THE PROVISION OF SERVICES IN MEDIEVAL HOUSES IN KENT

REFERENCES

• All these buildings are discussed in J. Blair, ‘Hall and chamber: English domestic planning 1000–1250’, in M. Meirion-Jones and M. Jones (eds), Manorial Domestic Buildings in England and Northern France, Society of Antiquaries Occasional Papers 15 (1993), 1–21, where references to detailed studies can be found.
   Google Scholar
• Rady J., Tatton-Brown T., Bowen J.A., ‘The Archbishop’s Palace, Canterbury’, J. British Archaeol. Ass. 144 (1991), 1–60.
   Google Scholar
• BL MS Cotton Galba EIV, fols 102v–108. For a discussion of the evidence and of the surviving manor houses, see S. Pearson, The Medieval Houses of Kent: An Historical Analysis (London: RCHME/HMSO, 1994), 34–42.
   Google Scholar
• S. Pearson, P. S. Barnwell and A. Adams, A Gazetteer of Medieval Houses in Kent (London: RCHME/HMSO, 1994), 66–7.
   Google Scholar
• Pearson et al., Gazetteer, 106–08.
   Google Scholar
• Drawings, accounts and discussion of these houses were published in the three RCHME volumes on rural medieval houses in Kent: P. S. Barnwell and A. T. Adams, The House Within: Interpreting Medieval Houses in Kent (HMSO/RCHME, 1994); Pearson, Medieval Houses; Pearson et al., Gazetteer.
   Google Scholar
• Cherry M., ‘Nurstead Court, Kent: a reappraisal’, Archaeol. J. 146 (1989), 451–64.
   Google Scholar
• Gardiner M., ‘Vernacular building and the development of the later medieval domestic plan in England’, Medieval Archaeol. 44 (2000), 159–79, plan p. 171; Canterbury Archaeological Trust, Archaeol. Cantiana 106 (1988), 142–8.
   Google Scholar
• Newbury Farm was discussed in the three RCHME Kent volumes (Medieval Houses, 39–40, 49–50; House Within, 31; Gazetteer, 128–9), and that account was updated when the house was being restored by tree-ring dating, VA 32 (2001), 92, and recording by Rupert Austin of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust, ‘Newbury Farm, Tonge: Kent’s earliest known aisled hall house’, Archaeol. Cantiana 123 (2003), 95–126.
   Google Scholar
• Chilton Manor was also discussed in the RCHME volumes (Medieval Houses, 44–5; House Within, 30; Gazetteer, 110–11), where it was, like Newbury, given far too late a date because it was felt impossible that timber buildings could have survived from a hundred years earlier. Once tree-ring dating started to show that several aisled halls survive from dates of c. 1200, it became clear that the dating of some of the earliest houses required reassessment. This was undertaken by John Walker, ‘Late twelfth and early thirteenth-century aisled buildings: a comparison’, VA 30 (1990), 21–53.
   Google Scholar
• Pearson, Medieval Houses, 33.
   Google Scholar
• Of sixty-nine houses erected before c. 1450, 15 (22%) are single build, and 24 (35%) show alternate rebuilding. The development of the rest is less certain.
   Google Scholar
• BL MS Add. 42715.
   Google Scholar
• I was alerted to the material on houses by Dr Bridgett Jones, who was helping the group by checking marginalia, and I am grateful to Jackie Bower for corresponding with me about the project and its results and allowing me to read her draft introduction. It has now been published on the Kent Archaeological Society’s website: <www.kentarchaeology.ac>, see especially pp. 48, 156, 164, 169, 180, 184, 192, 230, 264, 276, 320, 346, 360, 396, 412, 416, 424, 467–8 and 492.
   Google Scholar
• It has been suggested that some halls may have had chambers over them with the descriptions subsumed into the description of one or other end. However, although one or two of the entries are ambiguous, most are very specific. When a hall had a chamber over, the text goes to some lengths to make this clear. For example, at Wryhalfyoke in Lenham the text reads: ‘[…] first a hawle with a chymneye: On the northe side of the said hawle ar towe little chambers: over the said towe little chambers is one lofte or chamber. On the Sowthe side of the said hawle is a parler withe a chimneye and one little chamber: Over the hawle parler and little chamber aforesaid, ar three little chambers, wherof that chamber that is over the said parler, hathe in it also a chimney […]’. In contrast, at Mayes tenement, also in Lenham the detail indicates a hall with no chamber above: ‘[…] one hawle with a Chymneye: on the Northe syde of the same hawle is one Buttreye and a kitchin: over the same buttreye and kitchen are three little Chambers: on the Sowthe syde of the same hawle, is a parler withe a Chymneye one buttre and one other little Chamber: over the same parlor buttrie and Chamber is one fayre chamber withe a Chymneye […]’; BL MS Add. 42715, pp. 156, 164. Jackie Bower suggests in her introduction that the writing was all done either by Thomas Wotton himself or by William Clarke, husbandman, who undertook the land measurements, both of whom were present on all but one occasion; if so, one might reasonably expect the same procedure to be followed in each house.
   Google Scholar
• BL MS Add. 42715, p. 156.
   Google Scholar
• BL MS Add. 42715, p. 184.
   Google Scholar
• Flimsy, non-structural, partitions which have left no trace are known in some instances (Pearson, Medieval Houses, 103), and projections at the rear are found in a number of large farmhouses (ibid., 72–4).
   Google Scholar
• BL MS Add. 42715, pp. 467–8.
   Google Scholar
• Nottingham University Tree-Ring Dating Laboratory (NUTRDL), VA 19 (1988), 49.
   Google Scholar
• This point will be discussed in detail in eastern Sussex by David and Barbara Martin in their forthcoming book, Rural Housing in the Eastern High Weald.
   Google Scholar
• John Davey of Tenterden, 1467, printed in H. S. Cowper, ‘A note on some fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Kentish wills’, Archaeol. Cantiana 30 (1914), 128.
   Google Scholar
• Will of John Overer of Throwley, 1487, Centre for Kentish Studies (CKS: PRC 17/4/130v); will of Robert Olfede of Bredgar, 1497 (CKS: PRC 17/7/37r), both printed in E. Melling, Some Kentish Houses, Kentish Sources V (Maidstone: Kent County Council 1965), 7–8.
   Google Scholar
• Results of a preliminary study of Kent probate inventories for 1565/6 (CKS: PRC 10/11) were presented by Richard Harris to the VAG Oxford conference in May 1991. I am extremely grateful to him for providing me with copies of the transcripts. Copies have also been deposited in the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum.
   Google Scholar
• David and Barbara Martin, ‘Detached kitchens in eastern Sussex: a re-assessment of the evidence’, VA 28 (1997), 85–91; J. T. Smith, ‘Detached kitchens or adjoining houses?’, VA 32 (2001), 16–19; David and Barbara Martin, ‘Detached kitchens or adjoining houses? — a response’, VA 32 (2001), 20–33.
   Google Scholar
• For example, in August 1534 Francis Iden of St Peter’s, Sandwich, left his wife his ‘part’ of a house where Thomas Harwood dwelt (CKS: PRC 17/20/4); in March 1552/3, William Strode of St Mary’s, Sandwich, left his ‘part and portion’ of three tenements inherited from his father ‘according to the custom of gavelkind’ to his wife, and then equally to two sons (CKS: PRC 17/30/45); in February 1626/7 Robert Rayner of Barnfield in Charing left his house to his two sons, stipulating which rooms each was to receive. In 1668 one of them bequeathed the half he owned to his eldest son, the younger one receiving money instead (CKS: PRC 32/50/01, 32/53/554). At a later date Barn-field, a large Wealden house which still survives, was returned to single ownership.
   Google Scholar
• These issues were discussed by A. R. H. Baker, ‘Some fields and farms in medieval Kent’, Archaeol. Cantiana 80 (1965), 152–74; F. R. H. Du Boulay, The Lordship of Canterbury (Nelson, 1966), 146–50; C. Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages (CUP, 1989), 124; Pearson, Medieval Houses, 15, 16.
   Google Scholar
• Will of John Nasche, 1490, in J. de Launay, Cranbrook Wills 1396–1640 (Kent Record Collections, 1984), 42; will of Thomas Bishopden, 1512, in H. S. Cowper, ‘A note on some fifteenth and sixteenth century Kentish wills’, Archaeol. Cantiana 30 (1914), 130.
   Google Scholar
• The manor of Meadgrove or Broadoak was known from the thirteenth century to the eighteenth, D. Sweeting, ‘Mead Manor, Broadoak’, in K. H. McIntosh, Sturry, the Changing Scene (1973), 23; Pearson et al., Gazetteer, 123–4.
   Google Scholar
• Salzman L.F., Building in England down to 1500 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 464, 478–82, 483–5.
   Google Scholar
• Rupert Austin and Sheila Sweetinburgh, ‘‘Boots the Chemist’, Nos 9–11 Mercery Lane and 5–7 The Parade, Canterbury’, Canterbury’s Archaeology (Canterbury Archaeological Trust, Annual Report, 2005–6), 45–9; ibid., ‘Nos 8–9 The Parade, and 25–6 St Margaret’s Street, Canterbury’, Canterbury’s Archaeology (Canterbury Archaeological Trust, Annual Report, 2005–6), 50–6.
   Google Scholar
• 1 The Butchery, in H. Clarke, S. Pearson, M. Mate and K. Parfitt, Sandwich: The Completest Medieval Town in England (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010), 188. All the other Sandwich houses are discussed there.
   Google Scholar
• NUTRDL, VA 34 (2003), 106–7.
   Google Scholar
• Pierre Garrigou Grandchamp has pointed out that very similar chutes occur in the wine-growing regions of southern France where they were used to tip grapes into cellars for processing.
   Google Scholar
• The inventories are in the Centre for Kentish Studies, Maid-stone. The open-hall houses are identified by having no chambers over halls which were crossed by galleries allowing access to the first floor rooms on the street front from stairs at the back; eleven such galleries are identifiable in surviving houses, suggesting this was a common arrangement in Sandwich. Other inventories also have no obvious chamber over the hall, but without galleries open halls cannot be presumed (Clarke et al., Sandwich, 170–2, 194–5).
   Google Scholar
• Clarke et al., Sandwich, 257.
   Google Scholar
• In five cases the buttery was ‘in the hall’.
   Google Scholar
• For similar descriptions in York see Eileen White, ‘The domestic scene’, in E. White (ed.), Feeding a City: York (Totnes: Prospect Books, 2000), 123–38.
   Google Scholar
• D. and B. Martin, Rye Rebuilt. Regeneration and Decline within a Sussex Port Town, 1350–1660 (Romney Marsh Research Trust, 2009); D. and B. Martin, Rural Housing in the Eastern High Weald, forthcoming.
   Google Scholar
• Pearson S., ‘Rural and urban houses 1100–1500: ‘urban adaptation’ reconsidered’, in K. Giles and C. Dyer (eds), Town and Country in the Middle Ages: Contrasts, Contacts and Interconnections, 1100–1500, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 22 (2005), 43–63, p.53.
   Google Scholar
• Pearson, ‘‘Urban Adaptation’’, 55.
   Google Scholar
• Rupert Austin, Canterbury Archaeological Trust, unpublished report, 2009.
   Google Scholar
• Rupert Austin, ‘4–5 Best Lane’, Canterbury Archaeological Trust, Annual Report (1992), 50–4.
   Google Scholar
• Salzman, Building in England, 554–5.
   Google Scholar
• 30 High Street, Charing is a mirror image of 32 which had a floored hall from the start; it certainly had a shop in 1674.
   Google Scholar
• Leigh Alston, ‘Late medieval workshops in East Anglia’, in P. S. Barnwell, M. Palmer and M. Airs (eds), The Vernacular Workshop, from Craft to Industry, 1400–1900, CBA Research Report 140 (2004), 38–59, figs 4·7, 4·8.
   Google Scholar
• Variations in sizes, types and dates of medieval rural houses across Kent are discussed in Pearson, The Medieval Houses of Kent, fig. 2 and ch. 10.
   Google Scholar