Out of all the county’s carpenters the North Dartmoor framers and construction carpenters have pushed the envelope furthest since forming in 2007.

We are looking west over the Nymetwood valley, and though the tree canopy is seriously bare and the mid-Devon horizon is bleeding November grey into a late February day, being up above the world cresting the top-most branches still draws the breath. “It’s five metres down,” says Jasper Emanuel, peering over the edge of the deck and down to the marshy ground through which runs a medley of out of sight kit, the technical support system to the romance above: the services, power and drains drawing water down the hillside. All this is to ensure that the small all black, artfully angled cabin stays standing 5 metres above ground level.

There are some hefty chunks of Douglas fir holding the tree house up amidst the leafless branches. Two main trusses help the sides of the small box cantilever out, while a third to the front supports the deck. “It will need some attention”, Emanuel remarks, of one of the more recent projects of his north Devon timber outfit, EmanuelHendry. The cabins are anchored to the ground by steel shoes on concrete pads dug into the woodlands sloping ground. The cabin boxes are in standard stained black, inside the kitchen fittings are likewise black, though ash.

From invisible scents in the air, dimmed ambient light, a wood burning stove and an ever so casually positioned book announcing the wonders of Hygge reclining in the corner, everything is high order escapism. Out on the balcony there is a tub, yet however mild the February weather and however luxurious you take your glamping getaway, you can’t help feel this would be one frigid bath.

All lit up – Nymetwood tree cabins

 The two tree houses are prime Grand Designs material, and though they haven’t benefited from that sort of cabin porn exposure, it’s not difficult to see why the tree house business – set up over two years by two ex-London Covid exiles – Nymetwood is, according to Emanuel, doing well. “We need to leave”, Emanuel adds. “The next guests will be here soon. It’s a business model that works.”

Likewise, EmanuelHendry.

Up and running since 2007, in the intervening years the North Dartmoor timber framers and construction carpentry specialists, EmanuelHendry, have gone from strength to strength. As their heavy carpentry has evolved, their repertoire of expertise has developed across a wide palette of timber buildings, leading more than fifteen years later to a prolific smorgasbord of projects spanning traditional frames, conservation work and the contemporary design experienced at Nymetwood, as well as a spread of further PR friendly projects.

Though not direct offspring of Carpenter Oak & Woodland (COW), the fingerprints of paternity are plentiful. Originally the result of Jasper Emanuel and his brother Oscar joining forces with seasoned timber framer and carpenter, Joel Hendry, the carpentry outfit are the most dynamic and energetic of a new generation of timber framers, today’s forty-somethings, upsetting the, these days, rather tame green oak framing barrel cart and snapping at the heels of the more middle aged, put on your slippers, Carpenter Oak.

Some wild stories about the two brothers have made it through the grapevine. As it is, the two Emanuel’s experienced something of a bohemian homelife in the mid-Devon wilds, a writerly mother and an architect father – to which the Emanuels’ design sensibility is generally traced – Oscar gravitated to the New Age traveller scene while both were also involved in a series of courses and jobs that prepared them well for a future in building and timber architecture. Neither, despite some pressure from their parents, went to university, though this may account for the breadth of their projects, as well as a certain restlessness emanating from the pair.

Oscar headed to Canada for some years getting involved in building timber houses, while Jasper ended up on an agricultural course with ideas of working in development in Africa. In fact, the course encompassed tree surgery, dry stone walling, hedge laying and tractor driving. “So, I had the skills, but there was no work,” he says now. “I love building,” he thought, so carried on building with his by now returned brother and signed up to a carpentry apprenticeship in Exeter while working for conservation builder, Greg Dixon. There was also stonework, stone cutting and “this mysterious craft” – timber framing. This broad array of experience would all help with various conservation projects he began working on, including early on Bickley Hall. In all, his was a liberal education in the trades.

“The gateway was Henry,” says Joel Hendry, highlighting how he had the arch timber frame proselytiser, Henry Russell – an unsung hero and key influence in the return of oak framing, see Further here (link forthcoming in part II) – to thank for turning him towards timber framing. At the time, he says, he didn’t know about COW. For his part, Jasper recalls Russell’s “full of over-the-top enthusiasm.” Hendry and Jasper went on to meet in 2008, when Jasper was working for him, and according to Hendry, the two were soon wondering whether to join forces.

Pierhouse frame under construction

Pierhouse complete – and below

The project which started them off properly was a floating Pierhouse for the Hermitage Community Moorings Co-Operative in 2008. Comprising some eighteen house boats moored close to London Bridge the community group wanted a floating shared space structure for their meetings, and spaces, including a classroom for the local community and public. Conceived by Dutch architect Anna Versteeg, one half of IvanovVersteeg Architects the design also includes a laundry, a bike storage and an admin office. The need for a lightweight structure spurred timber for the final single storey design, a Douglas fir frame, as well as vertical posts, wall plates and all oak sill plates. Working with the architects and engineers Price & Myers, having already started out as unusual, the project was pushed further by the engineering decision to specify a Howe truss to minimise the tie beams and collars, giving a relatively clean look to the interior. Much used in bridge design, the truss featured long beam ridges in compression crosshatched with diagonals and vertical posts in tension.

Where more conventional timber construction outfits might have broken out in a sweat, EmanuelHendry turned its watery challenges into an opportune PR exercise, making out that this was exactly the one-off type of project that they thrived on. Not only were they working as the tide ebbed and flowed, the build included just three days for the frame to go up, with the whole prefabricated 14m³ green Douglas fir frame delivered to the pontoon quayside on special built trolleys. Finished off with a corrugated metal roof thrown over the frame, featuring overhanging eaves binds and vertical black slatted screens fitted for privacy, the PierHouse saw EmanuelHendry starting as they meant to go on.

Down by the river – right hand photo IvanovVersteeg Architects

“In the beginning I thought we’d be doing timber-framing,” says Jasper Emanuel today, but as the Pierhouse illustrates, things soon turned out to be more involved. Early commissions were indeed frame focused, but there was also the joinery, cladding and roofing. Benefiting from the growth of timber framing, and the relative wealth already in Devon or coming into the county, their workload has included regular oak frames, and any number of oak frame extensions, garden rooms, studios, annexes, and garages. There was also experience in one-off’s, like Giant Chair, a 20 foot tall oak frame chair by artist Henry Bruce, which Hendry helped complete at the artist’s Natsworthy Farm, near Widecombe on the Moor in 2010 (which the local council demanded be removed) and a host of smaller craft focused commissions.

Early work with ex-COWman and architect Cameron Scott – Further – Cameron Scott feature, began with the Blau Shelter, a modular shelter design, continuing through the next decade on several of Scott’s houses. Initially designed for a school swimming pool, both Scott and EmanuelHendry envisaged the modular system becoming popular. It was showcased at the 2008 Ecobuild and although Scott and EmanuelHendry developed publicity, it failed to generate the kind of interest to maintain the project. Work with Scott was complemented by their carpentry role at Venn House Extension for the then young FeildenFowles, but the majority of the houses are their own. Cast an eye over their Timber Buildings page and a long list of oak frame buildings, overwhelmingly domestic, passes before your eyes. Right from the earliest years the framing palette consists of a mix of green oak and Douglas fir, one example among many is a white-washed Douglas fir king post truss prepared for a house’s dining room extension above Wadebridge, North Cornwall. There are also frame variations like an arched brace jointed cruck, known across the Devon vernacular.

Henry Bruce’s Big Chair – photo Henry Bruce

Dartington gardens bridge

Alongside the frame buildings there are one-off experiments which have nourished their craft skills, design sensibility and technical knowhow. Of two bridges within Dartington College, one, a link bridge connecting to the lower gardens particularly shows off their craft ethos. There is some lovely looking woodwork within the ongoing work at the converted wedding venue, Shustoke Manor, not least the Gothic doors, which also draw attention to their restoration focused work. Smaller domestic furniture includes a solid oak table and kitchen island for the recently opened St Christopher’s Hospice Care building in collaboration with its architects, MillsPower. More recently, a London spiral staircase commission consisting of individually shaped Douglas fir keys used 3D printing techniques, suggesting a desire to keep with the times.

For all three of the founders, it soon became clear they were providing a whole build service, doing so by offering an all through service, coming in at more competitive and cheaper budgets than others. “Each project comes with its particular features,” Jasper says when I ask what they have learnt in the interim. “It’s always a challenge,” pushing their learning. Although there is new knowledge, there’s also been standardisation across the industry.

“We’ve branched out,” he says to my question of how things have changed, partially, he believes, as he is interested in innovation. “We’re always evolving and never stopping, never standing still. It’s hard to think of it as the same company as in the beginning, with the three partners, compared to where we are now.” The same can be said of Emanuel Hendry, except that is, with both Oscar Emanuel and Hendry long gone, and a different new team these days, for this human factor. 

Shustoke Manor’s Gothic doors, and below, under construction

Indeed, through the whole decade and a half of EmanuelHendry’s existence, their timeline shadows the arrival of timber build – albeit engineered timber – across the mainstream. Just as they were setting out, WaughThistleton’s ground-breaking eight storey cross laminated timber Murray House was going up a few miles north of London Bridge. Ten years later, Hackney was the urban timber capital of the world, and timber projects were multiplying across the country. Along with the engineered timber revolution, the take up of new machinery remade the pitch. Oakwrights in the Borders, for instance, had introduced Hundeggers and automation into oak framing in 2003, an early step in the mainstreaming of what was beginning to become a high end, though accepted niche sector. By the time of EmanuelHendry’s earliest years Oakwrights had grown into a highly effective and successful operation. The increasing industrialisation of carpentry is a point Emanuel himself emphasises, pointing to the standardisation of tools and machinery used, for instance, how timbers are now all cut to a 40mm mortice size. Recognised building systems, materials, and component sizes, with assured industrial warranties and insurance, have similarly become the norm. 

Though all three were assured carpenters Hendry was the craftiest of the original partnership, a point further illustrated by changing skills in his and more recent generations. Hendry believes that he, the Emanuel brothers and a small wave of their peers, while not part of the original seventies generation, were part of a second generation (though I’d suggest they were a third generation, with the likes of Henry Russell, the actual second generation) whose exposure and experience of timber framing happened prior to the watershed arrival of a host of technologies. “We could all sharpen hand saws and use hand tools. We knew how to use circular saws. And we were familiar with and knew how roofing geometry worked,” Hendry says today.

When the mortisers started coming in, he says, automating aspects of previously hand carpentered mortices. “No one had seen one, they were clunky little things, mortising of wood – it took quite a lot of skill to work with high quality and accuracy, and to do so fast. With a chain mortiser – you don’t need to be skilled.” As a result, from Hendry’s perspective, the next generation’s level of knowledge lessened and as this knowledge became slighter, the breadth of carpentry skills also diminished.

Love of craft was one part of Hendry’s reasoning to leave the company, which he did in 2017. Indeed, of the original three, only Jasper remains. Still, Hendry doesn’t see fundamental differences between the current day company and its formative period. “We did some great things, we delivered well for the customers, and we were happy to push the envelope, particularly in the early years”.

The energy and enthusiasm for new and different challenge was exciting, but it was to pull them apart. It is pretty well known among the West Country timber framing fraternity that the brothers had different ideas about the structure of the business, and its future, and it sounds as if Jasper and Oscar found it difficult to reconcile competing visions about the direction the company should take. “Oscar was always the hungriest,” says Hendry now, who left nearly a decade ago. “There was quite a bit of self-sabotage – I was in the middle.”

Like Hendry, Oscar Emanuel left and subsequently moved for several years back to France. After returning to Britain, Oscar co-founded, with the late Charley Brentnall and Hooke Park’s Martin Self, Xylotek in 2017. Heavily tech oriented, it is the clearest indication of Oscar’s timber direction and ambitions.

A tree lined path to the EmanuelHendry yard – photo Oliver Lowenstein

EmanuelHendry’s mid-Devon farmyard – photo Oliver Lowenstein

When I visited the yard for the first time on a clear skied late November day last year and met Jasper Emanuel, I only knew something of the bare outlines of these schisms, but after an hour or so of chatting, a sense of restlessness became apparent.

“Timber framing is so easy,” he notes. “It began to become boring.” Boredom has fuelled the adventure though, as well as deepening the expertise. For instance, an early project involving façade, and specifically, direct applied glazing, required that the timber joinery was integrated with the window sections, providing the learning needed to add glazing expertise to the company’s CV. Cladding and insulation followed.

“Experience is so valuable,” states Jasper, adding the mantra that they’re still learning, and how some lessons need to be learnt through osmosis. Today, 80 – 90% is construction carpentry work, the remainder, averaging at 15%, are mainly made up of timber frame jobs. The conservation work has continued too, if less regularly. At present, they are working on the restoration of parts of Exeter Cathedral, including recreating a new cloister gallery. Much of the softwood comes from East Brothers Timber, near Salisbury, along with smaller Devon sawmills. Despite the protestation, they do do oak frames and buy “lorry loads of oak.” He doesn’t believe they have (regional) competitors because they provide ‘the whole package’: including planning services, contracting services, groundworks, timber framing plus other services. What sets them apart is designing in-house. As they state on the website, the service offered is ‘from concept to completion.’

Apart from Jasper, the ten-person team are different from the early days. Hugh Arnold and Tom Murrell, now operations managers, are both long-ish in the tooth. Murrell also works on design. “We’ve been fortunate to be able to keep many of our team. “Work is reaching a new point,” he says, adding that it’s never been as busier, with at least a year on their books.

The Singing Room – a soundscape project currently under construction in N. Yorks Dalby Forest

The Halden Hill forest viewing platforms

Current projects include housing within a gated community “which I can’t talk about.” Another is in London, designed in what the younger Emanuel describes as “a Japanese style, though a completely different way of doing it.” Speaking of London, he notes how the team are reluctant to travel too much, unless there is enough of a rationale for doing the project. This comes down to one of three criteria: it is interesting to them, that it looks good on their CV, or that it’s paying well. “We’re all quite happy to be in Devon, we don’t like having to go away.” The first criteria must be why they are currently working in Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire, on another live project, A Room That Sings, a bird song sound labyrinth inside a big timber box. The sound space, by artist Nayan Kulkarni, is in the process of being completed, and opens later in the year.

Relatively recent projects have included a nature hide and viewing platforms at Forestry England’s Haldon Forest high above Exeter. Though relatively simple larch structures, the viewing platforms are another illustration of EmanuelHendry’s design skills. They sit raised on supporting posts above ground that anticipated the Nymetwood tree houses, made the 2020 AJ small projects short list, and are another example of their eclecticism and enthusiasm for trying new things.

Lest one forget, though, Emanuel is clear eyed that much of the regional appeal of timber, whether oak frame or contemporary carpentry, is about “selling the dream.” The Nymetwood tree houses are just one example of how the Devon timber scene sits within the regional tourism economy, one part of an elaborate ecology resting on the allure of the mild, mild West. Heavily dependent on wealth from London and the Southeast making its way westwards, EmanuelHendry are hardly the only timber and construction company servicing the desire of a slice of the middle classes’ taste and particular perceptions about the good life, a notion expressed in new individual homes, annexes and extensions. What there isn’t in EmanuelHendry’s portfolio is affordable or social housing, or for that matter community land trusts or other co-living type social projects. As Jackie Gillespie, one half of Dartington based GillespieYunnie Architects points out, the main Southwestern housing developers have absolutely zero interest in looking at timber or natural materials for their house building. Timber remains a province of the well healed professional middle classes.

A day after visiting Nymetwood, I am over in the Dart Valley, a few miles north of Totnes, looking in on one of EmanuelHendry’s current builds, a single floor annexe with guest rooms, overspill at the far edge of the garden of the home of one of the Riverford Farm clan – themselves major regional money-spinners. Not dissimilarly to an earlier collaboration, the reverse L shaped single floor annexe started off as a GillespieYunnie design. The build has been ongoing since December, says Tom Murrell who’s running the job, and will continue through the next two months. The timber frame is up and carpenters and sub-contractors are busying themselves in and around the building. The frame is French oak imported from Normandy, but the Douglas fir purlins and larch cladding have come from Rattery Sawmills, a small local sawmill only a quarter of an hour away, one of their regular local timber suppliers.

Corten coated roof panels have been thrown over the pitched roof, and though rust orange at present will later fade, the carpenters are onto the rest of the fit out. This is all part of the all-round service EmanuelHendry have refined. Stud walls have gone in, along with Steico insulation, sarking tongue and groove and different membrane layers. These include carefully affixed tapes and inner and outer membranes to help with vapour control and moisture lost from the wood.

The client’s husband is around, observing this hive of activity, and falls into discussion with Murrell. For a moment we look over at an original extension to the two farming cottages, with a timber conversion some years earlier by another incoming timber enthusiast, Manfred Tilbrook. What so impresses him, says the husband, are the crooked offset pegs. “How smart is that!?”, he proffers. I ask him what his line of work is – “finance and start-ups” he replies. The middle-class romance with timber buildings, it seems, shows no signs of letting up any time soon. ol

Further – www.emanuelhendry.co.uk

Down in the valley – EmanuelHendry at work on an extension in the Dart Valley – photo Oliver Lowenstein