South East Weald & Downland Open Air Museum, Singleton, West Sussex PO18 0EU

One of the best open air museums with over 50 buildings from the south east of England.

Part 1 - Some background and visiting

This is one of the earliest of the open air museums and still one of the best. Over fifty buildings are set on a 40 acre site on the edge of the South Downs and really do give the impression of walking back through history.

The buildings dating from the C10th to C19th, come from Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire and were either falling down or threatened with demolition. They have been carefully dismantled and reassembled here.

The Court Barn is home to the popular TV programme ‘The Repair Shop’ and access is limited to specific days when there is no filming.

The buildings include a mix of rural, urban and industrial buildings. Many of the interiors have been furnished to give an impression what it would have been like to live and work in them. Gardens have been recreated around many of the farmhouses with the herbs, vegetables and plants that would have been grown at the time.

There is even a working Tudor kitchen in Winkhurst Farmhouse.

A working water mill still provides flour. which can be bought from the shop.

The surrounding landscape is being worked traditionally with shire horses and C19th machinery. Sussex cows and sheep graze the pastures with sheep on the higher slopes. Traditional crops are grown using the medieval strip system. Woodland is managed traditionally to provide timber, fuel and charcoal needed for industrial processes.

There are demonstrations of traditional crafts including butter and cheese making and blacksmithing.

The site is divided into four main areas with urban buildings around the ‘market place’, industrial buildings around the lake and a rural buildings scattered over the rest of the site, along with a woodland area.

Many of the buildings have staff who are knowledgeable, entertaining and keen to talk. All the buildings are carefully maintained and do give a good idea of what it must have been like to live in them. There are information boards for each of the buildings as well as a very comprehensive guide book.

Entry is through the the Museum Shop, which is next to the cafe and overlooking the lake

Allow plenty of time for a visit - several hours, if not a full day - are needed as it is a large site. Also try and choose a dry day, as there is little shelter when walking between buildings!

Website

Map of site

The photographs were taken on visits in 2007 and 2026.

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[Eleanor]

Weald and Downland Museum cont - The Market Place area

The ‘Market Place’ area is the first area to visit and has a mix of buildings from small towns and villages.

The first building is the C19th wooden Toll House Cottage from Beeding in Sussex, complete with its list of tolls and wooden gates. (The toll board displayed here comes from near Petworth, but is similar to what would originally have been here.) The house was built between 1808-1810 and was typical of many in the area. The money collected was used to repair and maintain the toll roads. Many toll keepers combined their duties with other agricultural work, leaving their wives to collect the tolls. The Trust was wound up in 1885 and the toll house sold.

It was simply furnished with a living kitchen and bedroom..

The most prominent building in the Market Place is the Market Hall from Titchfield in Hampshire. This dates from 1620 and is a lovely timber frame building with brick infill. At street level is an open arcade where licensed traders could set up stalls. The small chamber under the stairs was used as a temporary lock up for offenders.

The room on the first floor was used as the town council chamber. It has massive wooden beams supporting the tiled roof.

Behind is a Medieval Shop from Horsham in Sussex, which is thought to date from the C15th and is made up of two units. Only the right hand unit had access to the upper floors by a staircase at the back of the building. This was probably where the owner lived with the larger left hand unit being rented out as a lock-up shop.

Each of the units had a shop at the front with a small hall or smoke bay behind. This had an open fire and was open to the roof.

Goods were sold over a counter through a wide opening overlooking the street. This had a heavy wooden shutter which was used to close the shop at night.

Next to it is the C15th timber frame Upper Hall from Crawley in Sussex.

The windows are now glazed, although they would originally have been unglazed with wooden shutters. The ground floor was divided into smaller units and may have been storerooms, shops or possibly an inn. They now house the library. The large room on the upper floor was probably a communal meeting room.

On display in the ground floor of the Upper Hall are some late C16th painted panels from Ivy House, Fittleworth. The black and white abstract designs of leaves and flowers covered the walls - a sort of poor man’s tapestry. These were discovered during alterations to the building and have been carefully removed for display here.

At the far end of the row is the timber frame Medieval Hall House from North Cray in Kent with the brick built House from Lavant next to it.

North Cray Medieval Hall House is a good example of the medieval hall house which was very common across the south of England and Wales in the C15th.

In the centre is a large hall with a central hearth, which extending to the rafters.

Windows are unglazed with wooden shutters.

One one side was the buttery and pantry with a chamber above.

On the other side, stairs lead to the best chamber or solar.

Next to medieval Hall House is a simple brick building from Lavant. The building is thought to be early C16th but was destroyed by fire in the late C18th, which probably explains the 1773 date stone above a window. It was probably originally an upper hall with an undercroft used for storage. It is now the Education Room.

The Tin Tabernacle from South Wonston dates from 1908 and was quickly assembled using corrugated iron sitting on a brick or rubble foundation. They were intended as temporary providing short term accommodation for the congregation until enough money had been raised to build a permanent church.

The inside of the church is simply furnished with an altar at one end and harmonica and font by the door.

There is a small vestry near the altar.

The Stoughton Bell Frame is late C16th/early C17th and came from the C11th Church of St Mary in Stoughton. and originally had three bells.

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[Eleanor]

Weald and Downland Museum cont - The Workshops and industrial area

Every town and village had a selection of workshops and a selection have been reconstructed behind the Market Place.

The C19th Plumber’s Workshop from Newick, Sussex had a plumber’s shop on the ground floor with a glazier above. It was made of prefabricated sections which were bolted together on site.

The Carpenter’s Shop is another small C19th wooden shed. The large windows provided a good light for the workbenches. Above is a shuttered opening through which ladders could be pushed for storage. The inside is very much as it was left by Mr Dale, the last person to use the building.

The Joiner’s Shop from Witley in Surrey dates from the late C19th/early C20th and is typical of the many small workshops found throughout the area.It is a much more substantial wooden building raised on brick supports.

It was originally the carpenters’ and joiners’ shop for a building firm employing several men. The large windows let in a lot of light and the large doors allowed large items out. Later on, they also made coffins and had a stone yard.

At the back of the building was covered storage for wagons, including a Romany caravan.

Beyond this is the industrial area and lake which functions as the mill pond for the Water Mill.

The Pugmill House from Redford in Sussex is an open six sided brick and stone building with a tiled roof. It would have contained a horse powered pugmill used to prepare clay for brick making. The clay needed to be exposed to the elements over the winter months to break the heavy lumps into manageable form. It then had to be ‘worked’ to the right consistency. This was originally done by treading of the the clay and turning it with spades. This was labour intensive, hard work and time consuming.

The pugmill replaced this manual process. It is basically an upright barrel open at the top and containing blades attached to a vertical shaft.These ‘grind’ or churn up the clay. These were turned by a horse treading round in a circle, although some brickworks used wind or water power. The clay comes out of the base of the barrel as a smooth, workable paste that can be poured into moulds ready to be fired for brick making.

Next to the pugmill house is a long Drying Shed from Petersfield. Clay was poured into moulds and was allowed to air dry in here for 3-6 weeks before being fired in a kiln. This helped prevent the bricks from cracking in the kiln. The wooden side screens gave protection from wind and sun.

Beyond these two buildings is the C19th wooden Saw Pit Shed from Sheffield Park in Sussex. These were once common on country estates and provided cover for the saw and other tools. It was open on one side to allow large tree trunks to be rolled in. Bark and sap wood were first removed before the log is levered into place over the pit, resting on two ‘bearers’ and held in place by iron ‘dogs’. Sawyers worked in pairs. The top sawyer was responsible for sharpening the saw and keeping the cut straight .

Across from these buildings is the brick Bakehouse from Newdigate which was in use until the 1930s. As well as selling from the shop, bread was also delivered around the local area by pony and trap. It is still used occasionally to bake using flour from the water mill. it became a bakehouse delivering bread from the adjacent shop as well as delivering by pony and trap around the local area.It is still used to bake on site, using flour milled in the watermill.

The Water Mill from Lurgashall in Sussex is an overshot mill which is fed by a sluice from the lake.

The original building dates from the C17th and it continued in use until the 1930s. It still grinds flour that is sold in the shop.

It had two sets of millstones. One was used the frond wheat for flour. The other was used for animal feed. which provided power for two sets of millstones.

Near it is a small Granary on raised stone pillars. These are mushroom shaped to stop vermin climbing up them and into the grain.

The thatched white painted building is a Model Dairy from the Eastwick Park Estate in Surrey. It dates from 1807 with two octagonal rooms connected by an open covered walkway.

One room was the scalding house with a boiler to sterilise equipment. (When the building was restored, the feed hole for fuel was plastered over..)

The other room was the cool room.

At the far end of the site, by the Repair Shop Barn, is the mid C19th Smithy from Southwater in Sussex. It is typical of many village smithies, cheaply built using materials readily available. It is a rough and simple timber structure with a brick wall providing protection around the forge itself. As well shoeing horses, the smith was also responsible for making and repairing farm equipment.

On the side of the lake is a small wooden Wind Pump from an old clay pit near Pevensey in Sussex. It was used to pump water out of the workings. These pumps were once quite common before being replaced by steel pumps. The sails would have been covered by canvas and are supported on the central post. The circular rudder allows the sails to turn on the central post to face into the wind. An iron rod inside and gears in the centre post and gears transmit power to the water pump below.

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[Eleanor]

Weald and Downland Museum cont - The rural buildings near the market place

Moving away from the lake and market place, is the rural area, with buildings dating from the C13th.

The first building is Whittaker’s Cottages, at the back of the market place.

The pair of small cottages were originally built facing the newly opened Epsom to Leatherhead Railway near Ashtead in Surrey in the mid 1860s. They are named after Richard Whittaker who sold his land to the railway company, who only needed a narrow strip for the track. They sold the rest of the land to a local baker who built the cottages as cheaply built speculative housing for renting to railway or agricultural workers. The cottage were small with two rooms on each floor and a washroom and privy at the back. Water came from a pump outside the cottages.

One of the cottages has been left unfinished inside to show how it was built. The foundations and chimney were brick. The rest was timber frame which would have been infilled with wattle and daub and the outside covered with weatherboards.

The second cottage is furnished as it might have been in the late C19th. The front room on the ground floor contains the only fireplace with a cast iron range and served as both kitchen and living room.

The back ground floor room had a sink and would have been used for storing and preparing food. Stairs led from here to the bedrooms.

The front bedroom had a small fire place and would have been used by the parents.

At the back is the wash house and privy.

Both houses had a small garden which would have been used to grow food for the family. The plots were divided into three areas on a three year rotation with potatoes being followed by leeks and root crops and then peas and beans. Some cottagers may also have kept chickens and a pig fed on household scraps.

Just down from Whittaker’s Cottges is the long Open Sided Vehicle and Implement Gallery displaying some of the site’s wheeled vehicles and agricultural implements.

Across the road is is the attractive thatched C17th brick and flint house from Walderton in Sussex, surrounded by a cottage garden.

This had been built around an earlier medieval timber frame building with an open hall and cross passage. In the C17th the outside walls were completely rebuilt and a new floor inserted under the roof with a massive brick chimney stack, which separated the house into two halves. The open windows with wooden shutters were replaced by glass.

Only the eastern half was heated with fireplaces, with a living room on the ground floor with a bed chamber above reached by a winding staircase. The rooms have been simply furnished as they might have been in the C17th.

Behind the fireplace in the bedroom is warm, dry storage area.

The original hall in the centre of the house is now the bakehouse with a bake oven.

The walls were plastered over, and the internal construction is now exposed in places. More stairs to the chamber above.

The western half of the house has five unheated rooms; three on the ground floor and two upstairs. The ground floor rooms were used for storage and are reminiscent of the medieval buttery and pantry.

Across the road is the School from West Witteringham which has a small brick built stable next to it. Both of these were closed for restoration in 2026.

The school was converted from an open ended cart shed in the late 1820s and provided a very basic education for six poor children in the parish, funded by a charitable trust. Children from dissenting or Roman Catholic families were barred from attending. Most of the work was done on slate boards with only the more experienced and able children allowed to use exercise books. A cast iron stove provided heating in winter.

Beyond this is Sole Street Medieval House. Although this was condemned as unfit for habitation in 1960, it was occupied until 1967.

This is a C15th timber frame building with a thatched roof. It is described as an aisled hall house, with a central hall that would have been open to the roof and with a central open hearth. On one side was a cross passage with the servants quarters beyond. On the other side was the solar. It is is now an interactive family hub.

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[Eleanor]

Weald and Downland Museum cont -The farm area and agricultural buildings.

The delightful Poplar Cottage dates from the C17th and was brought to the museum from Washington in Sussex. It is a distinctive shape with a hipped roof at one end and a gable end at the other.

It was built on a small plot of land on the edge of the common and is described as a ‘wasteland cottage’. The population was expanding rapidly in the C17th and there was rapid development of small cottages along road verges, pasture and the edges of common land. The land belonged to the Lord of the Manor may have encouraged developments like this for the rent they generated. It was probably the home of a landless labourer.

It is a timber frame structure with wattle and daub infill and surrounded by a garden complete with bee skeps. The small stone area is the outside wall of the smoke bay.

There were two rooms on the ground floor, with another two above, which served as bedrooms.

The gable end room ws the main living area and was heated with a fire burning in a smoke bay, an early form of chimney. This contained the smoke from the fire and was a precursor to a chimney.

The other was used as a service room or for storage.

The two first floor rooms have exposed rafters and thatch. They were mainly used for sleeping but were also used to store grain of wool that needed to be kept dry.

Set well back from the road is Tindall’s Cottage which is similar to Poplar cottage but with a tiled roof and a chimney. It was built around 1720 and the oak used in the timber frame was reused from earlier buildings. It was originally a small holding surrounded by 26 acres of land.

The nucleus of the farm site is made up of three buildings, Bayleaf Farmstead, Winkhurst Tudor kitchen, and Gonville cottage which is original to the site and is a private residence. There are vitually no picture of Gonville Cottage on the web. This one was taken by Anthony Houghton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

These buildings are surrounded by a range of different agricultural buildings.

Bay Leaf Farmstead from Chiddingstone in Kent is perhaps the most impressive house in the Museum. Dating from the early C15th, it was built by a prosperous yeoman farmer and is a lovely timber frame building with a tiled roof. Although it has been much altered since then, it has been restored and furnished as it might have been around 1540.

The cross or screens passage runs between the doorways on either side of the house.

The service rooms are on one side, reached through two arched doorways. The buttery was used for storing vessels and utensils. The pantry was used for storing food. Some food preparation may have taken place here, but by the C16th most houses had a separate kitchen.

The central hall extends the height of the building and had an open fire in the centre with smoke escaping through vents in the roof or between the roof tiles. It is sparsely furnished. Beyond it is the parlour which was a private living space.

Above the parlour is the solar which was the family’s private bed sitting room, complete with its own latrine. It is not known if this emptied into an open cess-pit in the garden or whether they were removed through a covered conduit. The wooden shutters in the solar slide vertically in grooves cut in the timber.

The upper chamber above the service rooms would have provided additional sleeping as well as being used for storage.

The garden around Bayleaf and the farmstead is what a mid C15th landscape may have looked like. The garden would have provided herbs, fruit and vegetables for the household. Vegetables were mainly cabbages, turnips, leeks, onions, peas, beans lettuce and spinach beet. There were probably gooseberries, raspberries and wild strawberries, blackberries as well as crab apples, plums and damsons. The orchard would have contained apple and pear trees.

Winkhurst Tudor Kitchen dates from the early C16th and was part of a farm but detached to reduce fire risk.

It was used for smoking food, brewing and washing as well as cooking. It has a single room open to the roof and a central open fireplace. In a corner is a water boiler with a clay oven next to it.

The kitchen is now used to prepare and cook the type of food that would have been eaten by the occupants of Bayleaf Farmhouse. This includes hand made butter, griddle bread cooked over the open fire, fried chewits (pastry filled with spinach, onion and other vegetables) and pottage.

Agricultural Buildings
Around these two buildings are examples of hay barns, granary, cattle sheds, stables and cart sheds,which were all needed for running a prosperous farm.

The small Threshing Contractors Van provided living quarters and shelter for the itinerant labourers who travelled round the countryside operating and maintaining the steam powered threshing machines.

The most impressive building is the Barn from Cowfold which is a similar date to Bayleaf and has been reassembled near Bayleaf to give the impression of what a late Medieval farmstead may have looked like. The central section was used barn was used for threshing. The open ended shelters at the ends provided cover for animals, implements or carts.

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[Eleanor]

Weald and Downland Museum cont -The isolated buildings around the site.

Leaving behind the farm area, and set among the trees is is Pendean Farmhouse
dating from 1609.

It was originally a yeoman farmer’s house from near Midhurst in Sussex, surrounded by 46 acres of land as well as grazing land. It is an attractive timber frame building dating with brick infill at the bottom and wattle and daub above. It still has unglazed windows with shutters.

The interior has been furnished much as it may have been in the C17th.

It is typical of mid C17th buildings as the open hall has been divided by a massive central brick fireplace with three main flues which heated two ground floor rooms and one room on the first floor.

There was a vent at first floor level which let smoke into a small smoking chamber which was used to cure meat.

One of the ground floor rooms would have been the kitchen with a bake oven. Off this was the brewhouse. Later a bakehouse was added to the kitchen. The unheated buttery and pantry were beyond the hall

Following the track beyond Pendean farmhouse, is the Thatched Hall from Boarhunt in Hampshire. This dates from the late C14th as is a good example of a medieval open hall with a central truss roof. A cruck or long curved timber rising from the ground supports the roof timbers.

The door leads into the central hall with its open fireplace. A low screen to the right of the door separated a service room from the hall. Beyond the hall and separated from it by a wattle and daub wall to the roof, was the solar.

Following along the track is Hangleton Medieval House which looks like a real witch's house set among the trees. This is a reconstruction of a C13th building from the deserted village of Hangleton in Sussex.

Around 1300, Hangleton had been a thriving village with a population of around 200, making their living from farming. The village was in decline by the C14th as a result of the Black Death and a series of wet summers when the harvest didn’t ripen, and disease among the sheep and cattle. By the C15th there were only two households left.

It is a small flint rubble building with a thatch roof. Buildings like this were widespread across the chalk downlands and this would have been part of a nucleated settlement with small cottages along a central street. Each householder held about 11 acres of land used to feed his family.

Inside there were two rooms, separated by a wattle and daub wall. One had a central open fireplace. The far room had a small oven.

The track continues round through the woodland past the woodyard and charcoal burners camp to the reconstructed C10th Anglo Saxon Hall House, which is set back from the road, down a signed footpath. This is based on archaeological evidence of a similar house found at Steyning.

The thatched building is constructed with a simple timber frame with daub smothered over hazel wattle The walls were made of daub over a very basic timber frame. There was a central hearth with smoke escaping through the thatch.

Further along the path towards the Gridshell building is a late C17th Treadwheel and House from a farm in Catherington in Hampshire. The treadwheel is housed in a small wattle shed made from split hazel with a thatched roof. It was originally built over a well nearly 300ft in depth. It has been reconstructed in working order over a well 12ft deep.

The main shaft was hewn from a single piece of timber, and is mounted on iron trunnions. Each rim of the wheel is supported on a set of four main spokes,

It is smaller than most donkey wheels, so was probably worked either by a man of a boy. The bucket descended under its own weight but took 50 turns of the wheel to raise it.

The iconic Gridshell building was the first to be constructed in the UK, using lightweight oak lathes bent into shape.

As well as housing collections of tools and artefacts, it is also a workshop for building conservation and training.

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[Eleanor]

Weald and Downland Museum cont -The woodland area

These pictures were taken in 2007.

The hillside above the museum is covered by mixed deciduous woodland and includes an area of hazel coppice.

Medieval woodland was an important source of fuel and building material. It also provided foraging for animals. The woodland was carefully managed by coppicing. The new growth was used for fencing and hurdles, as well as wattle panels in timber frame houses and barrel hoops. It was also used for making charcoal needed in iron production.

By the path is the Wood Yard with sawpits, mechanical saws and a timber crane.

In a clearing is a traditional charcoal burners’ camp.

Charcoal gave twice the heat of the same weight of wood and was made by burning wood in a kiln under carefully conditions restricting the air supply. This had to be watched all the time, so the charcoal burners and their families lived in a small shelter on the site. Cooking was done over a small fire outside the shelter. Best clothes for Sundays were kept in a small metal chest.

Charcoal production was an important industry in the Weald as it was needed as fuel for iron making which was an important local industry.

Building the kiln was critical to success. Heavier pieces of wood were used to build a small triangular central flue. Pieces of wood were then laid around the sides to build up the clamp. The top was covered with thinner pieces of wood, leaving a small hole in the centre. Burning embers of charcoal were dropped into the flue and once the kindling was alight, the flue and clamp was sealed with turf and earth. The aim was to ‘cook' the wood slowly. The kiln had to remain sealed during this process and more turf and earth added to fill in any cracks.

When the charcoal was ready ready, water ws used to put out the fire and the kiln was opened up. The charcoal was spread out to cool and sorted.

Later iron kilns replaced the traditional earth kiln.

Traditional methods of charcoal burning survived until the Second World War. Now the demand for charcoal is limited to certain chemical processes, artist’s pencils and barbecues.