My friend, Charley Brentnall, who has died aged 67, was an expert in the building and restoration of timber-framed buildings.
Charley’s work included the re-creation of the roof at Windsor Castle and the conservation of the huts used by Scott and Shackleton in Antarctica. He also dismantled and reconstructed the Sotherington barn at Bedales school in Hampshire, with the help of the school’s pupils.
His new-build projects often pushed the boundaries of the timber-frame structure while retaining the use of many traditional techniques, as in the solar canopy he built at the Earth Centre in Doncaster to a design by FCB Studios, and his series of buildings at Westonbirt Arboretum – including an innovative free-form community shelter and an award-winning tree management centre, both designed by Invisible Studio.
Charley was born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, one of the seven children of Maria (nee Higham), a nurse, and George, an obstetrician. After attending Mount St Mary’s school in Derbyshire he studied ceramics and three-dimensional design at Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, Wiltshire, from 1975 to 1978.
After his graduation he met Tom Webster, a Suffolk-based timber-frame and architectural salvage expert who employed him as a labourer and apprentice over the next few years. Having learned many skills under Tom, in 1981 Charley set out on his own after being approached by Bedales school to dismantle and rebuild the Sotherington barn.
In 1987, with two others, Charley set up a company, Carpenter Oak & Woodland, to take on further building and conservation work, and it grew to employ 50 people. When the administrative burden of running such a business began to take him away from the creative work he loved so much, he took a break for several years so that he could get back to hands-on activity. During this period he led the construction of a dining hall at Colerne school in north Wiltshire, in conjunction with its pupils, and was involved in the pioneering assembly workshop for the Architectural Association.
In 2018 he co-founded another business, Xylotek, which took on commissions for more experimental timber-framed structures such as those in the Guangzhou Garden (with Grant Associates) that won gold at the Chelsea flower show in 2021.
Charley’s imagination, focus and generous temperament made him especially skilled at problem solving and he was well suited to collaborative work and teaching, shining in workshop-like environments such as the Architectural Association’s Hooke Park Design & Make programme, Studio in the Woods and the Dartmoor Arts summer school.
His influence on several generations of timber-framers and makers cannot be overstated. Earlier this year a book, Charley Brentnall: Looking Back, was privately published as a celebration of his work.
A brief marriage to Felicity Aylieff ended in 1986. Charley is survived by his second wife, Sue (nee Cowen), whom he married in 2002, and their children, Rosa and Beau, and by two children, Holly and Tom, from his relationship with Anita Andrews.
