Search Website Design and Content © by Eric Krause, Krause House Info-Research Solutions (© 1996)
      All Images © Parks Canada Except Where Noted Otherwise
Report/Rapport © Parks Canada / Parcs Canada  --- Report Assembly/Rapport de l'assemblée © Krause House Info-Research Solutions

Researching the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site of Canada
  Recherche sur la Forteresse-de-Louisbourg Lieu historique national du Canada

DOMESTIC BUILDING CONSTRUCTION 
AT THE FORTRESS OF LOUISBOURG, 1713 - 1758

By

Eric Krause

1996 Draft Report

(Fortress of Louisbourg
Report Number H G 10)

CHAPTER THREE

EXTERIOR WALL INFILLS

Caulking, the method by which builders closed off the vertical joints of piquet structures, consisted of non-mortar materials, such as moss, clay and straw, or clay alone, known generically as a bousillage, which were the dominant infills until as late as 1721, or, as preferred afterwards, caulkings were lime-based. The durability of mortar caulkings simply outweighed the added expense relative to natural materials. A few builders, perhaps those who used the tighter fitting squared-off piquet, may have dispensed with a caulking altogether, but others, like Beaucours, whose home had been caulked with a lime-based mortar, felt it prudent to protect their investments, and so applied a lime and sand mortar finish on both the interiors and exteriors of their buildings.

The popular fill in charpente construction was vertical piquets, palisades or posts, round or squared-off, some perhaps as large as 12 by 12 pouces, caulked with the same materials as in piquet construction. This vertical fill was also easy to remove, possibly for repair or replacement, for in at least one instance, in a Block 14C charpente storehouse, a thief easily dislodged two piquets by hand.

Masonry fills, though frequently of rubblestone, stone, brick, or some combination of the three, were generally of wood, and required a large frame to support their weights. In fact, the frame of a charpente building with a wooden fill was generally large enough to have supported the added weight of a masonry fill.

It was rare that a charpente building had no fill at all, with only a dead air space in the wall. One possible example was a Block 41 building, described with just a board finish inside and out. Another owner, in Block D, did "improve upon" an open frame, but he was likely talking about a charpente building in an unfinished state.

French builders, who normally used the term charpente to mean a half-timber structure, also used the word colombage on occasion. They usually, though not exclusively, employed the term when referring to the prefabricated half-timber buildings that the English occupation forces had brought to Louisbourg between 1745 and 1748. Upon their return, the French found three of these buildings unfinished, their fills en colombages missing in both the upper and lower storeys. At other times, they used the two terms, colombage and charpente indiscriminately, when describing the same building, even those of their own manufacture, with either masonry or wooden fills. In one example, a Port La Joie building, the posts for the frame and for the fill measured the same: 12 by 12 pouces.

Finally, the original Block 1 engineer's house, an unusual structure with framed, open partitions between structural masonry pillars, was apparently closed off to the weather with exterior planking only. At a later date on this property a masonry wash area/hangar complex, with an open front and two 9 pied high mortar pillars spaced in between, was erected. A wooden palisade fill later closed off the front.