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Bressummer

Load-bearing beam in a timber-framed building

Bressummer

Load-bearing beam in a timber-framed building

A typical summer beam with slender joists in the ceiling of a cafe in the Netherlands. Image: Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands.

A bressummer, breastsummer, summer beam (somier, sommier, sommer, somer, cross-somer, summer, summier, summer-tree, or dorman, dormant tree) is a load-bearing beam in a timber-framed building. The word summer derived from sumpter or French sommier, "a pack horse", meaning "bearing great burden or weight". "To support a superincumbent wall", "any beast of burden", and in this way is similar to a wall plate.

The use and definition of these terms vary but generally a bressummer is a jetty sill and a summer is an interior beam supporting ceiling joists, see below:

  • (UK) In the outward part of the building, and the middle floors (not in the garrets or ground floors) into which the girders are framed. In the inner parts of a building, such beams are called "summers". It is part of the timber-frame construction in the overhanging upper story in jettying.
  • (UK) "Horizontal beam over a fireplace opening (alternatively lintel, mantel beam), or set forward from the lower part of a building to support a jettied wall, a jetty bressummer".
  • (UK) "...usually the sill of the upper wall above a jetty; otherwise any beam spanning an opening and supporting a wall above." also called a "jetty sill".
  • (UK) Breastsummer is a beam in a wall which carries the load over a large opening derived from breast being in the front, mid-level and summer: "A horizontal, bearing beam in a building; spec. the main beam supporting the girders or joists of a floor...".
  • "a main piece of timber that supports a building, an architrave between two pillars"
  • "Breast-Summer, an architectural term for a beam employed like a lintel to support the front of a building, is a corruption of bressumer..."
  • (US) "Summer beam: A large timber spanning a room and supporting smaller floor joists on both sides."Sobon, Jack. Build a Classic Timber-Framed House: Planning & Design/Traditional Materials/Affordable Methods. Pownal, Vt.: Storey Communications, 1994. p.191.
  • (US) "Summer beam. Heavy main horizontal beam, anchored in gable foundation walls, that supports forebay beams and barn frame above."

References

References

  1. ''A Dictionary of the Old English Language''
  2. ''[[Webster's Dictionary#1913 edition. Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary]]'', 1913.
  3. "Bressummer".
  4. Alcock, N. W. ''Recording timber-framed buildings: an illustrated glossary''. London: Council for British Archaeology, 1989. G4, 14h, 15b. {{ISBN. 1872414729
  5. Harris, Richard. ''Discovering Timber-Framed Buildings''. 2d ed. Aylesbury: Shire Publications, 1979. p.94. {{ISBN. 0747802157.
  6. "Breastsummer" def. 1. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press 2009
  7. Bailey; Kennett, 1695
  8. Palmer, Abram Smythe. ''Folk-Etymology: A Dictionary of Verbal Corruptions or Words Perverted in Form or Meaning, by False Derivation or Mistaken Analogy (1882)'', quoting Parker's ''Glossary of Architecture''.
  9. Ensminger, Robert F. The Pennsylvania barn: its origin, evolution, and distribution in North America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. p.392.
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