The Wealden hall house is a type of vernacular medieval

timber-framed Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large woode ...

hall house The hall house is a type of vernacular house traditional in many parts of England, Wales, Ireland and lowland Scotland, as well as northern Europe, during the Middle Ages, centring on a hall. Usually timber-framed, some high status examples w ...

traditional in the south east of England. Typically built for a

yeoman Yeoman is a noun originally referring either to one who owns and cultivates land or to the middle ranks of servants in an English royal or noble household. The term was first documented in mid-14th-century England. The 14th century also witn ...

, it is most common in

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

(hence "Wealden" for the once densely forested

Weald The Weald () is an area of South East England between the parallel chalk escarpments of the North and the South Downs. It crosses the counties of Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and Kent. It has three separate parts: the sandstone "High Weald" in the ...

) and the east of

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the Englis ...

but has also been built elsewhere. Kent has one of the highest concentrations of such surviving medieval timber-framed buildings in Europe. The original

floor plan In architecture and building engineering, a floor plan is a technical drawing to scale, showing a view from above, of the relationships between rooms, spaces, traffic patterns, and other physical features at one level of a structure. Dimensio ...

usually had four

bays A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a na ...

with the two central ones forming the main hall open to the roof with the

hearth A hearth () is the place in a home where a fire is or was traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking, usually constituted by at least a horizontal hearthstone and often enclosed to varying degrees by any combination of reredos (a lo ...

in the middle and two doors to the outside at one end forming a cross passage. The open hearth was later moved towards the cross passage and became a fireplace with chimney, sometimes the chimney pile even blocking the cross passage, which had soon been screened off the main hall. Beyond the cross passage the outer bay at the "screens end" or "lower end" of the hall, usually contained two rooms commonly called buttery and

pantry A pantry is a room or cupboard where beverages, food, and sometimes dishes, household cleaning products, linens or provisions are stored within a home or office. Food and beverage pantries serve in an ancillary capacity to the kitchen. Etymol ...

, while the rooms in the bay at the other end, the "upper end", were called

parlour A parlour (or parlor) is a reception room or public space. In medieval Christian Europe, the "outer parlour" was the room where the monks or nuns conducted business with those outside the monastery and the "inner parlour" was used for necessar ...

s. The end bays each had an upper floor containing solars, which did not communicate with each other, as the hall rose to the rafters between them. The upper stories on both ends typically extended beyond the lower outer wall being jettied on at least one side of the building. As the main hall had no upper floor the outer wall ran straight up without jettying, and thus the central bays appeared recessed. The early buildings had

thatch Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge (''Cladium mariscus''), rushes, heather, or palm branches, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. Since the bulk of ...

ed roofs and walls of

wattle and daub Wattle and daub is a composite building method used for making walls and buildings, in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle is daubed with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung a ...

often

whitewash Whitewash, or calcimine, kalsomine, calsomine, or lime paint is a type of paint made from slaked lime (calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH)2) or chalk calcium carbonate, (CaCO3), sometimes known as "whiting". Various other additives are sometimes used. ...

ed. Later buildings would have a

brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...

infilling between timbers, sometimes leading to a complete replacement of the outer walls of the basement with solid stone walls.

Examples

Examples are the " Bayleaf farmhouse" from Chiddingstone, relocated in 1968–69 to the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum. the Yeoman's House in

Bignor Bignor is a village and civil parish in the Chichester district of the English county of West Sussex, about north of Arundel. It is in the civil parish of Pulborough. The nearest railway station is south east of the village, at Amberley. Th ...

, the

Anne of Cleves House Anne of Cleves House is a 16th-century timber-framed Wealden hall house located in East Sussex, England. It formed part of Queen Anne's annulment settlement from King Henry VIII in 1541, although she never visited the property. It was restored ...

in Lewes, the Alfriston Clergy House, the Plough at

Stalisfield Green Stalisfield is a village in the borough of Swale in Kent, England, located on a secondary road about 1½ miles (2.4 km) north of Charing and 5 miles south west of Faversham. The parish includes the hamlet of Stalisfield Green. Stalisfield Gr ...

, the

Old Punch Bowl The Old Punch Bowl is a medieval timber-framed Wealden hall-house on the High Street in Crawley, a town and borough in West Sussex, England. Built in the early 15th century, it was used as a farmhouse by about 1600, passing through various ow ...

and the

Ancient Priors The Ancient Priors is a medieval timber-framed hall-house on the High Street in Crawley, a town and borough in West Sussex, England. It was built in approximately 1450, partly replacing an older (probably 14th-century) structure—although p ...

at Crawley, the

Pattyndenne Manor Pattyndenne Manor is a Grade II* listed manor house located near to the village of Goudhurst, Kent. () History This Grade II* listed timber framed house was built by the Pattyndenn family around 1480, it was a home and a place to hold the Mano ...

in Kent and the Monks' Barn in

Newport, Essex Newport is a large village in Essex near Saffron Walden. The village has a population of over 2,000, measured at 2,352 at the 2011 census. Located approximately 41 miles (66 kilometres) north of London, the village is situated amongst the a ...

, Hole Cottage near Cowden (operated by

Landmark Trust The Landmark Trust is a British building conservation charity, founded in 1965 by Sir John and Lady Smith, that rescues buildings of historic interest or architectural merit and then makes them available for holiday rental. The Trust's headqua ...

) and The Old Bakery, in Hamstreet, Kent. The northernmost examples are in York, and include the Wealden Hall on

Goodramgate Goodramgate is a street in the city centre of York, in England. History The area now covered by Goodramgate lay within the walls of Roman Eboracum. The street runs diagonally across the line of former Roman buildings, from the Porta Decumana ( ...

References

External links

Geograph online article about Wealden Hall Houses
{{Housing in the United Kingdom House types in the United Kingdom Architecture in England Vernacular architecture Timber framing