The Council of Management is pleased to announce that Lord Egremont has kindly agreed to become President of the Museum, following the death of our late President, the Duke of Norfolk. The Museum is honoured by His Lordship’s acceptance.

We look forward to the chance of welcoming him at the Museum.

Winter Openings 

For the first time, the Museum was open for visitors during winter months, on Sundays only.  We called these days “Limited Openings” and reduced the price of admission to 20p for adults and 1Op for children. The shop remained closed, while the site was stewarded by only one roving volunteer and by one person in the ticket office.  With the considerably lower numbers this system worked well. We see this experiment as a service to local people, who often on fine winter days in the past have leaned over the Museum gate.  The Museum is grateful to those volunteers who braved the elements during the winter. 

Winter Open Days Statistics

November 1974 - March 1975 - 21 Open Days 

Children, Students and OAP’s  701 visitors
Adults                              1,707 visitors

Total                               2,408

Museum Library and Crawley Hall

During this season, we hope to commence work on the Crawley Hall, a building which holds some significance in the development of the Museum. The upper hall will be converted for use as the museum library and will house for reference purposes a growing specialist library. The larger part of the collection will be photographic material, including the collection built up by Mr. Armstrong.  Already the Museum possesses a number of volumes mostly related to Sussex and to the study of architecture.  It is in the latter area that our collecting efforts will be directed towards.   There are a number of collections in the area specialising in local material and our aim is to compliment, rather than to duplicate these collections. 

Already a number of people have donated items to this collection and we are grateful to the Rank Trust for a donation of £100 towards the purchase of now material. In order that we may organise our collection even before the building is erected, Mrs Jenni Leslie has kindly agreed to offer her professional skills to the Museum as Honorary Librarian. We are very grateful to her for this help.  If any member comes across material that they think might be relevant please contact the Museum. The provision of a good reference collection will add a new dimension to the Museum and its work, and is of great importance. 

The Building Programme

We have been very badly delayed by the continual wet weather of the last few months. Our craftsmen are not affected by the cold but the wet conditions have made life very difficult. The greatest effort of this has been on the re-erection of Pendean which in turn has delayed the Watersfield Stable. The final landscaping of the lake site has also not been possible. However given some sunshine, or at least dry weather, we will see faster progress. One result of the bad weather has been that we have undertaken a number of site improvements that we would otherwise not have done.  

Workshop Site

The temporary planning permission for the workshop has now expired. The planners are not in favour of the continued use of the site in this way, and we hope to remove the workshop and its stores to the railway cutting.  The retention of a small workshop on site, possibly in one of the cattle sheds, will be vital.

However, the bulk of the material around the present site will be removed. The public will still see the erection of buildings, but not, of course the repair stages. 

The Mill and Lakes

During the winter the excavation of the lake site has been completed.  The aim for this year is to construct the foundations for the Mill and mill race and to dismantle the stone work at Lurgashall. If funds permit, we may also be able to line the ponds this year. 

By the Earl of March F.C.A.

As the Chairman of the South East Region of the Historic Houses Campaign Committee I have given a great deal of thought to the effects of legislation on the fate of our Historic House heritage. 

I see this heritage as being not only the houses themselves - but the essential unity of houses, contents and surrounding land. The campaign is designed to maintain this unity and to avoid the creation of empty, lifeless architectural shells. That is why the petition, organised by the Campaign Committee, is placed in nearly all historic houses - including National Trust Houses - this summer. 

At Goodwood we have placed the petition in, a room emptied of its contents. This we hope will alert visitors to what might well happen. We have asked our guides to make the following simple points in the empty room:

(1) This room had pictures and furniture but they have been removed to show what will be the likely effect of present and proposed legislation.  

(2) The government have stated that they wish to preserve the national heritage: but if that is to happen they must amend the legislation already formed and take more seriously the effects of proposed legislation.  

(3) Members of the public who show great concern should be invited to join the Historic Houses Association as associate members and given a copy of the "Destruction" leaflet.

(4) We ask each visitor to sign the petition and we ask that his signing of it will be the first - not the last thing they do in this campaign.

Many members will be most concerned about the legislation and its effects. Should you wish to have further information, the "Destruction" leaflet will be available in the Museum office.

J.R.Armstrong
29th April 1975.

Volunteers and Friends of the Museum have often asked for a general statement of the Museum’s policy and forward planning.  To meet this demand an abbreviation of an article written under the title “The Open Air Museum; Idea and Reality” and printed in the transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society forms the main item in this News Letter. The article was written just two years ago, but the general principles remain valid. It has been brought up to date by the inclusion of five buildings which have since been offered to the Museum, two of these are already repaired and are being re-erected - the stable from Watersfield and the Wind pump from the Pevensey Levels, and three are dismantled and in store - the wagon shed from Selsey,  the seventeenth century "Tyndall Cottage" from the site of the future Bewl Valley reservoir and a barn from the Petworth estate. 

These recent acquisitions well illustrate the central thesis of the article - the need for a clear and defined general objective combined with maximum flexibility as to details, and the closest possible liaison with other museums and other ventures which might otherwise overlap causing waste of scarce resources.  We now have twelve buildings in store which on any count is a fairly heavy responsibility. 

Perhaps the most significant change since the writing of the article is that the suggested limit to the number of buildings which could be satisfactorily sited has been increased to forty from thirty-five in the original article. The museum has also been increased from th

The first Open Air Museum in the British Isles to be open to the public was that of St. Fagan’s, near Cardiff. It forms part of the National Museum of Wales, has the status of a national museum, and is concerned with vernacular building and the Welsh way of life. This excellent museum now has nearly twenty buildings, and has been open for nearly twenty years.  England has followed tardily, although the need has been present in the minds of a great many of us since the early thirties, but nothing serious was achieved until within the past ten years.

During the past four years, museums within this category have been started, and first opened to the public, at Stoke Prior in Worcestershire, at Stowmarket in Suffolk, at Beamish Hall in Durham, at Button le Hole in Yorkshire, at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, at Morwellham in Cornwall, at Stoke Bruerne near Northampton and at Singleton in Sussex. At least six others are projected or already under consideration in other parts of the country. All these ventures are differently oriented, and some have, to a certain extent changed their objectives in the course of their initial development. The only feature that unites them is that they are all concerned with groups of buildings, whether restored in situ or moved to within a landscape area capable of accommodating them with a reasonable measure of reality. There is a big difference between a venture such as Morwellham in Cornwall, where the aim is restoration in situ, preserving the relation of the buildings to a particular industry and an industrial network and, say, Stowmarket, which aims at reconstructing the vernacular buildings and the rural scene representative of three or four regions of East Anglia. To take another example, there is a big difference between the two or three acres of Hutton le Hole, limiting itself virtually to one valley of the Cleveland Hills, and Beamish Hall, aiming to represent three industrial counties, with an emphasis on heavy industry and on a site of over two hundred acres.  Aims may also be altered during the initial development. At Stoke Prior the emphasis at the beginning was essentially on buildings and architecture and the name Museum of Buildings defined this aim and, within this general framework of intent, buildings as different in size and status as the Guesten Hall roof and a medieval hall from Bromsgrove could be accommodated; nor was there any exact limit to the region or area to be served.  Since then local crafts such as nail making and chain making have been included, the buildings becoming essentially ancillary to the crafts they house. This kind of pragmatic adaptation to changing circumstances or needs is understandable and may be necessary in the early stages. This has certainly been true in the case of the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum at Singleton. This pragmatic approach does, however, raise larger issues which will be made clear by recounting some of our experience at Singleton. 

It has not been easy to find phrases which define, or to invent any simple formulation of our aims.  At the entrance, for example, there is a notice board saying, “Museum of Historic Buildings”; on our headed paper appears “The Open Air Museum, Singleton”.  For those already familiar with those early museums on the Continent, the second of those phrases is probably adequate to indicate very roughly the kind of things they will expect to find in the Museum. When coupled with Weald and Downland (its full title), there is a fairly clear indication of the region covered.  But this description conveys only a generalized purpose; the other phrase “historic buildings”, can, by suggesting some limitation, be misleading.  One definition emphasizes the individual importance rather than the generic significance of the buildings exhibited, the other implies a preoccupation with buildings as something apart from their furnishings, as well as the exclusion of traditional crafts, with some of which the museum is definitely concerned.

Even the attempt to define exactly the geographical area which the museum covers by the phrase "Weald and Downland' could be considered a little misleading.  When a title for the original promotion committee was first discussed six years ago, the name adopted was “The Wealden Open Air Museum”; and it was in the central Weald that a site for the museum was first sought. The title was extended to include the Downland only when negotiations for a possible site near Brighton were later under consideration. In the end the magnificent site finally acquired, through the generosity of the Edward James Foundation, lay right at the western edge of the Weald and Downland area. It therefore became logical to include the eastern fringe of Hampshire Within the area to be served. Already four buildings from this area - a treadwheel from Horndean, a base-cruck cottage from near Fareham, a market hall with open arcade from Titchfield, and an early granary from near Winchester, have been acquired. The treadwheel and the market hall have been repaired and re-erected, and the other two are waiting until the necessary funds are available for their repair. This shift to the west means that the eastern Weald is a very long way from the museum, and it may well be that another museum, concentrating on the slightly different traditions of Kent, might some day be established within that area. This is a possibility which we should already take into account in our planning. Considerations of this kind raise very important issues which need clarification at a time when the response of the public, and the general interest which increasing numbers seem to be showing in museums of this type, may lead to their proliferation during the next decade. 

If we may return to the question of policy and, for the moment, set aside the question of catchment areas, for all those Open Air Museums where the objective is the removal and re-erection of buildings (rather than the restoration and preservation of an existing complex in situ as in the case of Coalbrookdale and other museums concerned with the preservation of a unified industrial site, or the group, for example, of abandoned crofters cottages at Auchindrain in the Highlands, or the Waterways Museum at Stoke Bruerne) there is a very real need for a simple, clear and easily understood statement of intent. At the time of writing, the following brief formulation is being considered for Singleton. Our purpose is to create a museum of representative traditional buildings which it is impossible to preserve in situ, rebuilt with associated crafts and furnishings for enjoyment, research and instruction. This is the kind of brief statement which can be printed even on the back of an entrance ticket or membership card, and it expresses fairly well the priorities as seen by everyone of the founding members, but the emphasis, even among those who are in general agreement, can prove to be quite different when it comes to actual detailed policy decisions. Every one of the key words in this apparently clear and simple statement can be differently interpreted, or the emphasis shifted - words such as “traditional”, "furnishings", 'crafts'", “research”, "enjoyment” can all be ' understood in subtly different ways.

There is, nevertheless, agreement that the focus should be on  traditional and truly vernacular buildings of sub-manorial status that the smaller houses and cottages, which rarely survive from early times, should have precedence over larger and more sophisticated buildings, and that only buildings, which cannot be preserved in situ, should be accepted. Logically this means that the museum must, whether directly or indirectly, be actively “preservationist”, ready to give advice and help to any individual society, or local authority concerned with preservation.  Already we can say that three important medieval buildings, which otherwise would probably have disappeared without trace, have been preserved and will be restored through the influence and recommendations of the museum. This we regard as an extremely important aspect of the museum’s work. But it also follows that the scope of the museum itself must be limited by what buildings may become available, and not by what it might be able to acquire, had it the means, in order to create an ideally balanced and representative collection. 

This means that the future content and shape of the Museum can be planned at this stage only in fairly general terms capable of adaptation.  If, for example, a much more determined effort were to be made at national, or regional level, to preserve in-situ all buildings of medieval date at whatever cost, the planning of the Museum would obviously require drastic reformulation. Unfortunately this is a very unlikely contingency; and, looking to the future, we anticipate that more than half of the Museum will be devoted to buildings which ante-date the sixteenth century.  

The position now is that we have thirteen major buildings, five of these have been re-erected, one is being repaired, and seven in store. Of these one is an aisled hall possibly from the thirteenth century (Sole Street), one is a small farmhouse of  about 1400 (Winkhurst), five are from the fifteenth century, three of them farmhouses (Bayleaf, Little Winkhurst  and the base-cruck cottage from Boarhunt), one an upper storey jetted hall; the Crawley Barn and the shop from Horsham), two are from the sixteenth century, (the Market Hall from Titchfield and Pendean Farmhouse), two are from the seventeenth,  (Lurgashall Water Mill and Tyndall Cottage) and two from the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, (the Hambrook Barn and the Petworth barn)  This is the range of dating we can anticipate for the major buildings which we hope to accommodate - perhaps twenty in all if we include three or four more barns, if we are to represent each of the main local types. 

If we look at the smaller buildings (of which we have fourteen already erected or being erected,  and two in store), we find the range of date is rather wider, - from the suppositional “Saxon hut” or the reconstructed Hangleton cottage to the smithy on the charcoal burners huts. Apart from these, the smaller buildings already standing include the treadwheel of about sixteen hundred, two granaries and four cattle sheds from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ,a stable of probably the eighteenth century, and a toll cottage and a windpump of probably the early nineteenth century. In store is the granary from Chilcomb of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century and wagon shed from Selsey which is not likely to be earlier than the nineteenth century. 

There are two reasons for this wide spread of date in the case of smaller buildings. Firstly any reconstruction of early buildings based on archaeological evidence can be attempted only when they are small and relatively inexpensive, and secondly, there are far fewer farm buildings or buildings accommodating traditional crafts surviving from the medieval period than is the case with houses. Because of this uncertainty as to what size or type of buildings may need to be accommodated, the master plan has had to be conceived in terms which provide maximum flexibility. Provision for farmsteads has been made so that each farm, with or without ancillary farm buildings, can be completely isolated from one another and within it own cartilage, less than it would have enjoyed in practice, but at least sufficient to give a sense of separate identity in time and space. The forty acre site will allow for seven, or perhaps eight, such farmhouses. This involves careful landscaping and anticipatory tree planting. 

The rest of the major buildings will be in close association in a nucleus consisting of compact village or small town, centred on the market hall which has already been erected. The acquisition of the market hall necessitated an early planning decision, fixing the exact site and form this village nucleus should take.  Buildings which will form part of the central village complex include the Horsham shop and the jetted upper hall from Crawley. There are also three buildings which could appropriately be situated on the village fringe, although inappropriate to the market square as such. These are, the three storied Tyndall cottage, the aisled hall from Sole Street" and Little Winkhurst, with, possibly, an adjacent barn. At the moment of writing the possibility of an early brick building from Lavant is under consideration. If the Museum agrees to take this building it would certainly be suitable for the market square complex and would be one building representing the early use of brick. At this stage exact planning of the market square lay-out cannot be undertaken as we do not know of what size or shape the individual buildings will be, or how much space each may require. This equally applies to the site as a whole. A building, for example, which is under consideration is a large and substantially built stone and brick dovecot, of possibly the late sixteenth century. Should this be acquired the problem of siting will be a difficult one and might even make acceptance impracticable. The same problem might apply to a building such as an outstanding and important tithe barn. The scale of buildings to one another and to the site must be a paramount consideration. The museum may be faced very shortly with such a problem in a great barn in Hastings. This barn has already been moved once, and reduced by three bays. In spite of its truncated form it is still larger than any buildings we have and where to put it may present a difficult problem. 

The development of the northern part of the site, i.e. from the village group to the A286 is conditioned by planning considerations imposed by the Planning Authority. Logically the village should straggle down towards the mill and the wheelwrights, smithy, stable, etc., but the Authority prefers that there should be no development north of the existing clump apart from the mill, and the smithy complex. The mill itself will probably be the only building in the local Lower Greensand stone, and the Hangleton the only building in flint. The Upper Greensand may be represented in the dove-cot already mentioned, and early brick in the Lavant house. The bias towards timber-framing is inevitable in an area where in any case ninety per cent of the building up to the sixteenth century was in wood and not merely on grounds of practicability and ease of dismantling, repair and re-erection. 

The master plan thus envisages some forty buildings altogether, thirteen or fourteen within the village nucleus, seven or eight farms with, perhaps, an equal or slightly larger number of farm buildings, a mill, and some six or seven buildings accommodating traditional crafts. When, in the early days of the project, a list of representative types of vernacular building from the earliest times to the eighteenth century including reconstructions and crafts within the region served by the museum was prepared and considered in the early stages it included nearly eighty suggestions, even after excluding all secondary variations of plan or structure. If this kind of programme were to be adhered to the site would obviously need extension. My own view is that forty acres and a limit of about forty buildings  is desirable for a number of reasons. 

An enlargement of the site would of course, be welcome to give greater elbow room, and curtilage to building of very different periods, status and use, as well as for the better landscape possibilities afforded, but not for any increase in the number of exhibits. The arguments for limitation are that, firstly, the experience of more than half a century on the Continent with museums such as that at Arnhem, has convinced many administrators that there is a certain size which, if exceeded, leads to frustration, fatigue or simply boredom; that it is in fact desirable to restrict museums both as to their range as well as to their size, if the public is to get most out of what is provided. Secondly, Parkinsons' law begins to operate with alarming acceleration beyond a certain limit, and size also induces an element of impersonality, unavoidable in any large-scale organization, destroying those, qualities of informality which we are particularly anxious to preserve at Singleton; and it leads inevitably to the need for greater restrictions. The third reason is in a different category, it is simply the need, of which planners are now much more conscious, to disperse the amenities available to

the public as widely as practicable.  Apart from obvious problems of car parking, traffic congestion and overpressure on public facilities, the desirability of spreading interest to include residents and static holiday-makers as well as weekend tourists, is in itself an important consideration. 

If limitation, then, is accepted as desirable, it can be achieved in two ways. The first is a reduction in the size of the catchment area, as has already been suggested; the other is the elimination of anything which can be as well done in another museum, and by close liaison with such museums. This can be illustrated by three examples within the three years since the museum was first committed to its site at Singleton. Since then, a museum, concentrating on rural life and agriculture, has been developing at Winchester, only twenty miles to the west. This museum will be able, when it is open to the public to deal far more adequately with a great deal of agricultural history, particularly that of the last hundred and fifty years, than we should over be able to at Singleton. To that extent, therefore, we can limit our aims. The second instance, is the establishment, only ten miles to the north-west of a research centre for the study and reconstruction of Iron Age farm economy, including all the building associated with an Iron Age farmstead, so that again, something which had featured in our original programme, would now be quite unnecessary, since it will be far more completely realised in a venture concerned with that and that only. Lastly, a promotion committee has recently been convened for the creation of an industrial museum devoted to the industrial history of the area. This should relieve us of any responsibility for the early Wealden iron and glass manufacture, and so enable us to concentrate more fully on the vernacular architecture of the region which from the beginning has been our central preoccupation.