5: The Weaver's Cottage
Væverhuset i Den Fynske Landsby, gul/hvid facade.
Væverhuset i Den Fynske Landsby, havesiden.
Væverhuset i Den Fynske Landsby, indgangsparti.
Væverhuset, da det lå i Vester Lunde.
Intro
The Weaver's Cottage (no. 5) represents the many landless houses which were also a part of the village communities. The residents of the house owned no agricultural land, instead they made a living by weaving.
The inhabitants of the Weaver's Cottage were people of humble means. During the 17th and 18th centuries it was poor people and the elderly who lived here, and who received their keep in exchange for one day's work a week at the Vicarage.
Through surviving documents from the 18th century we know something of the previous inhabitants' belongings. In the estate of Hans Olufsen in 1725, only a table, a chest, a curtained bed and a bench/cist are mentioned. He also left a few household items.
Times were a little better for Hans Olufsen's successors during the course of the 18th century, and in the 19th century they could, as described above, afford new buildings, extensions and alterations. In 1853, copyholder Lars Hansen bought the freehold of the house. Lars Hansen was a weaver, and it is his family that gave their name to the cottage.
Landless smallholders had to make a living from cottage industries and crafts and by working as day-labourers. This made them very susceptible to fluctuations in the economy. If the farmers or townspeople were short of money at any time, then they were rarely able to afford the wares and the services offered by the smallholders and cottagers. The inhabitants of the Weaver's Cottage were still living on the edge. Lars' son Hans took over the house in 1864 and in 1870 the household comprised weaver Hans Larsen, his wife and three children, as well as his parents, Lars Hansen and Kristiane Rasmusdatter, who were pensioners. On the sale of the house, a contract was drawn up which laid down the conditions for the maintenance and care of the old couple.
As a rule, several families lived in the Weaver's Cottage at any one time and as late as 1901, the house was divided up and inhabited by two families comprising a total of seven people. Today, the house is furnished with looms, a saddler's workshop and a spoon maker's workshop.
Building tradition
The Weaver's Cottage from Vester-Lunde is a timber-framed building with a thatched roof. The house is built of pine timber for the load-bearing structures where it was otherwise typical to use more solid but also more expensive oak timber. The house originally had walls of wattle-and-daub but in the present building the panels are filled out with fired bricks. The roof is thatched with reed and has kragetræer.
The timber frame has through tenons on the beams which suggests that the building was built prior to 1850. The cottage's two-coloured panels were not uncommon on rural buildings on Funen.
Building history
The age of The Funen Village's Weaver's Cottage is not known exactly. In the land register from 1682, a number of landless houses are mentioned which belonged to a clergyman in the neighbouring village of Lunde. These included a building which presumably was the predecessor of the existing house. All we know about this building is that it was timber-framed, lacked a chimney and was very dilapidated. In 1832, insurance documents refer to a house of five bays with a chimney and an oven, with two rooms and an entrance hall. This house was probably newly-built around 1830.
Apparently, the house was extended again by the addition of a single bay in 1854. At that time, the house comprised “...parlour with wooden floor, entrance hall, living room, weaving workshop and kitchen...”. Finally, in 1870, the Weaver's Cottage acquired its appearance as we know it from The Funen Village today, as a wing was added to the north to accommodate a peat store.