DISCOVERING Leominster’s last cruck-timbered house, not to mention tinned carrots dating back to the Second World War, are among Herefordshire house detective Duncan James’ latest revelations.

An acknowledged timber-framed building expert, he was speaking in Kington on the remarkable, and often quirky finds he makes through his careful searches in the county’s medieval houses, which often include scrambling in attics and cellars.

Invited by Kington Museum and History Society, he gave his audience examples of his detective work.

In one house at Ullingswick he was surprised to find a cruck timber in the roof, dated by dendrochronology to 1374, making it the oldest in Herefordshire.

Exploring the roof timbers in a black-and-white house at Leominster revealed a fine cruck beam – now believed to be the only survivor in the town.

Searches in a Weobley cellar led to the discovery of three-inch thick floorboards, and Mr James learned that a quantity of rusty tins of carrots, understood to have been over 75 years old, had been unearthed beneath a brick floor during recent work on an adjoining barn.

During the war, Nissen huts on Weobley’s Castle Green were occupied by US soldiers, so it was believed the carrots could have been “contraband”, Mr James explained.

In Wellington, he assisted a house owner in uncovering a spectacular wall painting. Mr James considered the work, hidden for centuries beneath lath and plaster, could well have been a secret shrine for Elizabethan recusants – Catholics forbidden from practising their own faith.

More will be revealed in Duncan James’ book, The Timber-Framed Buildings of Herefordshire due to be published by Logaston Press next year.