This oak door belonging to Westminster Abbey, London; England. It is the oldest and only Anglo-Saxon door in Great Britain. The door has been standing for over 950 years, dating back to the reign of Edward the Confessor during the 1050s CE.
The door was made from a single oak tree from eastern England in medieval times. The oak piece has 5 main boards, connected by iron strips and wooden beams, and is approximately 2m high.
https://bsky.app/profile/archaeohistories.bsky.social/post/3mauxmgyq2s2g
The carpenter who made this a thousand years ago probably complained that some part of the door didn’t line up properly and that if they had more time, they could have done a better job.
There is a striking air gap at the top. That poor carpenter died knowing he did a shitty job (that we are now admiring)
The gap is not original, the planks were cut down and were most likely rounded at the top.
https://www.westminster-abbey.org/history/explore-our-history/britains-oldest-door
That’s a great link with fascinating details!!
I’ve done lots of carpentry and building and renovating over the years.
In a lot of instances, I’d fix something believing that it was temporary and that I would get around to fixing it properly some other time.
My entire life is now surrounded by temporary fixes … some of which do get exchanged for better permanent fixes but many more sitting their looking at me day in and day out reminding me of that half finished job.
I find the thought funny that the guy who made this door a thousand years ago may have built it thinking it was just going to hold for a short time while he figured out a better solution … only to put up with it for decades until he was too old to do anything about it any more and then just died … and everyone else after thinking that the work was finished.
That door has seen some stuff.
That’s a-door-able.
That door is older than the USA.
So much stuff is older than the USA…
Not just older, but almost 4 times older. The US is only 249 years old
My house is 146 years old, but I think it might last longer than the US at this point.
Your mom is older than the USA
HODOR
Oak-ay, I can’t help myself, I actually had to go find and copy the relevant passage from Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters. With a little extra at both ends for context. Here y’all go:
I am totally in control of the situation, Magrat told herself. I never thought I would be, but I am thinking absolutely clearly.
And she realised, in an absolutely clear way, that her padding had slipped down to her waist, her head felt as though a family of unhygienic birds had been nesting in it, and her eyeshadow had not so much run as sprinted. Her dress was torn in several places, her legs were scratched, her arms were bruised, and for some reason she felt on top of the world.
‘I think you’d better stand back, Verence,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure how this is going to work.’
There was a sharp intake of breath.
‘How did you know my name?’
Magrat sized up the door. The oak was old, centuries old, but she could sense just a little sap under a surface varnished by the years into something that was nearly as tough as stone. Normally what she had in mind would require a day’s planning and a bagful of exotic ingredients. At least, so she’d always believed. Now she was prepared to doubt it.
If you could conjure demons out of washtubs, you could do anything.
She became aware that the Fool had spoken. ‘Oh, I expect I heard it somewhere,’ she said vaguely.
‘I shouldn’t think so, I never use it,’ said the Fool. ‘I mean, it’s not a popular name with the duke. It was me mam, you see. They like to name you after kings, I suppose. My grandad said I had no business having a name like that and he said I shouldn’t go around—’
Magrat nodded. She was looking around the dank tunnel with a professional’s eye.
It wasn’t a promising place. The old oak planks had been down here in the darkness all these years, away from the clock of the seasons . . . On the other hand . . . Granny had said that somehow all trees were one tree, or something like that. Magrat thought she understood it, although she didn’t know exactly what it meant.
And it was springtime up there. The ghost of life that still lived in the wood must know that. Or if it had forgotten, it must be told.
She put her palms flat on the door again and shut her eyes, tried to think her way out through the stone, out of the castle, and into the thin, black soil of the mountains, into the air, into the sunlight . . .
The Fool was merely aware that Magrat was standing very still. Then her hair stood out from her head, gently, and there was a smell of leafmould.
And then, without warning, the hammer that can drive a marshmallow-soft toadstool through six inches of solid pavement or an eel across a thousand miles of hostile ocean to a particular pond in an upland field, struck up through her and into the door.
She stepped back carefully, her mind stunned, fighting against a desperate urge to bury her toes into the rock and put forth leaves. The Fool caught her, and the shock nearly knocked him over. Magrat sagged against the faintly jingling body, and felt triumphant. She had done it! And with no artificial aids! If only the others could have seen this . . .
‘Don’t go near it,’ she mumbled. ‘I think I gave it rather . . . a lot.’ The Fool was still holding her toastrack body in his arms and was too overcome to utter a word, but she still got a reply. ‘I reckon you did,’ said Granny Weatherwax, stepping out of the shadows. ‘I never would have thought of it myself.’
Magrat peered at her.
‘You’ve been here all the time?’
‘Just a few minutes.’ Granny glanced at the door. ‘Good technique,’ she said, ‘but it’s old wood. Been in a fire, too, I reckon. Lot of iron nails and stuff in there. Can’t see it working, I’d have tried the stones if it was me, but—’
She was interrupted by a soft ‘pop’.
There was another, and then a whole series of them together, like a shower of meringues.
Behind her, very gently, the door was breaking into leaf.
Granny stared at it for a few seconds, and then met Magrat’s terrified gaze.
‘Run!’ she yelled.
They grabbed the Fool and scurried into the shelter of a convenient buttress.
The door gave a warning creak. Several of its planks twisted in vegetable agony and there was a shower of rock splinters when nails were expelled like thorns from a wound, ricocheting off the stonework.
The Fool ducked as part of the lock whirred over his head and smashed into the opposite wall.
The lower parts of the planks extended questing white roots, which slithered across the damp stone to the nearest crack and began to auger in. Knotholes bulged, burst and thrust out branches which hit the stones of the doorway and tumbled them aside. And all the time there was a low groan, the sound of the cells of the wood trying to contain the surge of raw life pounding through them.
‘If it had been me,’ said Granny Weatherwax, as part of the ceiling caved in further along the passage, ‘I wouldn’t have done it like that. Not that I’m objecting, mind you,’ she said, as Magrat opened her mouth. ‘It’s a reasonable job. I think you might have overdone it a bit, that’s all.’
‘Excuse me,’ said the Fool.
‘I can’t do rocks,’ said Magrat.
‘Well, no, rocks is an acquired taste—’
‘Excuse me.’
The two witches stared at him, and he backed away.
‘Weren’t you supposed to be rescuing someone?’ he said.
‘Oh,’ said Granny. ‘Yes. Come on, Magrat. We’d better see what she’s been getting up to.’
‘There were screams,’ said the Fool, who couldn’t help feeling they weren’t taking things seriously enough.
‘I daresay,’ said Granny, pushing him aside and stepping over a writhing taproot. ‘If anyone locked me in a dungeon, there’d be screams.’
There was a lot of dust inside the dungeon, and by the nimbus of light around its one torch Magrat could dimly make out two figures cowering in the furthest corner. Most of the furniture had been overturned and scattered across the floor; it didn’t look as though any of it had been designed to be the last word in comfort. Nanny Ogg was sitting quite calmly in what appeared to be a sort of stocks.
‘Took your time,’ she observed. ‘Let me out of this, will you? I’m getting cramp.’
And there was the dagger. It spun gently in the middle of the room, glinting when the turning blade caught the light.
‘My own dagger!’ said the ghost of the king, in a voice only the witches could hear. ‘All this time and I never knew it! My own dagger! They bloody well did me in with my own bloody knife!’
Perfect!!
Def looks her age.
I love me a good old door
Surely it’s not the same wood from almost a thousand years ago?
wood when stored properly lasts a long time.
It most certainly is.
Wood can rot and disintegrate, but with appropriate impregnation it can remain perfectly fine for hundreds of years.
Thats impressive!
Do you think this is the door of Theseus or something?
That’s what it sez.
They should build the Ship of Theseus out of that door.
That’s cool and all but have you ever seen a Rotten Ronnie’s built in under 30 days, building permit to doors open?








