Gonville Cottage to become a museum exhibit

Gonville Cottage in 1974

Gonville Cottage is the Museum’s best-kept secret – right in the middle of the site, but largely invisible behind trees and hedges. In the early 1970s it was home to Museum Director Chris Zeuner and since then has always been occupied by people working for the Museum.

In May this year it became vacant when Nick Conway, our Site and Security Manager, moved to larger accommodation in Singleton, and we decided that it should become an exhibit. Built in c1847, it is an excellent example of a very common type of house, with a central entrance and staircase between two living rooms in the main range, and a rear outshot, and fills a major gap in the story told by our collections.

What makes it even more interesting, however, is that in the course of her research Danae Tankard, the Museum’s History Associate, discovered that in 1851 it was occupied by a shepherd named Richard Burns, who had won a number of prizes at the West Sussex Agricultural Association between 1840 and 1851. In addition the mid-19th century tithe maps show that it was associated with a range of farm buildings in what is now its garden – a U-shaped range of narrow sheds forming a courtyard about 75ft square. This would almost certainly have been a sheep yard, of which several examples are known locally.

So as an exhibit it will give the Museum a wonderful opportunity to interpret a cottage with detailed knowledge of who lived there. But there was still a further question to be answered: what happened to the sheep yard buildings? All that can be seen now is a large garden. To help answer that question we engaged the services of George Anelay, an independent archaeologist and Heritage Officer for Chichester District. He selected four areas in which to dig trial trenches and to our delight discovered that the foundations of the buildings have survived.

So our plans are to carry out a major investigation of the archaeology of both the house and the garden during the 2009 season, sharing this work with our visitors – and maybe getting their help! To fund this the Museum will apply to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a grant from its Your Heritage programme. To receive an HLF grant a project must help people learn about their heritage, and either conserve it for present and future generations or help a wide range of people to take an active part in it. We believe that the Gonville Cottage project fulfils these aims.

Gonville Cottage - the thatch

New hop display will show quality artefacts

Museum Farm Manager Chris Baldwin tending the Museum’s hops

Since 1975 the Museum has been slowly accumulating hop-related artefacts, many of which are of great interest and quality. We acquired an extremely rare cast iron hop press from Bepton in 2002 and a wooden example in 2007 which was initially displayed within the Gridshell Artefact Store. Reviewing the other hop-related items in the collections we were surprised by their high quality and comprehensive range, despite being relatively few in number.

With no room to expand the display in the Gridshell Artefact Store, another location on site was sought. Despite having 45 exhibit buildings, flexible display space in the Museum is at a premium, but the open-fronted shed from Charlwood provided a solution, having housed for many years various agricultural wagons. The wagons were placed in store but one of them remained: the Whitbread Hop Wagon, which had been recently conserved and repaired by the Collections Team to enable it to be put on view. By the start of the 2009 season we will have a comprehensive display of hop-related items in the shed – not only the wagon and presses but also smaller artefacts such as hand tools and tally sticks.

The decision to display the hop-related items from the artefact collections was not taken in isolation. The Farm Manager, Chris Baldwin, has set up a small hop garden based on historic growing techniques, and the artefact display was designed to complement his activities.

Earlier this year one of the Collections volunteers, John Walshe, brought a friend of his to visit the museum and see the artefact collections. Fortuitously, Sir Richard Thornton, owns one of the last remaining hop farms in the area and his visit began a very productive relationship as a result of which we have visited the estate twice this year and gained very useful information on the growing and processing of hops. The Hampton Estate at Seale near Farnham is run by Sir Richard’s daughter and son-in-law Bill and Bridget Biddell, and it has not only large hop fields growing on the south-facing slope of the Hogs Back, but also woodland which provides the poles to which the hop vines are strung. In March we were invited to see the hop fields and plants at the beginning of the growing season and to discuss modern and traditional methods of growing and harvesting. We were shown the whole of the hop production operation – the young plants just beginning to climb the supporting wires, the unique and highly complex machine for stripping the flowers from the cut vines, and the drying and bagging shed.

Our second visit was in early September during the harvest fortnight – a hive of activity in sharp contrast to the tranquil scenes we had experienced earlier in the year. Despite the modern machinery, the techniques for processing the cut vines, removing the hop flowers, drying and bagging are still very similar to those which would have taken place when our historic artefacts were in use. Seeing the processes being carried out has given us a much clearer understanding of the usage and operation of the artefacts in our collections.

New plan will inform future activity in West Dean Park

The plan has the following aims:

The study area includes the arboretum, park, plantations and Open Air Museum, all of which are entered on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens at Grade II*, but excludes the gardens and house. This area includes a scheduled ancient monument and the setting of listed buildings. In the light of these designations, West Dean Park is considered to be of national importance.

The present designed landscape was begun by the Peachey family, and predominantly dates from their improvements of the early- to mid-19th century. The park and house were modified once again at the turn of the 20th century by William James. The house and most of the estate were conveyed to the Edward James Foundation in 1964, and the park has continued to be managed by the Foundation, with some interventions by Edward James before his death in 1984. The house is now occupied by West Dean College, the gardens and park are open to visitors, and the Open Air Museum has a lease of an area in the eastern corner of the park.

The significance of the park is summarised as follows:

Overall, the estate, gardens, park, plantations and Museum are managed to exemplary standards, and are widely used to inform best practice elsewhere. However the running of the College, open gardens and Museum places pressure on the historic landscape from vehicular traffic, requirements for new visitor facilities and car parking. In addition, the effectiveness of parkland restoration and arboretum management has not been reviewed externally since 1990.

The Landscape Conservation Management Plan sets out a number of policies and proposals to address these issues, and to improve both the quality and the capacity of West Dean for physical access and enjoyment. Proposals include:

Richard Harris

Focusing on the Museum’s working Woodyard

A view of the woodyard showing the racksaw bench, crane and sawpit,
with the shed from Coldwaltham in the background

The new Woodyard exhibit at the Museum is to be the focus of several special week-long demonstrations each year, enabling us to demonstrate all the woodyard operations, crafts and artefacts in an interesting way for visitors.

The centrepiece of the Woodyard is the timber crane. This hand-operated crane, manufactured by John Smith of Keighley around 1900, was restored in 2005–6 by the collections team (see Museum Magazine, Spring 2008). Next we added an historic racksaw made c1910 by W. Graham of Perth, and a working sawpit. The sawpit is a new construction but vital to the interpretation of the woodyard. The crane is positioned so as to be able to lift incoming logs from a timber carriage and transfer them either to the sawpit or the racksaw bench.

During 2007 the open-fronted shed from Coldwaltham was dismantled and re-erected in the Woodyard to provide a flexible workshop and display area. The shed had previously been sited in the Museum’s woodland and had housed an exhibition by Ruth Tittensor on woodland in the local landscape.

Our aim for the Woodyard is not a static display but a fully functioning yard in which staff and volunteers can demonstrate traditional wood-related skills, its heart being the historic working artefacts. But how can such demonstrations be provided? It would be wonderful to have a fully working yard on a similar basis to the watermill or forge where activity occurs virtually every day, but the pool of sufficiently skilled staff is very small, and they have other duties to fulfil. The cost of the raw material, newly-felled timber, is another factor that makes continuous demonstration difficult.

The solution has been to focus our activities into several week-long sessions each year, with demonstrations of the whole range of Woodyard operations during each week. This strategy economises on preparation time and the cost of raw materials, and concentrates resources efficiently.

So far one Woodyard Week has been held, on 28 July–3 August, at the start of the school holidays and directly preceding the blacksmiths BABA AGM event at which we provided a traditional charcoal earthburn.

Shire horse Neville delivering a log to the yard.

Mark Buxton and Ben Headon unloading a log from the timber carriage

During the remainder of the week we demonstrated the activities which will be the staple for Woodyard Weeks:

Collections update

We have received fewer items than usual this year, but the variety and quality of the artefacts we have been given is very high, with fascinating associated histories.

Dorset Wagon

A wagon offered to the museum by the family of the late Jim Oliver of Send presented us with a dilemma similar to that resulting from the offer of the hearse (see below). Described as a Dorset wagon, it originates from well outside our collecting area and would normally be declined, but its excellent provenance and interesting link to the museum persuaded us to accept the offer. It had been in Mr Oliver’s family since it was commissioned in 1848 by his great great Grandfather, Job Rose – a miller from Fiddleford in Dorset – and it stayed with the family as subsequent generations moved first to the Chesham area of Buckinghamshire and then to Send near Guildford. Jim Oliver, who farmed at Send, was a trustee of the Museum from 1986, and also chaired the Sites and Buildings Committee.

Each county or area had distinctive agricultural vehicles whose differences in shape and construction represent strong regional traditions. The Dorset wagon will help our visitors to understand how wagons designed for similar purposes can be quite different in construction and appearance.

Living Van

Parked outside the Gridshell Artefact Store is what appears to be a derelict, very rusty, corrugated iron clad ‘box’. In fact its poor appearance is deceptive, as most of the structure is in good condition. It is a contractor’s living van which was originally part of a threshing train, where workers could store their equipment and take their breaks.

We already have several shepherd’s huts and living vans at the Museum but this particular example, which was donated by Peter Tomkins and Ray Turbefield of Chalcroft Nurseries, could well be the most interesting of all. The wheels have disappeared but the metal hubs remain, and they are marked ‘Marshalls’, which provides an excellent link with our own threshing machine, which was also manufactured by Marshalls and is one of the oldest working threshing machines in the country, having been built in 1862. The living van also had wooden wheels with iron hubs and a similar undercarriage, which suggests that it may be of similar age to the threshing machine. This would make it the oldest living van we have and an example of national interest.

We are seeking funding for materials to repair and conserve the living van, and when the work has been completed it will be displayed alongside the other elements of the threshing train in the hay barn from Ockley

Hearse

An offer of a late-19th century hearse from Jeremy Exley, the Chair of Northiam Parish Council, provided us with a dilemma, as the highly ornate hearse was radically different from any other vehicle we have in the collection. However, we accepted the donation as it meets our collecting criteria and comes with a comprehensive provenance.

The hand or pony hearse was commissioned by Northiam Parish Council in 1897 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and was purchased from Mr R.G. Kemp of nearby Hawkhurst for the sum of £27. The Parish Council hired out the hearse as required, but the most suitable pony had other duties, so the undertaker had to wait until it had finished the milk round!

 Belfry Ladders

Although we have several ladders in our collections, mostly from builders or roofers, the set we were offered by Susan Batchelor from Chilbolton was very unusual. They was originally used for access to the upper levels of the belfry at St Mary the Less in Chilbolton and had to be removed from the church because of safety concerns. They are very long (about 20ft) and were impossible to remove from the belfry without the last foot or so being cut off. They had remained in situ during the remodelling of the belfry in 1893 by the renowned ecclesiastical architect W.D.Caroe, and it was subsequently discovered that the changes had made it impossible to get the ladders out in one piece.

Roof Tile

At first glance the clay peg tile given to the museum by Debbie Channer, an occasional collections volunteer, was fairly unremarkable. However, on the reverse of the tile was a handwritten inscription, presumably put there by the tile maker when the clay was still wet, which read: Joseph Norkett – Died Sept 2nd – 1841.

Although we don’t know who Joseph Norkett was, or who made the inscription, how the tile came to light is an intriguing story. Following the 1987 ‘hurricane’ John Wilshire, a Selsey carpenter, was repairing a roof in Sidlesham when he came across the tile in a consignment supplied to him from a local source. It is remarkable that the tile survived intact for so long and also that John, by chance, looked on the reverse of the tile when he was about to put it in place and had the foresight to pass it on to Debbie.

Stonemasons Workshop

Our acquisition of artefacts since the Museum began has brought us comprehensive groups of certain items and smaller numbers of others, and one subject area in which until now we had very few examples is stonemasonry.

Maurice Little (pictured above) was a stonemason and monumental carver based at Englefield Green near Windsor. He was chair of the National Association of Master Letter Carvers and in the latter part of his career this was the aspect of masonry he focused on. An accomplished artist and draughtsman, all of his work was initially sketched before transfer onto stone. The range of work he carried out during his life was varied and impressive including general masonry work to the façade of Eton College, carving nameplates for houses and public buildings, funerary monuments and even inscribing Churchill’s major speeches into a nine foot square block for the Malaysian Government. He also carried out work for some famous neighbours, such as commemorative headstones for the Queen Mother’s corgis and a monument to Tony Hancock.

After Mr Little died in 2007 we were offered the contents of his workshop. This acquisition provided us with some logistical headaches, as virtually everything associated with stonemasonry is heavy – 25 years of accumulated workshop paraphernalia certainly adds up!

We have acquired about a fifth of the contents of his workshop and we hope to display them in a suitable location once everything has been processed, cleaned and recorded.

Quilt

We do not usually collect textiles but this item, donated by Linda Webb, had an appropriate local history. Linda lives in Herefordshire but previously lived in Singleton where her father was the village constable, and the quilt was given to her as a teenage girl by an elderly lady from Charlton. Homemade items such as this are difficult to date accurately, but it is thought that it was produced in the first half of the 19th century.

A new fence for Whittaker’s Cottages

Fences and gates have been very little studied, so in preparation for constructing a fence for the front of Whittaker’s Cottages, we carried out research to establish appropriate proportions and details – and in doing so came across a great surprise!

The question was, in a fence using V-topped pales nailed to rails, how should the main posts be treated? We looked at old photographs and came to the conclusion that many of them seemed to show the tops of posts cut into the shape of a double V at the front, and weathered off behind. But the details were not clear enough to be sure, so it was a great relief when Master Carpenter Roger Champion came up with the answer: he had observed this detail and even collected a sample of it from a relative’s house in Berkshire. This confirmed what we had observed and gave us a reliable pattern to follow.

We later discovered a similar example on our own doorstep: an old gate just outside the Museum site has rounded tops designed in a similar way, with the front cut to the shape and the back weathered off.

So now the hunt is on for more examples, and we need your help! Please have a look at pale fences and gates in your neighbourhood and if any of them retain a similar detail, send us a photograph with a note of the location. We will publish the results in a future issue of the magazine.

Left to right, the top of the hanging stile of an old gate in the woods behind the
Museum.  The fence post collected by Roger Champion and used as a pattern
 for the new fence. Below, one of the posts of the new fence. The fence is made
of oak sawn on the racksaw bench in the Museum’s Woodyard

Richard Harris
 

Wheat straw experiments provide new information

 This year’s harvest of five acres of wheat straw for thatching was successful, and the quality of the straw seems to be good. The crop was closely observed as it grew and various controlled experiments have been carried out to investigate possible ways of improving length and strength still further.

For instance, sections of the wheat were cut at different stages of ripening to see what effect that has on the straw. One unexpected observation was that some Maris Widgeon sown amongst the Triticale (a hybrid of wheat, ‘Triticum’ and rye, ‘Secale’) seemed to grow taller than when sown purely as Maris Widgeon, perhaps being ‘brought on’ by the Triticale. This could be an argument for sowing mixtures of different seeds rather than pure strains, in addition to the tendency for mixtures to show greater resistance to disease. Our experience with threshing crops by hand in our barn is that it is extremely difficult to keep different seeds completely separated, so a mixture would tend to arise naturally in traditional farming.

For 2008–9 we will use winter-sown Chidham Red Chaff in one of our three ‘early’ strips, based on late-medieval farming practice, with the second being a spring-sown crop of peas and beans and the third being fallow. In the three ‘later’ strips, based on 18th century practice, we will be using clover as a forage crop, flax for our textiles interpretation, and rye as the grain. Our four ‘Victorian’ fields are being brought into a four-course rotation, and this year two will be sown with wheat for thatching straw, one with spring-sown cole seed (a forage rape) and the fourth with forage rye
 

New home for horse-drawn vehicles