Singleton, West Sussex

In the Weald

This post continues my short series on timber-framed buildings with another type that is associated with a specific  English region. This is the Wealden hall house, a form that is most common in the Weald region, which covers part of Kent and neighbouring East Sussex. A Wealden house is a timber-framed building with a central, double-height hall heated by a central hearth, the smoke from which would originally have escaped through a hole in the roof. On either side of the central hall are two-storey sections, with their upper floors overhanging slightly, so that the central, hall section of the house is recessed. There would be service rooms on the lower floor of one of these side sections, with private rooms called solars on the upper floors.

My picture shows the beautiful Wealden house known as Bayleaf, originally built at Chiddingstone in Kent and relocated to the excellent Weald and Downland Museum. The house dates mainly from the early-15th century with alterations from the 16th century. With its large rectangular panels of wattle and daub, with curving cross-braces, it is very attractive, although some Wealden houses have a still more striking type of framework made up of many closely positioned vertical timbers. The name Bayleaf may derive from Bailey, the surname of the first occupant in the 15th century. Harry Bailey and later tenants and lessees of the house were farmers and Bayleaf seems to have been associated with a landholding of about 100 acres of probably mixed farmland (cattle farming dominated in this part of Kent, but a holding of this size most likely included some arable as well). This would make it home to people who in modern terms we might think of as members of the rural middle classes.

Wealden houses were not only found in the Weald. There are also some examples in Surrey, Essex, and even further afield. But Kent and eastern Sussex are their heartland and they form one of the most distinctive and attractive regional types of timber-framed buildings.

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The website of the the Weald and Downland Museum, which I must visit again soon, has more information about Bayleaf.

The photograph above is by Keith Edkins, and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Singleton, West Sussex

Timber and tin

Chris Partridge, of the excellent Ornamental Passions blog, has sent me some photographs of a building recently erected at the Weald and Downland Museum, seven miles north of Chichester, and has given me permission to share them with my readers. Many of you will know that the Weald and Downland is an open-air museum that specializes in preserving buildings by re-erecting them on their site, so that visitors can enjoy them and learn about their history. Most of their buildings come from southeastern England and many are timber-framed structures, including houses from the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries.

Their latest addition is a very different kind of timber-framed building, a corrugated-iron church from the Hampshire parish of Wonston, near Winchcester, which was first built in 1909 and last used in 1996. Buildings like this were bought as “flat packs” by parishes who needed an inexpensive church, often as temporary building before they could raise the funds for a more elaborate building. Many, like this one, lasted far longer than their original users might have imagined.

Resplendent in its new green paint, the church of St Margaret, Wonston is now looking as good as it must have done when new in 1909. Its design is quite simple – there is no spire as there was on some corrugated-iron churches, and the windows are rectangular – although their individual lights do have a pointed upper section. But at one end, the building does look more ecclesiastical, with a corrugated iron bellcote and a small quatrefoil window.

Churches like this were designed to be quick and easy to put up, whether by parishioners in England or builders in the far corners of the British empire, where prefabricated corrugated iron churches were often sent. Once the team from the Weald and Downland Museum had constructed the base, the timber frame took two people a week to erect. No doubt the original builders put the church up at a similar speed, impressing the parishioners as much as the newly restored building impresses visitors to the museum.

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I’ve posted about “tin churches” before. There’s an example from Gloucestershire here and another from Worcestershire here.