Interior view of double relieving plates

The upper plate embedded in the masonry wall is the bearing and leveling timber for the first floor joists and a "tie" pocketed into the north wall to join it structurally to the east eaves wall. It also spans across numerous vertical mortar joints [“breaks the joints”], thus inhibiting or interrupting fractures which might otherwise radiate through a longer failure-path in the wall joints. The shorter plate is a relieving lintel transferring structural loads across the window [and the door to the south] to the flanking masonry abutments. See DTR09PH122--1001.01.218 for an interior view of these plates spanning the kitchen doorway and bearing on the east end of the masonry partition between the kitchen and root cellar. Laurence Ward, 2009