Two Types of Court Hall

􀀋 rclttCologin ln11ilt. U. )lilton l{t-i;i:b Court Hull, W. side. 1'1.A'rt: I S.t:.I(. If= p. JO PLATE lI S.f:.1/ . . \. Milton Hegi,; Court Hull frorn E. Copyriqhl .\'alio,w.l Mmmmenu Record 13. Fordwich Town Hall, from E. TWO TYPES OF COURT HALL By his kindness this section is now added to the general section through the front undercroft (Fig. 1, B), but it must be considered schematic since it was cut some distance to the south of the main section. The ultimate floor, on gritty, orange clay, overlay the presumably original lime floor of the undercroft, on a bed of carbonized matter. Below this were two layers of brown mixed soil, the lower of grittier texture, separated by a layer of ash. The lower layer (probably both layers) was of Roman date and directly overlay the rammed gravel surface of a Roman street, already detected on this line. The Roman levels thus come closer to the early medieval surface in this central point of the City than in more peripheral parts and the blackish soil must be equated with the similar spread which overlies Roman deposits, sometimes to a considerable thickness, in many parts of city.38 Only the top few inches seemed to show any medieval disturbance. MILTON REGIS ComtT HALL {Plate I, B; II, A) Milton Regis, though a port and market town on a royal demesne of unsounded antiquity, subsequently mediatizedB4 was never a corporate borough. It had an elected Portreeve who exercised some of the functions of a mayor in mercantile and day-to-day affairs, but the territorial jurisdiction was handled by the manorial steward at a court held at Easter and M:ichaelmas.ss The Court Hall was used by both functionaries and in it was kept an Elizabethan bushel measure, the dispute about the possession of which ended graciously when the Lord of the Manor, having established that there was no corporate entity to hold it, presented it to Sittingbourne and Milton Regis U.D.0.36 Hasted testifies that, when not needed for public meetings the Court Hall was used as a school, and that beneath it was the town prison.37 The preservation of the Court Hall stands to the credit of many individuals through the difficult years between the effective dismantling of the old manorial regime in the 1920s38 and the restoration of the Hall in the ownership of the local authority in 1959. The last Portreeve, Sydney T. Nicholls, bought the freehold personally in order to save the Hall, and repaired it.39 In 1944 it was damaged by enemy action, but received prompt 'first-aid' through the energetic interest of Mr. M. W. Lashmar, then surveyor to the U.D.C., and the Ancient Monuments 33 Very thick a.nd obvious in the recent Rose Lane-Gravel Path excavation. 34 Not until 1609. 35 Hs.ated, quarto ed., vi, 166, 177. 38 Arch. Oant., xxxix (1927), 165. 37 Hasted, quarto ed., vi, 167. 38 i.e. the extinction of most manorial incidents under the Acts of 1920 and 1925. 31 As note 36, with photos of the Hall in its former condition. 11 TWO TYPES OF COURT HALL Department of the Ministry ofWorks.40 When Mr. Nicholls died in 1945 it was bought by another loyal Miltonian, Councillor T. Buggs and presented to the U.D.C. in 1949. Repairs continued with limited funds, under Mr. Lashmar's guidance, including a bold operation of jacking up the sunken east frame. Finally, in 1957 /8 restoration was completed, with a grant from the Historic Buildings Council and a generous donation from Captain J. M. Clarke, who undertook the work. A new south end-frame was made, incorporating a window from a demolished house at 34 Mill Street, Milton (see Appendix A). The drawings here published are, to some extent, based on the working-drawings prepared by the U.D.C. Surveyors' Department. After a formal opening on 20th May, 1959, the Hall has housed a local museum. The Hall (Fig. 4; Plate I, B; II, A) lies north-south, presenting its unjettied west side to the road and its jettied east side to an area formerly encumbered with out-buildings, but originally a small market-place. Excavation by Mr. D. A. Ponton revealed something of its flint-cobbled surface, beneath which were traces of Anglo-Saxon burials, perhaps part of a much more extensive cemetery.41 The southernmost bay of the Hall had been mutilated and abutted on to a later, half-hipped, cross-wing, of flimsy construction, now removed. The restoration supplies a hipped roof at this end, to correspond with the original hip at the north, and, below the imported window mentioned above, there is now an entrance in the south wall. It is probable but not certain, that this end was originally hipped; it is almost certain that it did not contain an entrance. These features, and any other members for which there is no definite evidence from mortices, etc., are marked in light outline on the plans (Fig. 5, B, C) and in broken lines on the elevations (Fig. 4, B, D).Before the repairs much of the hall had been clad in weatherboarding; this has been removed, and a little of what infilling remained on the upper floor has been retained-both of the original wattle-work, and of a later treatment in which the outer rendering was incised with false ashlar-joints. With the exception of the prison-cell (see below) the Hall is a good example of 'open-frame' building, in which the only heavy timbers are the main structural members and the curved braces; the infill, in quite large panes, was carried on riven spiles (or light studs), which were not meant to be exposed, though some have been left visible on the west side. The Hall is 40 ft. long, in four bays (all five of the full-height main posts on the west remain), but relatively narrow-the upper floor only 17 ft. wide internally. All the major longitudinal members-plates . ,o It is just to recall how much the monuments of Kent owed at that time to the late B. H. St. J. O'Neil and R. W. Wardill. u Cremations and disturbed inhumationa; of. Arch. Oant., lxxviii (1963), with referElnces to local cemeteries (.A.. Meaney, Gazeteer of early A-S Burial situ is misleading); this is cemetery I, its full extent is uncertain. 12 A' A 8 B' 1: f---- \ I I 􀀄 ,, ., 11 1 : .,,,,....,.=1--1-- --.J.􀀏; - - _ WEST FRONT_ _ _ _ _ _ _ 20 Flo. 4. Milton Regis Court Hall. C A B C FORDWICH C -!] 11 '. ! I .. I I I . ' I ltl C1]J .. JI ' ' 11 Ii !} - 1st FLOOR MILTON REGIS N ;J; I, !, 􀀊! 1+1 11! 11 C i l I 11 !li A 1st FLOOR r i GROUND FLOOR 0 5 􀀃 feet i,,,;;=....i-----"""""'""'"""'== 5 Fm.5. - 􀀉 :r: 0 CRANE HO USE - B' 11 11 11 i.􀀃. co 11 11 B --\--N p l TWO TYPES OF COURT HALL throughout the collar-purlin-are in two sections, spliced where they pass the line of the central truss with a normal horizontally halved and bridled scarf (Fig. 6, A),42 The Hall proper, i.e. the upper floor (Fig. 5, B), now appears as an undivided room, and, since all the ties carry ornamented crown-posts, there was clearly no partition up to the ridge. But below the tie the slightly longer southern bay was screened off from the rest (Fig. 4, A); the door from the stair-head was matched by a narrower door at the A TWICE SCALE E F feet 0--=:1=========5 ½ 0 metres li====:::s======= Fxo. 6. Timber details. (B, Canterbury; A, F, :Milton Court Hall; D, E, Milton, Mill Street; C, G, Fordwicb.) u For definition, Arch. Cant., bccti. (1966), 3-5 and fig. 1, D. 15 TWO TYPES OF OOURT HALL east end of the screen, leading to an inner chamber (C).The position of the original windows is indioa.ted by shutter-grooves; on the east there were pairs on either side of the intermediate trusses, one (not restored) lighting the inner chamber; on the west there were single windows in two bays only, balanced by single arch-braces, but a third window was inserted later; on the north there was a central window, later blocked, as it made the presiding official's seat intolerable. Presumably at first he had sat against a side-wall, but the present arrangement, occupying the whole north bay, with traces of a simple 'bar' under the truss, goes back at least to the seventeenth century. There are two tiers of rough seating, with a 'chair' formed by arm-rests on the upper tier, and one tier of side-benches. The dwarfish scale would also have suited the school. The ground floor (Fig. 5, C) was entirely enclosed and divided into two by a longitudinal partition. The eastern half was once subdivided into four small stores by one bay each, two at least of which had small windows with diagonal mullions; the partitions have long been removed and the external appearance is uncertain. The western half was divided into three: the main entrance to the stairway, which retains its solid treads: a cellar for valuables with an irregular arrangement of studs on. the central partition; and the last bay-and-a-third which, in contrast to the rest of the building, are walled with heavy close-studding, and lined with rough edge-to-edge boarding.4s This compartment, which also differs from the others in having no brace from the main post to the floor above, was clearly built to serve as the town prison; it has a heavy door with a pivoted iron bar, attached to which is a small grille fitting into an inspection-hole in the door. The boarded lining of the cell may well be original. What remains of the partition beside the stair is similarly treated. The west wall of the cell had broad boarding on the exterior and was probably also studded, and the rest of the ground-floor on this side, though now brick-filled, was originally open-framed. The close-studding of the cell is a notably early instance for a special purpose, in an otherwise 'open-framed' building.44 Outside the longitudinal partition the only other original studs define windows. The bracing of this typical, mature south-eastern open frame is of two types -a symmetrical arrangement of down-bracing on the jettied east wall (Fig. 4, D; Plate II, A), and arch-bracing elsewhere (Plate I, B).This with the normal late-medieval form of scarfing (i.e. not the splayed scarfs that might be expected until late in the fourteenth century),45 the moderately deep (10 in. by 7 or 8 in.) tie-beams, which bear plain u The cell a.t Tha.xted ia similarly treated. 4' As in the 'Hasarde'; another instance of like date, for show not strength, is Wye College Hall. 46 Cf. Arch. Oant., bead (1966), 3-5, fig. 1, A-0. 16 TWO TYPES OF COURT HALL chamfers, the slightly eccentric arch-braces to the ties46 and the relatively archaic and rather spindly crown-posts (Fig. 6, F), with clumsy caps and bases, rough neck-rolls and broach-stops to the chamfers at the base,47 would seem to point to date about the second quarter of the fifteenth century (a date of 1450 has long been painted over the entrance; it is not far wrong, though it has no known documentary warrant). The Hall is a poor but contemporaneous relation of Canterbury's. FoRDWIOH TowN HALL (Plate II, B) The Court Hall, Sessions House, Common Hall, Moot Hall or, now usually, Town Hall48 served a townlet much poorer than Milton and mediatized for a much longer time (to the Abbot of St. Augustine's) but jealous of its ancient rights as a borough. In Hasted's day, and until 1886, shadowy 'general sessions of peace and gaol-delivery' took place in the Court Hall, and beneath it, as at Milton, was the town prison.49 Attached to it was, and still is, the shed for the crane that provided one of the borough's main sources of revenue.6° Fordwich had a guildhall, possibly on this site, as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century.01 Canon C. E. Woodruff, who thoroughly explored the municipal records, could find no account for building the Hall except a purchase of three logs for the common house in 1474,52 and was inclined to attribute it to that date. In the writer's opinion the upper floor at least, is considerably later in style, and the expenditure cited by Woodruff for tiling the Common Hall in 154468 is relevant to its reconstruction. The tiling refers to the roof-covering, and possibly also to the 'herringbone' brick-nagging of its close-studded frame (Plate II, B).Even if, for a few years, it had had a temporary covering of thatch, the detail seems perfectly consistent with the supposition that the carpentry had been provided, at no recorded expense to the town, by the wealthy Thomas Norton, mayor, with a short interval, from 1530 to 1547,5 4 possibly to 0 Ibid., p. 15, as a progressively marked feature of later barns. 47 Broach, or pyramid, stops, common in stone throughout the fourteenth century and, in Kent, later, a.re rare in timber and usually relatively early. The crown-post, and son:ie details of the frame may be compared with those in the pa.rt of Pitstook (Rodmersham) reconstructed a.t Fox Hill, Sittingboume. '8 C. E. Woodruff, Hist.ory of the Town and Port of Fordwich, 113, distin• guishes between the Court Ha.11 and the 'Town House' or 'Give-a.le House', rebuilt in 1555. tu Hasted, quarto ed., ix, 61, 62. 6° C. E. Woodruff, 'Fordwich Municipal Records', Arck. Oant., xviii (1889), 95, note. s1 Urry, op. cit. in note 19, 130. 61 Woodruff, op. cit. in note 48, 83. 61 Ibid., 86. H ·Wooqrufi', op, CU, in note 50, 87. 17 TWO TYPES OF COURT HALL celebrate the town's liberation from the interfering Abbot. The detail throughout is of the final phase of medieval timber-framing (of. Appendix A), and the building (section, Fig. 7) is the answer to requirements similar to those of Milton but about a century later. The Moot Hall, or Green House, at Elstow, Beds., probably midway between them in date, has the breadth of Fordwich but the long, four-bay plan, with partitioned stores beneath, as at Milton.66 The ground floor is of rubble, of mixed sizes, and contains the prison-cell (smaller than Milton's) and other stores. It is indicated schematically on Fig. 7. The area of the first floor (Fig. 5, A), jettied 0 5 20 fel;lt ......= ..,,,.=-=--"'==$-=-= 0 5 metres -====--z==== Flo. 7. Fordwioh Town Hall. on three sides, is much the same as at Milton, but is in two bays only, ea.eh much longer (nearly 16 ft.) and wider (nearly 22 ft.) than the earlier hall. Folkestone Guildhall seems to have been of similar proportions. 56 The mayor and twelve jurats of Fordwich huddled together on a single bench, with minimal definition of the 'chair', under a simple dais-canopy along the north wall. There are double two-light windows, with three-centred heads, on ea.eh side of the 'high' (north) bay and in the middle of the south wall. A stair, now bounded by Jacobean-type 56 S. E. Rigold, J. Godber, and others, The Moot Hall, liJl,stow, 7-10. 􀁲o This, demolished in 1840, was an irregular quadrilateral, not far off square, jettied on at lea.st two adjacent sides and gabled. The town-prison was near, but not beneath it. S. J. Mackie, Folkestone and its Neighbourhood (1856), 83, 18 TWO TYPES OF COURT HALL balusters, emerged near the middle of the hall, and beside it is the inner chamber or 'jury-room' (C), much smaller than at Milton. Beside seating the corporation side-by-side in awkward dignity, this breadth of planning speaks the same language as the broad and relatively low parlours and solars of the latest 'Wealden' houses.07 The main tie-beam is much deeper than at Milton (1 ft. 4 in.) and the arch-braces or 'knees' correspondingly deep and thin; both bear hollow chamfers. The crown-post is of the type, particularly common in Essex, with fillets running from the head-braces down the shaft (Fig. 6, G).The entire frame, save the blind north wall, is close-studded without visible braces, and the jettying joists are masked by a fascia-board with the usual late roll-andcavetto mouldings (Fig. 6, C). The roof is hipped at each end, with small gablets. Even the ample and regular Kentish carpentry cannot disguise the sense of degeneration from the functional simplicity of an open frame, however homely. The Hall was repaired and the frame exposed at the end of last century, having previously been ma.sked with rendering. Since the dissolution of the borough the Hall has been administered by the Trustees of Fordwich United Charities. APPENDIX A 34 MILL STREET, Mn.TON REGIS This house, totally disguised in brick and very dilapidated, contained relics of two phases of tim her construction: . A. A relatively early cross-wing, with a quite spacious solar, of which the crown-post (Fig. 6, E) was preserved, bearing tight neck rolls and sharply cut, scroll-type mouldings on the cap and base; B. A two-storey hall-block, from which a highly finished window of the upper chamber wa,s incorporated in the Court Hall. It has two, three-centred, arched lights, with recessed spandrels, oyma and cavetto, meeting in a roll, on the mullion and grooves for external shutters; belo,v the sill, which also bore rolls and oavetti the walling was closestudded, and the soffit of the lintel again bore repetitions of roll and large oavetto (Fig. 6, D). The general form of the windows and mouldings is comparable to those at Fordwich and suggests a date for both around the second quarter of the sixteenth century. 67 A contrast, as between Milton and Fordwich, may be seen by comparing the plans and views, especially of the end-chambers, of Chessenden, Smarden, and Pattenden, Goudhurst (the classic late hall a.nd in the writer's view to be associated with the Berkleys and completed with glazing in Katherine of Aragon's time, before 1533), in H. S. Cowper's pioneer article (Arch. Oam., xxix (1911), esp. 182 ff. and 174 ff., respectively). Compare a.lso Appendix A, below, and the now disused hall at Romden, .Smarden, with typically late detail and the pomegranate budge of Katherine of A'ragon. ' · : · 19 6 TWO TYPES OF COURT RALL APPENDIX B POTTERY FROM CANTERBURY GUILDHALL By S. E. RIGOLD and D. C. MYNARD The pottery (Fig. 8) from the strata exposed by removing the west walls of the undercrofts comprises (A) that from the accumulation of brown occupation-soil over the barren black stratum, largely subsequent to Norman undercroft but not visibly disturbed by the construction of the southern undercroft, and (B) that from the backfilling behind the wall of the southern undercroft, the building-trench having been cut into the black and brown strata aforementioned. Group A was not properly sealed, but the strong predominance of sand-tempered sherds of 'Tyler Hill' type, of the middle and later thirteenth century suggests that most of the build-up was of that date -only one, black, gritty sherd was of twelfth-century or earlier fabric. The reconstructible vessels are: 1. Cooking-pot, buff, sand-tempered ware with a little shell; horizontal, undercut rim-flange of a type hitherto called late thirteenth century, but it occurs at Dover perhaps c. 1260.58 2. Bowl of typical 'Tyler Hill' fabric, with orange-buff surface and similar grey, reduced core; clubbed flange to rim, stabbed at regular intervals, with slight inner bead; date as 1-the rim-forms occur together. &o 4. Globose cooking pot, sand-tempered ware with grey core, perhaps a late Tyler Hill vessel, stabbed on shoulder and rim; the upstanding clubbed rim, with inner flange defining a groove for a lid, points towards fifteenth-century forms (as from Temple Manor, Strood),60 but is known rather earlier ( e.g. from Potterspury, Northants., Olney Hyde, Bucks., and Nuneaton, Warwicks.). Parts of jugs include (5, 6) stabbed strap-handles of the usual sandy ware with reddish surface and grey core and (7) one grey, stabbed rod-handle with splashes of white paint and glaze. Group B was more mixed, including several eroded grey, shell-filled sherds, a fine pinkish sandy ware, not typical of Tyler Hill, and perhaps one sherd that approaches late medieval 'hard ware', but 'Tyler Hill' &a Of. Arch. Oant., lxviii (1954:), 132-136, and Figs. 18, 19, nos. 27-32, a pit from Canterbury ('M 15') dated second half of the thirteenth century. But this rim-form occurred in exc11,vations by the writers at Dover Coatie in o. context preceding o. 111,te work of Henry III and the rim-form of no. 2, below, and a variety of Rouon jug, both also found in 'M 15', occurrod o.t Dover CMtle in a context apparently of 124:8 (Journ. Brit. Aroh. Ass,, 3rd Ser., xxx {1907), 112 ff,, nos, II A 1, 2 and II F 2), All the veBSels mo.y ho second or third quo.rter of thirteenth century. 0 Arch. Oam., 11a cited in note 68, Fig. 19, nos. 34, 39. eo Arch. Joum., oxxiii (1965), 130, Fig. 14, 10, 20 l 1 I .... s I • 6 I Flo. 8. Canterbury Guildhall Pottery (¼). Numbers as in text. - 7􀀅1 I 􀀃 TWO TI.'PES OF COURT HALL was also present. The nea.rest to o. diagnostic vessel is (8) a small cooking-pot in a lo.to version of Tyler Hill fabric, orange-brown exterior, darkened on shoulder and e:iq>0sed pttrt of rim, groy reduced core, with slight grooving on the shoulder and the oharactoristio conoavo rimflange that seems to appear towards the middle of t.bo fourteenth century (e.g. at Dover). 22