Village carpenters in Romania raised wooden church towers 54 metres tall, without a single drawing

Stacked beams, wooden pegs and shingle roofs, raised by village carpenters in northern Romania.

By Made Over Weekend · 3 min read

In Maramureș, a hilly region in the far north of Romania, almost every village once had a wooden church. More than 300 stood there at one time. Today 93 remain, and in 1999 UNESCO put eight of them on its World Heritage List: Bârsana, Budești, Desești, Ieud, Plopiș, Poienile Izei, Rogoz and Șurdești.

They are dark, narrow and very tall. Each has a steep shingle roof and a slim clock tower at the west end. The oldest of the eight, at Poienile Izei, is dated by UNESCO's advisers to 1604. Budești followed in 1643. Șurdești, built in 1767, has a tower 54 metres high, and for a long time it was counted the tallest wooden church tower in Europe.

How it was built

There was no architect. Research published in the Romanian architecture magazine Arhitectura traces two schools of carpenters, really families, who built most of the churches in the 17th and early 18th centuries. One worked north of the river Tisa, the other in the Iza valley. They did not need a design on paper. They worked from proportions and a fixed order of building stages, and the best trees from the forests around the village went to the best craftsmen.

Village families helped too. A poor family could earn a place in the pews and in the churchyard by working on the build.

The method is called Blockbau: squared beams of oak or pine are laid one on top of another to make the walls. At each corner the beams are cut so they lock together, with joints shaped like a V, a U or a T. That makes the frame both stable and a little flexible. The beams were worked along their length so the walls closed tightly with no extra insulation, and even the nails were made of wood. The roofs are covered in shingles, small split boards laid in overlapping rows, which are replaced when they wear out.

What it teaches a weekend woodworker

The corner joint is the heart of it, and you can make one small. Take two pieces of square timber, say 45 by 45 mm, and cross them on the bench. Mark where they overlap. Saw down on both sides of the mark to half the depth, make a few cuts in between, then chisel out the waste with the bevel down, working from both edges toward the middle. Do the same on the other stick, flip it and drop it in. Clamp your work, keep both hands behind the chisel edge, and pare until it fits snug.

Stack four sticks that way and you have a tiny log frame: the start of a planter, a box or a stool base. This weekend, cut one corner, then the next three, and watch the frame lock itself together the way the Maramureș walls do.