This reconstruction of a flint cottage is based on archaeological evidence from excavation of the deserted medieval village of Hangleton in Sussex.
The cottage was probably built in the 13th century and abandoned in the 14th century. The main room has an open hearth and the inner room has an oven.
The reconstruction is based on the remains of two cottages, of roughly similar dimensions, excavated at Hangleton in 1952–54. Judging from a combination of historical and archaeological evidence, the village was in decline by the middle of the 14th century as a consequence of climatic, economic and other factors to which the Black Death of 1348–1350 was a major contributor. From then on the village continued to decay, so that by 1428 there remained only two households.
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Overview
Dates From
13th–14th century
Excavated
1952–54
Reconstructed
1971
Original Location
Hangleton, Sussex
Building History
Background Information
The reconstruction is based on the remains of two cottages, of roughly similar dimensions, excavated at Hangleton in 1952–54 by the Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society and the (then) Ministry of Public Buildings and Works.
Hangleton is a deserted village site on the Downs above Hove. Judging from a combination of historical and archaeological evidence, the village was in decline by the middle of the 14th century as a consequence of climatic, economic and other factors to which the Black Death of 1348–1350 was a major contributor. From then on the village continued to decay, so that by 1428 there remained only two households.
Before its final abandonment, one of the cottages had been repaired by the addition of a buttress at one corner, and it is safe to assume that the cottage dates back at least to the late 13th century.
The inner room contained an oven, and a portion of the wall at this end was still preserved to a height of about three feet. The total height of the walls could be determined by the amount of tumbled flint.
Above the level of the eaves, however, everything remains conjectural — the form of roof construction, the kind of timber used, the pitch of the roof and the material of the roof covering. Straw thatch has been used in the reconstruction, but it might equally have been wooden shingles, turf, or various types of thatch, such as broom or furze.
Some of the buildings at Hangleton were covered with clay roofing tiles, small Horsham Stone slates, or real slates — the latter brought by sea from South Devon and Cornwall.
In spite of conjectural elements, it was decided that this full-scale archaeological reconstruction was justified as the cottage represents a form of building in rough flint rubble which was once widespread over the whole of the chalk area. The plan and interior space are also probably fairly typical of many cottages of the early Middle Ages.
Alternative reconstructions are possible. For example, some of the smaller cottages at Hangleton were first constructed with a framework of timber posts. The posts were let into the holes in the chalk, with one at each corner of the building and at least one in each of the longer sides. The spaces between the posts were probably filled originally with wattle and daub, but later these panels were removed and replaced with flint. This style of building appears to be somewhat earlier than that of all-flint rubble construction.
Full descriptions of the excavations at Hangleton were published in Sussex Archaeological Collections Vol. 101 (1963) by E W Holden, and Vol. 102 (1964) by J G and D G Hurst.
Article: Hangleton & Its Medieval Village
Hangleton & Its Medieval Village by Dr Danae Tankard
The medieval downland village of Hangleton was situated just above the village of Hove about two miles from the sea, with an estimated population in the early 14th century of approximately 200. Hangleton’s nearest towns were New Shoreham (4.4 miles) and Lewes (10.5 miles) and it was presumably to one or both of their markets that the villagers bought their surplus produce for sale.
The manor of Hangleton formed part of the Fishersgate Half Hundred, together with the neighbouring manors of Aldrington and Portslade, situated within the Rape of Lewes (Figure 1). The lords of the manor from 1291 to 1446 were the de Poynings, a Sussex gentry family with lands in Sussex, Kent, Suffolk and Norfolk.
A Medieval Village Uncovered
The village site was excavated between 1952 and 1954 by Eric Holden and John and Gillian Hurst when plans for additional housing, overspill from Hove, threatened to (and subsequently did) remove all traces of the village for good (Holden, 1963; Hurst, 1964). In total the remains of 12 building groups (20 buildings) were excavated, covering a period from the 13th to the 15th century. These were spread out in a linear development away from the village church along two tracks, track 1 which corresponds to what is now Hangleton Way and track 2, which has disappeared (Figure 2).
The remains of two ‘longhouses’ were found, measuring approximately 40ft by 20ft, each divided internally into three rooms. All the other buildings were less than 30ft long, some with two rooms, some with one. The remains of six ovens were found, two within what otherwise appear to be living houses, three in separate outshuts (two in one outshut and one in another) and one within a freestanding kitchen. The pattern of building combined with the dating of pottery sherds suggested that the period of densest occupation was from c.1250 to c.1325 and that the population of Hangleton contracted substantially at some point after that.
The Museum’s Cottage
The Museum’s cottage is an amalgam of two buildings (buildings 3 and 11) because no house was sufficiently well preserved to allow for reconstruction on its own evidence. Both of these buildings contained two rooms, an inner room with a large domed oven and an outer room with a hearth cut into the chalk floor. There has always been some debate about their function: although they have been interpreted as living houses the possibility exists that they were free standing kitchens or bakehouses. The structure of the buildings also remains conjectural.
When Holden excavated the site he found the remains of timber post-holes below the flint walls in building 3 and concluded from this that a 12th century timber framed building was rebuilt with flint in the 13th century. The Museum’s cottage was therefore built with flint walls to a height that seemed to be consistent with the amount of tumbled flint that was discovered.
However, the possibility exists that the timber frame was not replaced but was simply underpinned with a flint footing when the wooden post-holes rotted. If this was the case the infill could either have been flint or wattle and daub. Alternatively, a timber frame could have been encased in flint walls.
Medieval Settlements
The location of the Museum’s cottage suggests an isolated building, set away from its neighbours and without any associated agricultural buildings. In fact the cottage would have formed part of a nucleated village (as can be seen in Figure 2) in a pattern of settlement found in other medieval rural communities. A typical medieval nucleated village plan consisted of a street with peasant holdings or ‘tofts’ arranged on either side.
The regularity of some medieval settlements with each house occupying the same sized piece of land along a street or a green suggests that they were the result of a deliberate planning or re-planning by the lord. Other settlements were ‘polyfocal’; that is, small groupings of holdings in close proximity to each other, representing a more organic development. The plan of Hangleton uncovered during excavation, although incomplete, indicates that the village fell in the latter category.
The typical toft would include a separate living house, a building for animals (e.g. a byre or sheepcote) and a barn or granary for crop storage grouped around a yard. A living house might be divided into one, two, three or more rooms separated by screens and walls. The hall was the main social space in a house and might serve numerous functions, including eating and sleeping. Chambers were used primarily for sleeping but might also be used for storage.
The number of people accommodated within these small buildings can only be guessed at: the average peasant family size was approximately five but actual family size would have varied enormously depending on wealth (wealthier households tended to have a larger number of children), survival and position within the life cycle (e.g. young, old): the poor widow in Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale lived in her ‘narwe’ (i.e. small) two-roomed cottage with her two daughters. Kitchens were usually freestanding buildings or, as in Hangleton, outshuts attached to living houses.
Hangleton’s Peasant Community
Hangleton’s peasant community would have been diverse and contained within it its own social gradations. The most important of these was the division of the peasant population into free and unfree tenants (or freeholders and villeins), the principal distinction being that the former were protected by common law and the latter were not, but were instead subject to the control of the manorial lord, and required to provide labour services in exchange for holding their land.
But whilst unfree status was viewed as inferior, there was no direct correlation between wealth and land tenure: unfree tenants could hold more land and thus be wealthier than their free neighbours. So there was also a social division within the peasant community based on wealth. The relative wealth of the Hangleton villagers can be assessed from their tax assessments but it is reflected too in the archaeological evidence.
The two largest buildings excavated at Hangleton – the ‘longhouses’ – rather than being used to house both people and animals were more likely to have belonged to more substantial peasants, one of whom may have been the village reeve.
Farming & the Peasant Economy
At the start of the 14th century the area of coastal Sussex in which Hangleton was situated was one of the wealthiest regions in England. The primary crops were wheat and barley but this part of Sussex was also the country’s leading legume producer, grown both as an animal feed and as part of the peasants’ staple diet. More intensive agriculture made possible by the elimination of a fallow period on the best arable fields meant that sowing rates were higher than elsewhere in England.
A system of sheep-corn husbandry allowed sheep farming to coexist with the extensive cultivation of grains. The sheep were penned in folds on arable overnight so that their dung and urine would ‘tathe’ (i.e. manure) the ground before being returned to their sheep walks during the day. As a food animal sheep were kept more for their milk than meat but it was as a source of wool that they gave their best returns.
The majority of Sussex wool and wool-fells were exported through Shoreham, Chichester and Seaford, with more eastern ports such as Pevensey and Winchelsea playing a lesser role. The Hangleton flock may have been relatively small in comparison with other coastal Sussex manors – possibly about 400. In contrast we know that in 1340 the neighbouring communities of West Blatchington and Patcham were pasturing 1000 and 2000 sheep respectively.
The chalk downland above the village is covered with a mantle of clay with flints making it difficult to cultivate, and indeed excavations carried out there in 1989 and 1990 in advance of the construction of the A27 Brighton bypass found no evidence of medieval cultivation. It is probable that this area was used as sheep pasture with crops grown on the light chalk soils to the south of the village (Gardiner, 2002).
A fairly crude estimate of the average size of peasant holdings in Hangleton can be made on the basis of the number of peasant-owned plough teams recorded in the Domesday Survey of 1086 (five plough teams ploughing an average of 100 acres each a year). On this basis each householder held approximately 11-12 acres of land, a figure which correlates almost exactly with the amount of land needed to feed a peasant family of five (estimated at between 10-12 acres). In practice of course the size of individual peasant holdings would have varied widely depending on wealth.
Production on the peasant holding, whilst inevitably on a small scale, could nevertheless be quite diverse. Peasant livestock in Hangleton included cows, sheep, chickens, geese, pigs and bees. We know that the villagers of Hangleton grew flax used in the manufacture of linen cloth and hemp, used to make canvas, coarse cloth and cordage. Based on what is known about crop production on peasant holdings elsewhere it is probable that they also grew onions, leeks, peas, beans and vetches.
Whilst most of this would have been for household and livestock consumption any excess would have been available for sale, boosting the peasants’ cash income. Peasants were only partly self-sufficient and what they were unable to produce themselves – things such as ironwork, pottery and textiles – had to be bought.
In addition they needed money to pay rent and taxes. Income could also be generated from by-employment such as some sort of craft or industry. The main evidence for by-employment in Hangleton is the ovens which were almost certainly used for baking bread for sale outside the village and may in addition have been used for drying barley malt for ale brewing. In the late 13th and 14th century ale production was largely a domestic activity undertaken by women to supplement the household income.
A Deserted Medieval Village
In 1300 Hangleton appears to have been a thriving community of approximately 200 people, making a living predominantly from agriculture. By 1340 the village was in trouble. In that year the villagers of Hangleton told tax assessors that many lands in the parish were barren and uncultivated and that they were unable to live by their lands and tenements alone (the implication being that they were obliged to seek some kind of supplementary employment in order to make ends meet). Even allowing for an element of exaggeration intended to reduce their tax burden the complaints of the villagers point to some kind of economic crisis. So what had happened?
There are two interrelated explanations. Firstly, the period c.1275 to c.1315 was characterised by rapid population growth putting increasing pressure on land. During this period peasant holdings tended to become smaller as land was subdivided to accommodate adult children. The effect of this was to create a large class of impoverished smallholders, with insufficient land (perhaps as little as one acre) to support their households.
The second explanation is the agricultural crisis of 1315 to 1322, which saw a succession of poor harvests caused by wet weather and accompanied by disease among sheep and cattle. It is estimated that in some parts of the South East crop yields fell during these years by as much as half and the resultant famine may have increased mortality by between 10% and 15%. Food prices soared and opportunities for casual employment decreased as producers (both large and small) tried to cut production costs.
The combination of these factors may have spelt disaster for Hangleton: villagers’ holdings were too small to support their families and they were unable to afford the additional food that they needed.
But this was disaster on a small scale in comparison with what was about to befall them. In 1348 the Black Death arrived in England, wiping about between 40% and 70% of the population. In Hangleton the population may have fallen by about 60%, leaving a post-plague population of between 65 to 80 people. The immediate consequence of the reduced peasant population was that there was more land available for the survivors.
In Hangleton two 14th century buildings, possibly barns, were built over the remains of four earlier living houses. These were replaced at a later point, possibly in the late 14th century, with a farm complex comprising a living house, freestanding kitchen, both with tiled roofs, and barn (Figure 3).
It is this farm complex that may hold the key to understanding changes in the size and social composition of the village. Whereas c.1300 there was a sizeable community of peasants, most of whom were small landholders, by the late 14th century the village was more sparsely settled with larger and wealthier peasant landholders, whose social status may have been reflected in the increased sophistication of their buildings. This explanation, whilst only partially supported by the evidence, would nevertheless be consistent with the general trend in landholding elsewhere in the country in the post-Black Death period. The population of Hangleton continued to decline and by 1428 when there were just two householders the village had effectively ceased to exist.
References
- Gardiner, M, ‘Excavations at Hangleton’ in D Rudling (ed), Downland settlement and land-use: the archaeology of the Brighton Bypass (London, 2002), 87-9.
- Holden, E W, ‘Excavations at the deserted medieval village of Hangleton, part I’, Sussex Archaeological Collections 101 (1963), 54-181.
- Hurst, J and Hurst D G, ‘Excavations at the deserted medieval village of Hangleton, part II’, Sussex Archaeological Collections 102 (1964), 94-142.
Top 3 Interesting Facts
Medieval Village
This cottage is an archaeological construction, one of two at the Museum, based on evidence from the deserted medieval village of Hangleton.
Flint from the Ground
Locally a plentiful supply of flint is found, and this is used to construct the walls of Hangleton Cottage.
The Black Death
The village of Hangleton declined and became deserted for various reasons, including the impact of the Black Death of 1348–1350.