Tim Burrell

Tim is Carpenter Oak & Woodland’s managing director. Tim has extensive experience of managing companies of all sizes, in many business sectors, including construction and building. Tim’s no-nonsense hands-on approach, coupled with his outstanding management experience and commercial acumen, make him the ideal complement to the craft-based skills of the rest of the team.

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Previous posts

• Musings on Arts and Crafts
• Environmentally responsible building
• Why oak?
• Wood Awards
• Interbuild 2007

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By Tim Burrell

Over the weekend I was chatting with an architect friend of mine about a conservatory we had built for a neighbour of his. It seems that seeing this, he had been inspired to suggest that it would be really good if there were a way to build a whole house structure in oak! I got the impression that my protestation that we had built literally hundreds over the years was taken as being the beer talking.

Horrified by this event, I called him yesterday to let him know that in fact timber buildings had been made for hundreds of years and that really we were just a modern refinement of that technology, at which he saw my point. Turns out that he had just assumed that these beautiful pieces of work were only used to adorn (otherwise bland and ugly) buildings, and that was the value of oak conservatories, heavy timber roof trusses and the occasional dummy post. If you wanted to build a timber frame, that would be in nasty pressure treated softwood.

Funny really. I had thought that our industry was well established, and our capabilities known. More to the point, I just assumed it was obvious that our frames are in themselves structural and hold the building up rather than having a requirement for the rest of the building to hold it up! So when you read this Steve (well we are friends, and you did give me permission), a fabulous bespoke heavy timber framed home is surprisingly cost effective and in fact needn’t cost any more than brick and block place. It should look and feel better, will probably be healthier, will have a higher resale value, be kinder to the environment, and since we can build virtually anything from a square box to a geodesic dome, it will widen your scope to express your architectural flair!

Maybe I’m biased (!) but I find it hard to understand why anyone would build anything else.