To provide theoretical basis for the restoration of Guangfu wooden structures, five hoop head tenon joint specimens were designed and manufactured using Merbau wood. Considering the influence of the size of mortise and tenon construction, quasi-static tests were carried out on undamaged and unreinforced joint specimens. Then, to preserve the original appearance of the building as much as possible, the damaged joint specimens mentioned above were reinforced by the Queti-type dampers that have minimal influence on the original appearance of the structure. Finally, quasi-static tests were conducted again on the reinforced joints to investigate the difference in their seismic performance and the strengthening effect of the dampers. The results show that the joint specimens reinforced with dampers exhibit significant indentations at the mortise and tenon connections when being loaded to failure. There is noticeable splitting on the outer side of the tenon of the beam and the detachment of the tenon, as well as obvious separation between the rubber and steel plate at the base of the damper. The addition of dampers to joints can compensate the decrease in forcebearing performance caused by initial damage, provide better post-damage stiffness for the damaged mortise and tenon joints, and enhance the ultimate load-bearing capacity and energy absorption capacity. After adding the damper, there occur enhancements in terms of post-damage stiffness, load-bearing capacity and energy absorption of specimens, as compared with the unreinforced joints, with the increment being more than 18%, 19% and 20%, respectively. Moreover, on the basis of the existing simplified mechanical model and in combination with OpenSees, a macro-modelling method was proposed for hoop head tenon timber structures, which helps to obtain hysteresis curves of the joints being in good agreement with the experimental results, meaning that the modelling method can effectively simulate the hysteresis energy dissipation characteristics of the hoop head tenon joints strengthened with dampers.