By Danae Tankard 
Pendean is a timber-framed house of the three-cell lobby
entry type, with an internal axial chimney stack and back to back
fireplaces. This house type, which could also be of two cells, became common
from the late 16th century onwards, and has been described by Matthew
Johnson as ‘closed’ to distinguish it from its ‘open’ hall predecessors.
Dendrodating of its timbers revealed that they had been felled in 1609
suggesting that the house was built at around that date. The house has been
reconstructed at the Museum as it would have been at the time it was built,
including the rear (south) outshut. For the purposes of this article it is
important to note that substantial modifications were undertaken in the late
17th century. The internal oven was removed to make way for a relocated
staircase and outshuts were added to the east and north walls, providing a
total of three external service rooms.
An article by the late Elizabeth Doff on the historic
context of Pendean and the history of its occupants was published in the
Spring 2002
edition of this magazine.
Rather than repeat her findings, this article summarises the
key information before moving on to discuss the social status of the
occupants and evidence for room terminology and room use within the house.
Pendean in
situ in the 1960s, before being dismantled for re-erection at the Museum.
The history of Pendean
A map of Pendean
and Horselands farms in 1781.
The farm called Pendean was situated about one mile south
of Midhurst in a detached portion of the parish of Woolavington (now West
Lavington) and within the manor of Woolavington. The earliest reference to
it is in a court book entry for 1489 when it was a copyhold property
described as ‘one tenement and certain lands with appurtenances called
Penden’. The word ‘tenement’ indicates that in the late medieval period
there was already a farmstead there, including a dwelling house, which may
have been the source of some of the reused timbers that were incorporated
into the 17th century building. A subsequent reference to Pendean in the
court book from 1551 describes it as having ‘by estimation’ 30 acres. In
1564 the farm, along with the majority of other copyholds on the manor of
Woolavington, was converted to a leasehold property for the term of 10,000
years.
Identifying the earliest occupants of Pendean is far from
straightforward. In 1609 John Coldham sold the lease of Pendean to Richard
Clare, a yeoman resident in Woolavington. At that date Pendean comprised a
house, barn and 40 acres of land plus rights of pasture for 100 sheep and 14
bullocks upon the commons and was described as ‘in the occupation of John
Clare and Richard Figge’. John Clare was Richard Clare’s father who held an
adjoining farm called Hurstlands or Horselands. This farm, comprising 100
acres, was a copyhold property held of the manor of Cowdray. We know that
Hurstlands was John Clare’s place of residence since in his will, dated 12
June 1615, he describes himself as ‘John Clare of Hurstland in the parish of
Woolavington … yeoman’. It is therefore probable that at the time Richard
Clare bought the lease Richard Figge was living in the farmhouse at Pendean
and John Clare was farming some or all of the land. The identity of Richard
Figge remains unknown, since his name has not so far been discovered in any
other contemporary records.
The coincidence of the date of the lease with the
dendro-dating of Pendean suggests that Richard Clare built the 17th century
house and it is reasonable to assume that he lived there as successor to
Richard Figge at least until 1639 when he sold his lease to Francis Browne,
3rd Viscount Montagu (lord of the manor of Cowdray) for the sum of £410.
From this date, evidence for the occupation of Pendean becomes tenuous. The
Woolavington court book for the later 17th century continues to describe
Pendean as a leasehold property held by the Montagus but does not record who
actually lived in it. There is a single reference in a lease dated 1681 to a
Nicholas Austen, ‘son of Nicholas Austen of Pingdeane’ in Woolavington.
There is nothing else to connect Nicholas Austen the father with Pendean
although, as discussed below, the description of his house contained in the
probate inventory made after his death in 1697 appears to match precisely
the layout of the house as it would have been at the end of the 17th
century. Like John and Richard Clare, Austen was a yeoman.
The social status of the occupants of Pendean
Whilst evidence for occupation may be problematic, it does
point clearly towards Pendean being a yeoman’s house. Rather than attempt an
exact definition of what a ‘yeoman’ was in the 17th century it is easier to
note some shared characteristics and some differences. Yeomen occupied a
broad rural middle ‘class’, below the ranks of gentry, but above the ranks
of husbandmen and labourers. They derived their living primarily from the
land and typically employed non-family labour. Their houses were usually
larger and better furnished than those of husbandmen (for whom houses the
size of Poplar Cottage were more typical). They were more likely than
husbandmen to hold parish offices such as overseers of the poor or
churchwardens, giving them an important stake in the government and
administration of their communities. Generally, literacy levels amongst
yeoman were higher than amongst husbandmen, although Richard Clare was
illiterate, as evidenced by the ‘mark’ he used on the indenture of sale of
1639.
Richard Clare’s ‘mark’
from the indenture of 1639.
There were, nevertheless, marked variations in wealth
between yeomen. In terms of lifestyle, the wealthiest yeomen could equal or
surpass the minor gentry; whilst poorer yeomen were closer to the ranks of
prosperous husbandmen. While the total value of movable wealth recorded in
probate inventories provides only a crude index to wealth distribution
within and between social groups it is worth pointing out by way of
comparison that when the yeoman William Sandham died in 1678 his movable
estate was valued at £682 10s 10d whereas in 1697 Nicholas Austen’s movable
estate was valued at a more modest £231 15s 3d. At 40 acres Pendean was a
small farm by yeoman standards and much of its value would have been in the
rights of pasture that went with it. We know that Nicholas Austen was
holding land elsewhere in addition to Pendean since his probate inventory
records four barns in what were evidently separate locations.
The 17th century house
By the 17th century traditional open hall houses like
Bayleaf with their clearly obsolete. Many medieval houses, like Walderton,
were modified with the insertion of a chimney stack and second floor.
Others, like Pendean, were built according to a new domestic plan. The
reasons for the decline of the open hall are unclear. The technology of
chimney construction was already available and the cost of adapting
traditional houses was not excessive. Historians agree that the reasons are
more likely to be located in broader social and cultural changes; they
disagree on what those changes were.
Whilst identifying the agents of change may be difficult,
we can be more confident in our analysis of changing patterns of room use
and in room terminology in the ‘closed’ house thanks to the extensive
survival of 17th century probate inventories. A probate inventory was, as
its name suggests, an inventory of the deceased’s movable estate taken
immediately after death. The ‘appraisors’ (usually two) normally began with
cash (‘money in his purse’) and clothes (‘his wearing apparel’) and then
proceeded around the house from room to room listing and valuing the
deceased’s movable goods, before moving outside to list the contents of
agricultural buildings, livestock and crops growing in the fields. Anything
that was not movable was omitted, which means that you might get a list of
cooking utensils but no oven, window curtains but no windows.
A 16th century manuscript plan of a
house to be built in Suffolk. It has an identical plan to Pendean, but the
room names are different. The unheated end room is called the buttery, the
middle room is the parlour, and the end room, with the widest fireplace, is
the hall. The two fireplaces are labelled ‘chimney’, and the stairs are
behind the chimney.
Room terminology and usage
Not all probate inventories list rooms and in others it is
evident rooms have been omitted. Counting the number of rooms within an
inventory or as an average across a sample of inventories is therefore an
inaccurate way of gauging house size. In general, however, 17th century
houses had more rooms than their 16th century predecessors, usually
including a greater number and variety of service rooms. The extent to which
the new domestic plan reflected changes to the use of space within the house
is considered below.
There are 35 probate inventories surviving for the parish
of Woolavington for the period 1600 to 1700, only 12 of which list rooms. To
this sample has been added a further 61 inventories surviving for Stoughton
(in which the house from Walderton was situated) of which 32 list rooms. All
these inventories are held at the West Sussex Record Office and have been
transcribed mostly by John Hurd, assisted by Sue Davis and Anna Jackson.
Analysis of inventories listing rooms reveals that in these two parishes in
the 17th century all houses had a room identified as a ‘hall’, the primary
function of which was eating, sitting and storage. The hall continued to be
the main social space, as with earlier houses like Bayleaf. Some inventories
suggest that cooking was still taking place in the hall, but in the majority
of inventories cooking had moved to the ‘kitchen’.
The word ‘house’ was applied to rooms in which activities
involved production for use (‘bake house’, ‘milk house’, ‘brew house’). In
theory, ‘milk houses’ were used for dairying; ‘bake houses’ for food
preparation and baking, and ‘brew house’, ‘drink house’ and ‘malt house’
were used for brewing and drink storage. However, in practice many of these
rooms served more than one function, depending on the needs of the
household. A few of the larger houses in the sample had a room called a
‘wash house’. This might be used for brewing and dairying but was
distinguished from other service rooms in having a well, providing an
in-house water supply.
In other parts of the country at this date historians have
noted the increasing number of houses containing parlours. The parlour,
which was additional to the hall and the kitchen, was a private sitting room
for the householder and his wife and was where they received guests.
Parlours usually contained the best furniture and furnishings, allowing the
householder to display his wealth and social status. In the inventory sample
used here only a handful of the wealthiest yeomen with substantial houses
had parlours. For example, Edmund Fairmanner, a yeoman of Stoughton whose
movable estate was valued at £725 1s 8d in 1644, had a downstairs parlour in
addition to his hall and kitchen. He also had a milk house, cellar, bake
house and wash house on the ground floor. His hall contained a table, a form
(a bench), a chair, three stools and a pair of andirons. His parlour
contained a table, two forms, a chair, three stools, a side cupboard, a
carpet, a cupboard cloth, three cushions, a pair of
andirons and a curtain rod. The disparity in the level of ‘comfort’ offered
in these two rooms is apparent. The presence of a curtain rod suggests that
the parlour had glazed windows.
A ‘chamber’ was a general synonym for
‘room’ and could be located downstairs or upstairs. Upstairs chambers,
usually identified by their position above the downstairs room (e.g.
‘kitchen chamber’, ‘hall chamber’), were used for sleeping and storage,
including the storage of household goods such as linen and agricultural
products such as grain and wool.
Room terminology and room use in
Pendean
Plan
of Pendean showing the original layout of c1609 and the alterations made in
the mid-17th century.
Actually matching an inventory to a
standing building is difficult. No probate inventory survives for Richard
Clare. However, we are fortunate in having a probate inventory for Nicholas
Austen dated 1697 which seems to match what we know of the layout of Pendean
in the late 17th century. The inventory (which is damaged down the right
hand side, preventing a complete transcription) describes a total of nine
rooms, six downstairs and three upstairs. Downstairs there was a kitchen,
with a fireplace, used for cooking, a brew house (self explanatory but
possibly also used for dairying), a cellar (for the storage of liquid,
probably ale and cider), a milk house (for dairying), a hall with a
fireplace for sitting, eating and storage and a bake house for food
preparation and baking. Upstairs the inventory records a hall chamber with a
fireplace, used solely for sleeping, a little chamber and a kitchen chamber,
both used for sleeping and storage.
Austen’s inventory confirms that the
Museum’s interpretation of room usage within Pendean is substantially
correct. We know that the room on the east side of the chimney stack was the
kitchen because of the size of the fireplace and evidence for the earlier
existence of an oven. The central room with a slightly smaller fireplace
would therefore have been the hall and the smallest, unheated, room at the
west end was probably the milk house. The internal oven, which we know was
removed in the later 17th century, must have been replaced by a new oven in
one of the two additional outshuts, becoming the bake house. The hall
chamber with the fireplace was evidently the main bedchamber as the Museum
has interpreted it; its status is reflected in the fact that it was the only
one of the three chambers not used for storage.
Enclosed living
In many ways the revised domestic plan
offered by Pendean and other houses like it is not radically different from
the way that space was used in its open hall predecessors, like Bayleaf,
although the rigid distinction between upper and lower ends is no longer
apparent. Matthew Johnson has offered the most detailed, and challenging,
interpretation of the social and cultural changes that produced the ‘closed’
house, seeing it (amongst other things) as a corollary of the ‘closure’ of
the landscape, with the enclosure of common land, and the increased
marginalisation of women and servants, reflected in their removal from the
open hall to enclosed service rooms. However, Woolavington experienced no
early enclosure and it is open to question whether one can talk about
increased social segregation in a house of the size and layout of Pendean,
leaving the relationship between historic ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ unresolved.
The less exciting, but still plausible, explanation that the ‘closed’ house
was simply more comfortable to live in should not be dismissed.
Bibliography
M Johnson,
Housing culture: traditional architecture in an English landscape (London,
1993).
M Overton, J Whittle, D Dean and A
Hann,
Production and consumption in English households, 1600-1750 (Abingdon,
2004).
