I'll have to look up 'English Oak' trees. We have very old Live Oak trees in our yard and our house is probably a hundred years old. The original papers were written in very fancy cursive script and were missing when we paid off our house. [somebody took them!]
I watch HGTV (House&Garden) 'fixer upper' shows where they tear apart old houses and redo them and it's sometimes amazing how much more well built old houses were back then. I've seen the methods you mentioned but can't imagine a 500 hundred year old house, wow!