Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Grade II listed building. Main construction periods 1467 to 1999

Monument Types

• SITE (Medieval to Modern - 1467 AD to 2050 AD) + Sci.Date

Full description

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The following text is from the original listed building designation:
TQ 54 SW SPELDHURST BULLINGSTONE LANE
3/467 Little Laverall 17.8.87
GV II
Cottage. Probably late medieval origins (late C15/early C16) with C16 and C17 improvements, modernised circa 1986. Exposed timber-framing on coursed sandstone footings. Brick stack on sandstone base, brick chimneyshaft. Peg- tile roof.
Plan and Development: 3-room plan house facing south east. Centre room has a large axial stack backing onto the unheated left (south west) room and the right room has a projecting gable-end stack. Present layout is the result of C19 and C20 alterations.
House apparently began as a late medieval open hall house occupying the right (north eastern) 2-room section. The left room (the present central room) was probably open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. The evidence is not clear cut. It could be a C16 house with the hall heated by the stack and floored over from the beginning. The right room, the original service end, was 2 storeys from the beginning and had an end jetty. The stack here was inserted in the C19. There is clear evidence here of a through passage alongside the hall and the small room to right was originally a srvice room; buttery, pantry, dairy and the like. Left end room was added in the C17 as an unheated crosswing of uncertain function. Roof was altered later (probably in the late C18 or C19) when the top of the stack was rebuilt and a fireplace provided for the first floor room.
House is 2 storeys with probably C17 lean-to outshot to rear of left end and another on right end made up of reused timbers is probably C20.
Exterior: Irregular 3-window front of C20 casements containing diamond panes of leaded glass. Some of the frames are probably C19. First floor windows are C19 gabled half-dormers, their gables hung with scallop-shaped red tiles. Front doorway left of centre and contains a C20 part-glazed plank door with coverstrips behind a contemporary gabled porch on rustic posts. The 2 bays of the medieval frame provide evidence of its original layout although this is much clearer on the rear wall where the blocked passage doorway and end-jetty can be seen. The C17 frame of the left end wall is 2 bays and includes 2 small first floor windows; both 3 lights with diamond mullions. Main roof is gable-ended to right and hipped to left.
Interior: Well-preserved early carpentry. The right room, the former service end, has chamfered and step-stopped axial joists with stops interrupting the chamfers along the line of the missing passage lower screen. The upper (hall side) passage partition is also missing. There is a chamfered and step- stopped crossbeam along its line with only very shallow and roughly cut stave holes along its base. Axial beam across the hall is somewhat awkwardly let into the crossbeam. It and the joists are chamfered with step stops. A rail of the original left end wall passes across the chimneybreast suggesting that the stack is secondary. The large sandstone fireplace has a replacement oak lintel. It includes some brick rebuilding including a large brick bread oven with removeable iron door. At first floor level the wall plate and tie beam are quite low and the tie is broken through to provide a doorway. No main timbers above the tie. Roof of common rafter couples with mortises for lap- jointed collars and evidence of hip arrangements each end of the medieval 2- bay section. The rafters are dark but not definitely smoke-blackened. The C17 extension has evidence of a clasped purlin cross roof construction which was latered to a hip when a brick fireplace provided to the first floor room.
This is an interesting and intriguing house, apparently a rare example of a small 2-cell late medieval hall house. Presumably it was related to the large medieval house close by to the south east, The Cottage and Holly Cottage (q.v.).
Listing NGR: TQ5442341137

Previously TQ 54 SW 45

Dendrochronology dating gave a date range of 1533-1552. (2)

English Heritage, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest (Map). SKE16160.

<2> Vernacular Architecture Group, ADS Dendrochronology Database, Vol. 23, Pg. 57 (Website). SKE17391.

Sources and further reading