This timber-framed house was built in 1609. It has no open hall, but a brick chimney heats two of the ground-floor rooms and one of the upper chambers. This revolutionary change in house planning took place in the mid-16th century, but Pendean also has some medieval features such as unglazed windows.
Originally situated about one mile to the south of Midhurst, this building started as a small yeoman farmhouse built in 1609. It was converted into two cottages in the late 18th or early 19th century, but had returned to a small scale farm by the present century. Although protected under the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, permission was given for demolition in favour of sandworking.
The structure of the building was little modified by later alterations and has been rebuilt as it was first designed. Outshots which had been added on the east and north sides were omitted in the reconstruction, together with the partitions and staircase which had been inserted when it was divided into two cottages. The original windows have been restored from the evidence of mortices, replacing the varied assortment of wood and metal windows inserted between the 17th and 20th centuries.
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Overview
Dates From
1609
Dismantled
1968
Reconstructed
1976
Original Location
Midhurst, Sussex
Building History
Interior Planning
The building demonstrates the results of the revolution in interior planning which took place in the 16th century — the abandonment of the open hall, as in Bayleaf, in favour of upstairs and downstairs rooms heated by a massive central chimney. This chimney provides flues for the back-to-back ingle-nooks in the ground floor rooms. The fireplace in the end room is the wider of the two and contains the bake-oven, so this room was the kitchen.
The central room, with a slightly smaller fireplace, might have been known either as the hall or the parlour, while the unheated inner room beyond would have been called the buttery or pantry.
The slow transition from medieval to modern is shown by the retention of medieval features — such as unglazed windows with their diamond-section mullions, upper rooms still open to the rafters, and the use of wattle and daub for interior partitions and the upper panels of the outside walls.
In contrast to these medieval survivals, the chimney is a sophisticated construction. Its three main flues serve the three fireplaces — the two ground floor inglenooks and the small fireplace in the middle room upstairs. A vent was formed at first floor level to let smoke into a smoke chamber for curing meat.
The interior brickwork of the chimney has been painted, a technique known as “ruddling and pencilling”. Although surprising to modern eyes, there is ample evidence to show that this practice was almost ubiquitous in the 17th century.
The Interior
The interior has been furnished with replica items to give an idea of the way it was originally used. The pottery has been based on Graffham ware which came from a 17th-century kiln at Graffham, a short distance from Pendean. The oak furniture, treen, basketware, textiles and ironwork have all been based on appropriate 16th and 17th-century originals.
In 1609 Pendean was sold to Richard Clare, the son of John Clare, who held a neighbouring farm called Hurstlands. The property consisted of 40 acres of land, a barn, and herbage and pasture for 100 sheep and 14 bullocks on the common land of Woolavington manor. Richard Clare was a yeoman, higher on the social scale than a husbandman but below the rank of gentleman. Like many yeomen at this date he was illiterate.
Dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) shows that the timbers of Pendean were felled in 1609, so Richard Clare probably started to build the house as soon as he purchased the property. There would have been an earlier house on the site, which was possibly the source for some of the re-used timbers that can be seen in Pendean farmhouse.
Article: Pendean – A Yeoman's House from West Lavington, West Sussex
Pendean – A Yeoman’s House from West Lavington, West Sussex by Dr 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.
The History of Pendean
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.
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.
Room Terminology & 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 & Room Use in Pendean
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).
Top 3 Interesting Facts
Counting the Tree Rings
Dendrochronology, or counting tree rings, was used to accurately date the timbers of this house to 1609.
A Brick Chimney!
The brick chimney represents a revolutionary change in house planning of the mid-16th century, and can be contrasted to earlier open halls.
The Clare Family
The original inhabitants were yeoman farmers, with 40 acres of land, a barn, pasture for 100 sheep and 14 bullocks on common land.