Behind the Design – Broadleaf Oak Plank Doors

The HISTORY of Oak Plank Doors

The traditional ledged and braced plank door is one of the oldest and simplest timber door designs. Dating back to the Middle Ages, it can still be found in traditional buildings across Britain, from cottages and farmhouses to churches and barns.

The earliest examples were made from simple vertical boards, cut from freshly felled timber and held together with horizontal ledges fixed using hand forged iron nails.

As the timber dried, it naturally shrank and twisted, causing doors to pull away from their hinges and the fixings to loosen. To overcome this, diagonal braces were added to help keep the door flat and transfer its weight back towards the hinges. This is why you’ll notice braces always slope downwards towards the hinged edge of a door.

For centuries, the ledged and braced plank door remained the most common design in everyday buildings. Easily made and repaired by local carpenters using locally sourced timber, it offered a practical and cost-effective solution.

As carpentry skills, tools and tastes evolved during the 18th and 19th centuries, more elaborate panelled doors became the preferred choice. Ledged and braced plank doors were increasingly confined to more rustic settings, where practicality and affordability were valued over design and style.

They experienced a revival in the late C20th alongside the trend for restoring traditional rural properties and converting barns for residential use.  This time they were valued not for simplicity or economy, but for the character and heritage they brought to a building rather than simplicity or cost.

Modern timber drying and machining techniques, together with the use of screws and adhesives, made it possible to produce plank doors that remained stable after installation. As a result, diagonal braces were no longer needed to prevent twisting, and the simpler ledged-only design once again became the standard.

Broadleaf Oak Plank Doors

Expertly kiln-dried and precisely machined

When we first designed our oak plank doors over 25 years ago, this was our starting point. We chose solid oak planks, expertly kiln dried to remain stable in normal modern living conditions (16 – 24°C and 40 – 65% relative humidity) and added a precisely machined tongue and groove profile to lock them together and hold them square. We added three, carefully positioned ledges to the rear, fixed firmly with screws.

EVERY DETAIL CAREFULLY DESIGNED

We covered the screws with discreet oak plugs, trimmed by hand to be flush with the surface of the ledge so they are almost invisible. We added traditional hand-forged nails to the face of the door in line with the ledges as an authentic decorative detail that could be omitted to create a cleaner, more modern look.

We added a chamfer to the top and bottom of our ledges to give our doors a less rustic, and more well-crafted look. On a practical note, this also makes the edges of the ledges less prone to damage.

We chose a traditional bead and butt profile for the front edge of the planks. It’s one of the earliest decorative details for vertical timber and again we felt that it elevated the traditional design without compromising its simplicity. On the rear we decided to keep a simple chamfer, as the planks are interrupted by the ledges and anything more complicated would look fussy.

Made to measure as standard

We don’t really believe in one size fits all, so we have always made our oak plank doors in a choice of timber grades that offer different aesthetics. Cottage Oak doors celebrate character – larger knots and greater natural colour variation – and are a natural match for more rustic interiors. Elegance Oak doors are made with cleaner looking boards with smaller knots and more consistent tones, to suit more contemporary or sophisticated spaces.

Given that most of the properties where our oak plank doors are fitted don’t have standard sized doorways, it seemed only logical to make them to measure. This also means we can select plank widths according to the size and proportion of each door and maintain consistency across all of the doors for an individual property.

Carefully Selected Timber

It might seem strange, but even the decision to fill (the knots) and sand every plank before the door is constructed was design motivated. Knots look quite different before and after they are filled, so to make the best decision which planks to include in a door for the bet aesthetic, you need to do this before you select the boards. Once the door is made, it’s too late to change anything that doesn’t look right.

Although these design decisions made our doors more expensive than standard, batch produced alternatives, with knots left for the customer to fill and sand, and which had to be cut to size on site, we were convinced though that the additional care and craftsmanship were worthwhile and overall offered better value.

Hand finished in a choice of heritage shades

Fast forward 25 years, and we are still making our Oak plank doors in the same way, with the same care, in our workshops here in Wales.  The only evolutions over time have been the option of fully finished plank doors, hand painted with natural hardwax oil in a choice of heritage shades, and an Oak Plank Fire Door.