Birds Cottage
An up to date photograph of the oldest surviving house not only in Milton Keynes Village but also within the new city as well. Birds' cottage was found to have been built using a structure known as cruck. This is a very rare form of construction and only 130 exist in the whole of England and Wales. The inside would have originally been completely open and the whole of the old roof and thatch battens have been blackened by smoke . The Bird family who lived here from around 1742 until the mid C20 were mainly carpenters and the property had a large yard area that still contains a huge saw pit.
This old photograph shows the cottage as it looked previously.

You can see that one chimney has been lost in renovations but

basically the house has not changed much over the years.
The diagram shows the construction of a Base Cruck type roof
A view of the inside of Birds' cottage during renovations
These two photographs show the cruck construction with the new roof rafters to the left and an interior view of the carpenters' workshop.
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