Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Grade II* listed building. Main construction periods 1433 to 1966

Monument Types

• HOUSE (Medieval to Modern - 1433 AD to 2050 AD)
• END JETTY HOUSE (Medieval to Modern - 1508 AD to 2050 AD) + Sci.Date

Full description

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The following text is from the original listed building designation:
TQ 53 NW SPELDHURST SPELDHURST ROAD, LANGTON GREEN
7/588 Manor Cottage 25.10.73 II*
Former farmhouse. Late medieval, probably mid/late C15, with late C16/early C17 improvements, refurbished and modernised in the mid C20. Timber-framed. External walls at ground floor level underbuilt with C20 Flemish bond red brick with dentil cornice, framing above is hung with peg-tile. Main brick stack on coursed sandstone base and staggered brick chimneyshaft. Peg-tile roof.
Plan and Development: 3-room plan house facing west. Axial stack between larger central room and right (south) room serves back-to-back fireplaces. Left end room has C19 or C20 end stack and contains the C20 staircase. Various C19 and C20 extensions to rear, mostly service rooms with kitchen rear left with a disused stack but also a sitting room rear right.
Main block contains the extensive remains of a late medieval open hall house. This had a 3-room-and-through-passage plan with storeyed ends either side of the central hall with was open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. Service end at the right (southern) end was originally divided into two by central axial partition (probably buttery, dairy, pantry and the like). Passage this end in the hall. Principal bedchamber or solar over the left end inner room.
Major late C16/early C17 modernisation. Hall was floored over and, it seems, the house was turned round. An axial stack serving back-to-back fireplaces was inserted into the passage with lobby entrance in front of it. Service partition was removed and this end became the parlour. No obvious evidence that the hall was used as a kitchen. Former inner room relegated to service use.
2 storeys with attic rooms in the roofspace and various single and 2-storey additions to rear.
Exterior: Is largely the result of the C20 modernisation. Regular but not symmetrical 4-window front of C20 casements with diamond panes of leaded glass. Original front doorway and probably later lobby entrance doorway was right of centre but now blocked by a window. Present main doorway into rear extensions. Tall and steeply-pitched roof is hipped to left and gable-ended to right. Similar windows around the other sides including the extensions.
Interior: Main block contains the extensive remains of the late medieval hall house. Large-framed walls are exposed at first floor level and, unusually, survive down to the sill on the rear wall; timbers of large scantling with curving tension braces. Both end rooms have large axial joists and empty mortises in the central joist of the right room testify to its original use as 2 service rooms. Much of the upper (left) end crosswall has been removed at ground floor level but there still remains here the moulded dais beam with brattished crest. Late medieval 4-bay roof. Hall with open truss with closed trusses each end. All 3 trusses, including the closed trusses, with massive arch braces to the tie beam (removed from the open truss). Crown post superstructure. Hall open truss has square-section crown post with chamfered and step-stopped edges, chamfered cap and base. Common rafter A-frame trusses of large scantling with lap-jointed collars. Hall floored in late C16/early C17 and the axial beam and joists are chamfered with step stops. Contemporary stack and hall has a good large sandstone fireplace with a chamfered oak lintel. The fireplace behind it must have been rebuilt if there was one here in the late C16/early C17.
Manor Cottage is an interesting well-preserved late medieval hall house with good late C16/early C17 improvements.
Listing NGR: TQ5445939576

Dendrochronology dating gave a date of 1508/9. (2)

End-jetty house with a formerly open 2-bay hall. The upper end only was formerly jettied. (3)

Historic England, Archive material associated with Manor Cottage, Speldhurst, Listed Building (Archive). SKE57171.

<1> English Heritage, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest (Map). SKE16160.

<2> Vernacular Architecture Group, ADS Dendrochronology Database, Vol. 22, Pg. 44 (Website). SKE17391.

<3> Pearson, S., Barnwell, P. S. & Adams, A. T., 1994, A Gazetteer of Medieval Houses in Kent (Monograph). SKE8010.

Sources and further reading