In the absence of actual examples, we are driven to glean what information we can from other sources. There remain to us a good many of the deeds of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, by which, on the impropriation of the benefices, provision was made for the permanent endowment of vicarages in them. In the majority of cases the old rectory house was assigned as the future vicarage house, and no detailed description of it was necessary; but in the deed by which the rectories of Sawbridgeworth, in Herts, and Kelvedon, in Essex, were appropriated to the convent of Westminster, we are so fortunate as to find descriptions of the fourteenth-century parsonage houses, one of which is so detailed as to enable any one who is acquainted with the domestic architecture of the time to form a very definite picture of the whole building. In the case of Sawbridgeworth, the old rectory house was assigned as the vicarage house, and is thus described—“All the messuage which is called the priest’s messuage, with the houses thereon built, that is to say, one hall with two chambers, with a buttery, cellar, kitchen, stable, and other fitting and decent houses, with all the garden as it is enclosed with walls to the said messuage belonging.” The description of the parsonage house at Kelvedon is much more definite and intelligible. For this the deed tells us the convent assigned—“One hall situate in the manor of the said abbot and convent near the said church, with a chamber and soler at one end of the hall and with a buttery and cellar at the other. Also one other house in three parts, that is to say, for a kitchen with a convenient chamber in the end of the said house for guests, and a bakehouse. Also one other house in two parts, next the gate at the entrance of the manor, for a stable and cowhouse. He (the vicar) shall also have a convenient grange, to be built within a year at the expense of the prior and convent. He shall also have the curtilage with the garden adjoining to the hall on the north side, as it is enclosed with hedges and ditches.” The date of the deed is 1356 A.D., and it speaks of these houses as already existing. Now the common arrangement of a small house at that date, and for near a century before and after, was this, “a hall in the centre, with a soler at one end and offices at the other.”[308] A description which exactly agrees with the account of the Kelvedon house, and enables us to say with great probability that in the Sawbridgeworth “priest’s messuage” also, the two chambers were at one end of the hall, and the buttery, cellar, and kitchen at the other, the stable and other fitting and decent houses being detached from and not forming any portion of the dwelling house.
Rectory House, West Deane, Sussex.
| A Entrance door. B Windows. | C Cellar window. D Entrance to stair. | E A recess. F Fire-place. |
| ft. | in. | ||
| Length of exterior | 35 | 6 | |
| Width of interior | 14 | 10 | |
| Thickness of wall | 2 | 6 | |
| Height of rooms | 8 | 0 |
Confining ourselves, however, to the Kelvedon house, a little study will enable us to reconstruct it conjecturally with a very high probability of being minutely accurate in our conjectures. First of all, a house of this character in the county of Essex would, beyond question, be a timber house. To make our description clearer we have given a rough diagram of our conjectural arrangement. Its principal feature was, of course, the “one hall” (A). We know at once what the hall of a timber house of this period of architecture would be. It would be a rather spacious and lofty apartment, with an open timber roof; the principal door of the house would open into the “screens” (D), at the lower end of the hall, and the back door of the house would be at the other end of the screens. At the upper end of the hall would be the raised dais (B), at which the master of the house sat with his family. The fireplace would either be an open hearth in the middle of the hall, like that which still exists in the fourteenth-century hall at Penshurst Place, Kent, or it would be an open fireplace, under a projecting chimney, at the further side of the hall, such as is frequently seen in MS. illuminations of the small houses of the period. There was next “a chamber and soler at one end of the hall.” The soler of a mediæval house was the chief apartment after the hall, it answered to the “great chamber” of the sixteenth century, and to the parlour or drawing-room of more modern times. It was usually adjacent to the upper end of the hall, and built on transversely to it, with a window at each end. It was usually raised on an undercroft, which was used as a storeroom or cellar, so that it was reached by a stair from the upper end of the hall. Sometimes, instead of a mere undercroft, there was a chamber under the soler, which was the case here, so that we have added these features to our plan (C). Next there was “a buttery and cellar at the other” end of the hall. In the buttery in those days were kept wine and beer, table linen, cups, pots, &c.: and in the cellar the stores of eatables which, it must be remembered, were not bought in weekly from the village shop, or the next market town, but were partly the produce of the glebe and tithe, and partly were laid in yearly or half-yearly at some neighbouring fair. The buttery and cellar—they who are familiar with old houses, or with our colleges, will remember—are always at the lower end of the hall, and open upon the screens, with two whole or half doors side by side; we may therefore add them thus upon our plan (H, I).
Conjectural Plan of Rectory-House at Kelvedon, Essex.
The deed adds, “Also one other house in three parts.” In those days the rooms of a house were not massed compactly together under one roof, but were built in separate buildings more or less detached, and each building was called a house; “One other house in three parts, that is to say, a kitchen with a convenient chamber at one end of the said house for guests, and a bakehouse.” “The kitchen,” says Mr. Parker, in his “Domestic Architecture,” “was frequently a detached building, often connected with the hall by a passage or alley leading from the screens;” and it was often of greater relative size and importance than modern usage would lead us to suppose; the kitchens of old monasteries, mansion houses, and colleges often have almost the size and architectural character of a second hall. In the case before us it was a section of the “other house,” and probably occupied its whole height, with an open timber roof (G). In the disposition of the bakehouse and convenient chamber for guests which were also in this other house, we meet with our first difficulty; the “chamber” might possibly be over the bakehouse, which took the usual form of an undercroft beneath the guest chamber; but the definition that the house was divided “in three parts” suggests that it was divided from top to bottom into three distinct sections. Inclining to the latter opinion, we have so disposed these apartments in our plan (F, E).