magazine spring 2002 winkhurst

House Magazine Spring 2002

Re-interpreting Winkhurst

Richard Harris describes the re-location of Winkhurst Farm and its re-interpretation as a Tudor kitchen.

Winkhurst Farm was one of three buildings dismantled to avoid sewage contamination of the Bough Beech reservoir. Its timbers arrived at Singleton in January 1968 — the first building acquired by the Museum — and were re-erected the following year. It was recorded and analysed by R T Mason and R H Wood and interpreted as “a largely complete and well-preserved example of a small hall house dating around 1370”.

In October 1986 the Museum carried out a major programme of repairs to the building during which various observations were made that enabled to us to propose a completely different interpretation: that it was originally built in the early 16th century (dendrochronological analysis suggests a date in the range 1492–1537) as a kitchen or service block, attached to — and functionally part of — a larger house. Originally it was attached to other structures on two sides (its original west and south sides).

Its site on the Museum was inappropriate both in topography (set high up on a Downland slope rather than in a low-lying Wealden pasture) and orientation (the building’s original east wall was turned to face south at the Museum). The Museum felt that additional structures should be added to the building to represent those to which it was originally attached, but its site precluded this because of the steep slope. We therefore proposed that the only solution was to move it to a more appropriate site and the Museum trustees agreed to this in January 2000. Funding for the project was promised by the Designation Challenge Fund, with the Museum’s contribution coming from Virginia Lyons’ legacy.

The proposal

Winkhurst is to be presented to the public as a Tudor kitchen, fully reconstructed, authentic and operational. It will complement Bayleaf Farmhouse, in that Bayleaf probably had an attached or detached kitchen in the 16th century but it has not survived. Winkhurst can therefore fill in an important gap in our interpretation of Tudor domestic life and enhance Bayleaf, which is furnished and interpreted to a date of c 1540.

The site chosen was formerly in use as a pig yard, on the north side of the site road opposite Bayleaf Farmhouse. It is surrounded by mature high hedges and planting, except for a 20ft gap on the south side, and therefore is a ready-made ‘green display case’. In it, Winkhurst can be correctly orientated and small modern extensions can be added to its west and south sides: the Tudor kitchen will again be part of a larger building complex, making it easier for visitors to understand.

The modern extension on the west side forms a 20ft square room, separated from the Tudor kitchen by a broad entry passage, reflecting the possibility that this could have been the original medieval arrangement. The room will be used to house an exhibition on medieval and Tudor food production, preparation, cooking and eating, based on vivid illustrations from 15th and 16th century manuscripts. In size the extension reflects the wing that was attached to the west wall of Winkhurst when it was dismantled, but which was unfortunately discarded without a survey as it was thought to be much later and therefore irrelevant to the building being saved.

The modern extension on the south wall (gable end) is merely a small ‘token’ to indicate the former existence of a building (pre-dating the Tudor kitchen) in this position, but it has an important interpretative function: the south wall of Winkhurst originally had no infilling studs or panels, and relied on the wall of the earlier building. This relationship can be re-established with the modern extension. It will be used as a modern kitchen (closed to visitors) in which the public health and hygiene requirements of food preparation and storage can be satisfied, and thus support the operation of the Tudor kitchen.

The design and choice of materials for modern extensions at the Museum has been carefully considered. Extensions to Crawley Hall in the Museum’s village group were clad in tile hanging, reflecting their urban character, while small additions to Longport Farmhouse are in oak weatherboarding. For these extensions to Winkhurst we have chosen to use vertical boarding in cedar, a high quality and attractive material but without strong ‘echoes’ of particular historical periods. The cedar will weather to silver grey and, with the hand-made peg-tile roofs, will be very attractive. The exhibition room will have an upper level ‘clerestory’ window of hit-and-miss boarding with internal glazing, while the modern kitchen will have a small single-light casement window in the boarding, and a stable door with a glazed upper half.

In the entrance passageway there will be a wall-mounted display telling the story of Winkhurst and explaining the reconstruction. The modern extensions will feature “sustainable” insulation materials and a “breathing” wall construction which will also be explained in a small display. All in all we expect this renewed exhibit to introduce a strong new centre of interest onto the Museum site.

Click here to see the progress of the construction of the new Winkhurst complex in words and pictures.

Winkhurst Memories

We were delighted last year to hear from Mr Tony Palmer, who worked at Winkhurst Farm for about 13 years from 1948. His memories were very clear and gave us some valuable insights into the modern history of the house and farm.

Mr Palmer lived with his parents at nearby Oak Lodge Farm and started working at Winkhurst when he left school. He was the only employee. The farmer at Winkhurst was Mr Barrow; he was in his 70s, and his sons Dudley and Lionel ran the farm. It was mainly a dairy farm, with beef and poultry as well. The whole farm extended to around 150 acres, but only about 50 acres would normally be ploughed, and most of what was grown was used for feed. Meadow was grazed early in the year, with a crop of hay being taken later on.

“They had no pigs or sheep, no ducks and no geese. The poultry was quite a big thing: black and white speckled Marrans mainly for eggs, and the old hens went to Sevenoaks market, crated up. Part of the Barrow family lived at Goathurst Common, Ides Hill, and they had a dairy. They used to do milk rounds, and the eggs went from one Barrow family to the other and were sold in the milk round. They had horse and cart milk floats and they used to do all of Ides Hill, part of Sevenoaks Weald, Goathurst Common — it was quite a big concern.”

“Both of the cow sheds were milking sheds, two cows to a stand, not a parlour or anything like that. We did later go over to the Alfa Laval sheds but it was all hand milking at first. The open yard was a very rough cobblestone sort of area, between the sheds. … We used to milk them all at one go.”

One of the buildings at the farm was an oast house, which still exists and is now used as a visitor centre.

“The oast wasn’t used as such during my time. Neither the Barrow family nor I were ever there when there were hops. We had an old gentleman who used to come and talk about it, and he remembered the hops. … In the oast house we used to winch up the bags of corn, then we used to put it into a hopper. It came back down into the oast house, and we used to have to keep turning it with shovels to keep it dry so that it didn’t go musty. It was always cleaned first, then it was filtered down to the oast house, then bagged as and when it was wanted, or if any was sold. But we still called it the oast house.”

In the late 1950s there was a great flood which left Tony Palmer with clear memories.

“It was about 1957 or 8, September time, and we were harvesting. We had a very bad storm, which started about 6 in the evening, and the whole valley was flooded right the way through. It reached within a foot of the opening in the oast house, where we reversed the tractor in, and we spent 48 hours up there, we couldn’t get out, stuck in the top of the oast house. We had a lot of pullets in arks, and we lost the whole lot, several thousand, from 3-4 months old to point of lay pullets. It was shortly after this that they started talking about the reservoir — whether this had a bearing on the fact that a lot of water gathered where the reservoir now is, I don’t know.”

The farm straddled a water course, with a large area shown on maps as a pond.

“There was no pond, just the stream and a swamp, a very boggy area going through to where the reservoir now starts. We could graze the area, but it was so boggy we couldn’t do anything with machinery or even the horse. It was nearly all reeds.”

Another area of the farmstead was used as a wood yard.

This was where we made all the fencing stakes and gates, and we had tar barrels there which we put the stakes in, to preserve them. The tar was a black pitch, there used to be a place at Sevenoaks market that did all farm supplies. We used to cut our own chestnut for stakes and hurdles from our own coppice.”

Mr Palmer’s memory of the house and garden is equally vivid.

“In the area to the east of the house there was a very steep bank, with old fruit apple trees on top, and two massive walnut trees behind the house. To the north was the vegetable garden. The lawns and flower gardens were kept immaculate. A path came down and out through the garden gate by the stream.”

“Even though I was young you could distinctly see that the house had a new part and an old part. I remember Mrs Barrow’s range cooker: in the summertime when we worked on the farm she used to bake cakes and bring out drinks for us, when we were working in the evenings. The cooker was called a “Beatonette”, and she used to keep it black leaded and so clean.”

“There was a wooden lean-to on the side of the house. This was the old toilets and wash house. There was a copper in there that had to be heated for hot water. The toilets were next to the house and the wash house further down. All the whites and everything were boiled in the copper, and up behind the walnut trees was where the lines were that Mrs Barrow used for the washing.”