looks like the whole side of the building has been replaced at some date.
You could try dendrochronology, but if they replaced the side walls, they may have replaced the roof and timbers at the same time.
Private individuals in the UK can certainly do this. I have a friend who had both dendrochronology and C-14 surveys done on his house. The house was medieval but otherwise just an unremarkable house on a street in an unremarkable market town. He was researching his house’s history. Googling will turn up companies offering this.
Is the building listed? If so, there will be an entry on the Historic England database.
If there is an entry, an actual architectural historian will have already examined the property and given their specialist assessment as to its likely date. The caveat is that they usually do this only by looking at the exterior. That information should therefore just be treated as a first approximation. There are commercial specialists you can pay to take a more detailed look and they’re also the people to advise on whether dendro or carbon dating is likely to be useful.
A small point that doesn’t get mentioned often enough.
Carbon dating is intended for dates thousands of years old, so that precision is not the point. Or even possible. Much more important that something is around 4500 years old than 3500.
So little account is precision that “years ago” is not measured from today but from a base reference point of 1950. If you read a date of 4500 years ago, it means 4500 years before 1950, not 2025. Scientists know this and make the adjustment automatically.
That’s because 75 year difference means little to an artifact that thousands of years old. It might not mean anything that a wood beam is 475 years old rather than 400, either. But carbon dating may not be the right tool for the purpose of dating newer objects; it doesn’t work quite the way newspaper accounts make it seem to.
This. Our house was built in the 1700s, and we know what year it first started getting taxed (by talking to the local historical society), which we figure is close enough.
On a side note, the support beams for our house are just trees split lengthwise in half, some with bits of bark still on them. I assume even if carbon dating a tree were accurate, you’d be dating the tree, not the house.
I remember you posting that building before, I think I might have said 18th-19th century. But it’s been obviously rebuilt and converted so often I’m not sure what part to suggest might be tested with any accuracy. If the roof trusses look old enough, mabye those, although the roof itself is obviously more recent. If the level of the upper floor is unchanged, then the beams possibly (maybe even so if they’d been reused).
Not really - at least, not that I’ve found. My house itself is certainly Georgian (although date unknown), but there’s older and more historically important buildings in the same village more worthy of a mention, including the remains of a 12th century castle. It’s more the couch house that intrigues me because it looks older (in parts) - and being a random outbuilding, it’s not the sort of thing to get listed in much detail in property details.
The previous owner suggested that my house was built on the grounds of a much older farmhouse, and it makes me wonder if the coach house is a survivor from older times.
No, not listed. If any part of the property would be listed, it would be the house rather than the coach house, and it isn’t. My house gets a mention as part of the Conservation Area designation, but they don’t give any historic details about it. Just a comment on my fine garden wall!
Any old nails you can inspect or send to an expert? With a little online research you could probably tell the difference between hand-wrought, slitter, and wire cut nails.
