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Tudor Cottage, Cellar Hill, Lynsted. Building structural history details were explained following a survey carried out by the Royal Commission on the Historic Monuments of England between 1986 and 1992: House of 2 early 16th-century phases, both of which present problems of interpretation. 1st phase is hall and upper end of smoke-bay house; 2nd phase is elaborate parlour. Phase I (1514)-1520*. Timber. Floored hall and jettied upper end. Hall heated by smoke bay to S. Former lower end was contemporary, as indicated by pegs for rails on posts at rear of smoke bay, and by projecting sill. Position of main entrances unknown - could have lain in demolished lower end. At ground-floor level, smoke bay did not extend right across to front wall; the passage between smoke bay and front of house is floored, but there does not appear to have been any way through closed trusses from chamber over hall or chamber over lower end: the 1st floor could have been a smoking chamber only reached from within smoke bay. Upper end to N has unusual plan: end bay was entered from hall by doorway in normal position beside rear wall, but it did not lead directly into the main room -instead, main room was entered from a passage which lay beside rear wall and led to external doorway in end wall (cf Summerfield Cottage, Woodnesborough); window in end wall had projecting moulded sill. On 1st floor, truss between upper end and hall bays was open, making a large 2-bay chamber. Position of stairs unknown owing to replacement of many joists. Upper-end wall close studded, the rest in large framing. Collar-rafter roof. Tree-ring dating: 9 samples were taken from posts, spine beams, end sill and tie beam between upper end and hall bays. All but 1 sample dated and 2 had signs of bark (VA 20). Phase II 1518-(1528)-1538*. Timber. Large parlour bay, constructed on site of former lower end, so that Phase I's upper end must have been relegated to service function; jettied on all 3 external sides. Plan appears to have chimney stack backing on to smoke bay, with stairs to its W. Doorway in front wall opened against the stairs, making a lobby entry: although this is scarcely credible at so early a date, there is no evidence that either fireplace or entrance are secondary. Further external doorway at rear, beside end wall. Ground-floor windows in front and rear walls have deep projecting moulded sills. All 3 external walls are close studded. Collar-rafter roof. Tree-ring dating: 9 samples were taken from joists. All samples dated (VA 23). 55035 (Level 3 IP D)
Figure 1: Tudor Cottage Floor Plan Heating in early two-storeyed houses From the beginning of the 16th century, houses were being built which were designed to be of two storeys with enclosed fireplaces. An agreement of 1500 to build a three-cell house in Cranbrook specified that it was to be lofted throughout and heated by a chimney with two fires,10 and although no surviving two-storeyed houses of quite such early date have yet been firmly identified, they certainly survive from a few years later. A number have been dated by tree-ring analysis, and these include Court Lodge, Linton, of c 1506*, Little Harts Heath, Staplehurst, 1507*, Rocks, East Mailing and Larkfield, 1507/8*, Place Farmhouse, Kenardington, 1512/13* and Tudor Cottage, Lynsted, c 1514*. Rocks is unusual and may not have been a normal dwelling, but the others are well-appointed houses which were fully two storeyed from the start. Court Lodge and Place Farmhouse are early continuous^ etty houses and seem to have been heated by external lateral stacks in the position suggested above for those late open halls with enclosed fireplaces.
Figure 2: Cross section of parlour ceiling beam, Open halls (i.e. the earlier form, with no ceiling between the ground floor and the rafters) continued to be built until well into the century, however.
Figure 3
The parlour end of Tudor Cottage displays oriel (boxed) windows. These are scarce in houses built before the end of the 16th century. Three of the four surviving examples have elaborately moulded sills.
Acknowledgement. This material is reproduced, with permission, from: A Gazetteer of Mediaeval Houses of Kent, S Pearson, P S Barnwell and AT Adams, 1994; The Mediaeval Houses of Kent: an Historical Analysis, S Pearson, 1994, and The House Within: Interpreting Mediaeval Houses of Kent, P S Barnwell and A T Adams 1994. Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England. ©Crown copyright. NMR . Author: Bob Baxter |
One of the notable features of the new two-storeyed houses of the early 16th century is that they are among the first to show a marked improvement in the quality of the ground-floor room at the ‘upper’ end, which was now almost certainly used as a parlour. At Tudor Cottage the parlour ceiling joists received unusual attention for their date, and are the most decorative in the house.
One of the windows (upper floor on the north side) still shows the vertical, diamond-section timber mullions that were originally unglazed. The window (from ‘wind eye’ ) was closed by sliding a wooden shutter-board sideways, from its internal storage position, along grooves cut into timbers above and below.
Figure 4: Oriel parlour window, c 1528, with moulded sill, projecting beyond the main line of the wall