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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 EIGHT

DOOR AND WINDOW OPENINGS - CONSTRUCTION

On Isle Royale, door and window surrounds of rubblestone structures could be of local rubblestone; flat stone or wood; or of local or imported cut stone or brick. Wood or flatstone surrounds did not last in the harsh climate, however, and required constant repair after only a few seasons. Those of local brick deteriorated so quickly that no repairs at all were possible. But those of French cut stone proved their superiority almost immediately with their lower maintenance costs. Unfortunately, cut stone also required a high initial investment, and private builders, who did not usually have such levels of capital backing, were prudent in its use.

Only a properly cut, chiseled and roughened stone could be placed with the care demanded by cut stone. Bricks, on the other hand, needed only to be well baked to meet the standards of common practice. In either case, the recipe for mortar was one-third lime and two-thirds sand (screened for bricks, ordinary sand for flatstone or rubblestone).

In one instance, imitation mastic surrounds of cement and lime most likely were chosen. The imitation stones had the appearance of cut stone and were placed around at least 10 windows and a balcony door of a Block 23A house. Its owner, Louis Levasseur, a man of considerable means, would never state his reason for the substitution.

The sills and lintels of masonry buildings were often of the same material as the surrounds. When of wood, these sills and lintels were sometimes made from planks, either of oak or of mérisier, a local hardwood, or even of pine. Planed, tongued and grooved, the planks were often 2 to 3 pouces thick, with one known sill being 10 to 12 pouces wide.

A builder who used these hardwood planks within the bays of windows and doorways, to support the masonry above the openings, was employing a lintel technique the French referred to as palétrage. Elsewhere, the lintels were of pine timber (also found in palétage constructions), ranging in size from 4 by 4 pouces and 6 by 8 pouces to 8 by 10 pouces; or were of cut stone, flatstone, brick or once, at the hospital, even of hardwood, in the form of a relieving arch.

Charpente construction builders quite naturally framed their sills and lintels into the structural vertical members that comprised their walls. Window sills, as in the second building to house Louisbourg's civil officials, were 3 1/2 pieds long and, depending on location, either 10 by 11 pouces or 12 pouces square in size. Those of a Block 20G house were elongated, extending beyond the vertical framing members, while those of a Block 34C residence were apparently shouldered, to fit in between.

References to door sills are rare. A pine replacement sill, 4 pieds long, destined perhaps for a charpente building, measured 7 by 8 pouces in thickness. Otherwise, the only described sills were for several masonry constructions and they were of cut stone.

Also of cut stone were the door jambs of the above several masonry buildings. However, as in wooden constructions, these jambs, as well as those of any window, might just as easily have been of timber. Known variously as chassis, chassis dormant (in window construction, actually the frame which holds the sash), or cadre, timber jambs were to be set firmly in place with holdfasts (cloux à patte). The recommended procedure was for at least two nails to be driven through the shouldered tongue of the holdfast into the jamb.

Wooden window and door jamb sizes varied from pine jambs of 6 by 6 pouces and 8 by 9 pouces for piquet buildings, to 6 x 7 and 7 by 8 pouce jambs for several masonry buildings. Both the lintel and door jambs of a cellar door of the engineer's masonry house were 8 by 9 pouces, while the jambs and sill of the exterior yard door of an assumed charpente structure on Block 19B were 7 by 8 pouces.

Timber jambs of a separate nature were common, but not every builder used them. In 1744 the specifications for a masonry prison and guardhouse provided details for 7 by 8 pouce jambs. Failing however to note the same for an attendant charpente bakery, they did call for a 2 pouce thick hardwood door. Undoubtedly, the plan was to make use of the 10 by 10 pouce vertical pine members that defined the exterior door opening. Of much the same design, apparently, were the entry doorway to another charpente building, Louisbourg's second administrative complex. Here, the only doorways with separate wooden jambs were those within the building itself.

Not every building had wooden jambs, of course. Masonry jambs of cut stone, brick or flatstone, rebated as required and recessed to accommodate a window frame or door, were popular in masonry buildings.

Finally, there was the occasional chambranle or architrave, an expensive finish around a window or doorway opening. A casing, it was of a rather fine size, generally only one or 1 1/4 pouces thick, perhaps 4 pouces wide, of an expensive hardwood, oak or mérisier, but sometimes of pine, and had a quarter round molding between fillets. They were corner pegged. Their great expense was in the cost of the hardwood, the difficulty in working the wood, and in the resulting waste. Consequently, not every doorway in a house with them had them, nor were they always of hardwood when most expected, as in the residence of the commissaire-odonnateur where at least some were of pine.