running to gables...

"Running to" is a locution which expresses the characteristics of someone or something. It usually means the extreme characteristics.

Frank is untrustworthy, his stories about others running to half-truths and even outright lies.

Sarah's taste is pure kitsch, running to embroidered samplers and knitted tea cozies.

Although i think that there isn't any reason to see gables and half-timbering as crooked, the use of the locution "running to" is saying that the house is crooked, and gables and half-timbering are obvious examples of that.

Thank you; in dictionaries:

-half-timbered:
-having walls that are made from a wooden frame filled with brick, stone, etc. so that the framework can still be seen

Does the word mean ramshackle or house-unfinished? Has it a different meaning in the context above?

No, it does not mean ramshackle. Half-timbering was a construction style of the Tudor era in England.



The ground floor here is brick or stone, and the upper stories are half-timbered. That means that there is a timber (wooden) frame, and that the space between the timber is filled with other construction materials. In the 16th century (the Tudor era) it would have been filled with wattle and daub, meaning interlaced wooden branches covered with clay or mud.

In this image, the upper story is half-timbered, and there are three gables.



I consider the passage saying that the house "ran to" gables and half-timbering to be awkward, it is poor writing.

To an English reader it seems to be merely jocular. Dickens ran to locutions of this type.

I don't buy appeals to authority. Dickens was not some sort of literary god, incapable of bad writing. Another thing he "ran to" was serialized writing which had to be churned out on a deadline, and for which he was paid by the word.

That's because such things all too often illustrate that you are out to lunch, Set.




Speaking of bad writing.




Good lord, he wrote to put food in his mouth, a roof over his head! Oh, the calamity!

Setanta:




I doubt very much that this has anything to do with the nuance Setanta raised. I I think that this was the writer's way of suggesting that the building was done in a rather hodgepodge fashion. This is a literal sense - structural building components, rafters, beams, joists all run from/to each other.

Excellent WBYeats, learning by reading. Read the entire book first then come back and ask what it all means.

CROOKED HOUSE 1949 Agatha Christie Page 1 Chapter 1

http://bookre.org/reader?file=209677

"I don't even know where you live in England."
"I live at Swinly Dean."
I nodded at the mention of the well-known outer suburb of London which boasts three excellent golf courses for the city financier.
She added softly in a musing voice: "In a little crooked house..."
I must have looked slightly startled, for she seemed amused, and explained by elaborating the quotation "'And they all lived together in a little crooked house.' That's us. Not really such a little house either. But definitely crooked - running to gables and half-timbering!"
"Are you one of a large family? Brothers and sisters?"
"One brother, one sister, a mother, a father, an uncle, an aunt by marriage, a grandfather, a great aunt and a step grandmother."
"Good gracious!" I exclaimed, slightly overwhelmed.
She laughed.

It is clear that the house is a type found in the suburbs of many British cities, built between 1900 and 1950 approx; the hodge-podge is of architectural styles
Such houses do indeed 'run' to styles without completely assuming them, and I find the expression entirely appropriate.

As do I.

Some of the questions here are akin to a secret garden of lost treasures.

I think Setanta's analysis was spot on if you'll excuse my Shakespearean.

And "running to" means "going so far as to include" to my mind.

This is the type of house I was alluding to... built around 1920... an appalling hodge-podge of styles. Every large British city has a belt of housing of this type. Such suburbs often have pubs, parades of shops, electricity substations, bus and rail stations in this style. It has been called "Tudorbethan", "mock-Tudor" or "joke-oak". This is what Christie meant about "running to" half-timbering and gables. They are 'crooked' (dishonest) in an aesthetic sense.


Row ("parade") of shops near Croydon (built 1920s)

Pub near Croydon (built 1920s)

Electricity substation in Stoke-On-Trent (1930s)

You find Tudorbethan all over the British Commonwealth, and in the USA I believe suburbs in northern New Jersey such as Englewood and Teaneck feature particularly dense concentrations of Tudor-revival construction from this period.


House in Tilden Ave, Teaneck NJ



House down the road from my father's house in Croydon

The village of Lavenham is believed to have inspired the poem:

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.[1]

First published in 1842.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Was_a_Crooked_Man

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavenham



The vignette on joke-oak was muchly enjoyable, yet still I have reservations about what Agatha decided to inadvertently plagiarise in her estimable work.

Christie committed no plagiarism, inadvertent or deliberate, and if you think so then your understanding is somewhat superficial. The whole gable/half-timbered thing is Christie deftly sketching in some social background

I see this topic has been fairly well covered (done to death?) so I will refrain from putting my ha'porth in.

Good day.

Sadly you are egregiously erroneous in your contention.

Christie's character refers to her house as crooked, word for word, from the 1842 poem. This is not a reference to your latterday crooked aesthetics contrexfabulation.

I can see her now deftly sketching while you furiously scribble deeper and deeper.

Hoist by his own petard.