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Abstract
Two groups of medieval aisled houses in Yorkshire, one in the Halifax area, the other in the Vale of York, have long been known to students of vernacular architecture. The houses in the two groups show many points of similarity but also significant differences in structural forms, plans and distributions. This article reviews these buildings, asking questions of why aisled construction might have been adopted and how the observed differences might be explained, suggesting that social differences between the two areas, as well as local building traditions, were responsible. Questions are also raised about why it is only in these two areas in the north of England that medieval aisled houses have been recorded. Issues relating to problems of dating the buildings due to the lack of dendrochronological sampling are highlighted.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful for assistance given by a number of individuals: David Cook for access to the archive of the Yorkshire Vernacular Buildings Study Group and for help beyond the call of duty in assistance with illustrations; my editor, Roger Martlew, for producing the map; Nigel Wilkins of the Historic England Archive; David Hunter and Rhona Finlayson of the West Yorkshire Archaeology Advisory Service for help with information and illustrations; Darran Joseph for supply of images; David Cant and Paul Barnwell for reading and commenting on early drafts of this paper; and the members of YVBSG, especially Barry Harrison; for over fifty years they have been compiling records of vernacular houses across the county.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 RCHME 1986, Rural Houses.
2 Hutton, ‘Timber Framed Houses’.
3 Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire.
4 This account is drawn from a number of published sources. The fullest is Emery, Greater Medieval Houses. See also Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, 17–28; RCHME 1987, North York Moors; and Ryder, Medieval Buildings.
5 RCHME 1987, North York Moors, 15–7.
6 Harrrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, 21, 24; Leach and Pevsner, Yorkshire West Riding, 331; Emery, Greater Medieval Houses, 346–7.
7 Michelmore, ‘Elland Hall’; Webster and Cherry, ‘Medieval Britain’.
8 Pearson, Medieval Houses of Kent, 54–7; Alcock and Miles, The Medieval Peasant House, 36–9, 151–2.
9 Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, 21–3. The Royal Commission believed that Canon’s Garth was more likely to have been of aisled construction, without a base-cruck truss: RCHME 1987, North York Moors, 18–9.
10 Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, 22.
11 For Harewood and Farnhill, see Emery, Greater Medieval Houses, 335–36, 339–44. The tower at Harewood had two halls, lower and upper: the lower was the more public and ceremonial room.
12 RCHME 1986, 196.
13 It is interesting that aisled construction continued to be adopted in York’s guildhalls, the form being suited to gatherings of large numbers of people and to ceremonial events: the city guildhall was built 1449–55, St Anthony’s Hall in the mid and late-fifteenth century. The Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, like St Anthony’s Hall at first-floor level, was built earlier, in the mid-fourteenth century; RCHME, York Central Area, 76–93.
14 The ‘Middling sort’ is a term generally adopted by historians to describe to describe social levels between the aristocracy and the labouring class and is mainly applied to developments in the early post-medieval period. It is used here as a convenient means of identifying the same social levels in the late-medieval period: Wrightson, Earthly Necessities, 289–306. Daniel Defoe, in Robinson Crusoe, refers to ‘the middle Station of Life’.
15 Moorhouse, ‘Rural Houses’, 821, note 229, in Faull and Moorhouse, West Yorkshire.
16 Wrathmell, Domestic Settlement, 4–6. Although there was very little archaeological evidence for cruck construction at Wharram Percy, documentary sources indicate the common use of crucks in the Wolds, leading to the cruck house being proposed as the model for peasant housing.
17 To avoid excessive endnotes, information on many of the houses cited can be found in RCHME 1986, Rural Houses, 27–36. Other sources are individually referenced.
18 Atkinson and McDowall, ‘Aisled Houses’.
19 Stell, ‘Pennine Community’; Stell, ‘Pennine Houses: AnIintroduction’, 5–24. See also Pacey, ‘Elland Buildings’. Copies of both dissertations are available in Halifax Local Studies Library.
20 Mercer, English Vernacular Houses, 14–6. Three aisled houses were recorded in the Boothtown area of Halifax, ‘within a few yards of one another’.
21 RCHME 1986, Rural Houses; Westerdale, ‘Shibden Dale’.
22 Ambler, Old Halls and Manor Houses, Plate XCVII, available online at https://huddersfield.exposed/wiki/The_Old_Halls_and_Manor_Houses_of_Yorkshire_(1913)_by_Louis_Ambler
23 RCHME 1986, Rural Houses, 111–2, 207.
24 Two houses in Shelf are possible cases. The post-medieval house at Jaque Royd, with a datestone of 1680 in its principal range, has a transomed window lighting the housebody, with no chamber over. At Low Bentley, the housebody is ceiled at a higher level than the adjacent rooms, suggesting that in an earlier timber-framed house the room was originally open to the roof: Westerdale, ‘Shibden Dale’, figures 61, 63,113.
25 Westerdale, ‘Shibden Dale’, Fig. 11, Distribution of timber-framed houses. The Figure plots 53 timber-framed houses, of which 29 were aisled, in 15 townships around Halifax.
26 For example, High Bentley Farm, Shelf (not to be confused with the nearby High Bentley, Shelf), YVBSG report 1674.
27 Mercer, English Vernacular Houses, 222–3; Atkinson and McDowell, ‘Aisled Houses’, 78; RCHME 1986, Rural Houses, 29.
28 Giles and Cant, ‘Broadbottom’.
29 Lower Bentley Royd, Sowerby; Atkinson and McDowell, ‘Aisled Houses’, 86; (Town House, Norland; RCHME. Rural Houses, 29.
30 For High Bentley, see Atkinson and McDowell, ‘Aisled Houses’, 84–5. For Lower Hollins, see RCHME, Rural Houses, 219.
31 A similar phenomenon has been observed in Kent, where upper and lower ends of a medieval house were often rebuilt, removing evidence for their early form: it is suggested that the replacement indicates that the end bays were not capable of adaptation: Pearson, Medieval Houses of Kent, 45.
32 Also at Lower Bentley Royd, Sowerby: Atkinson and McDowell, ‘Aisled Houses’, 86.
33 For Broadbottom, see Stell, ‘Pennine Houses’, 6–9 and Giles and Cant, ‘Broadbottom’.
34 For the evidence for original heating in the cross wing of a late-medieval gentry house in the area (New Hall, Elland cum Greetland), see RCHME, Rural Houses, 196.
35 See, for example, the use of the smoke bay in Kent: Pearson, Medieval Houses of Kent, 108–11; and in Surrey: Harding, ‘Timber-Framed Early Buildings’, 130–3.
36 For similar evidence at High Bentley, see Atkinson and McDowell, ‘Aisled Houses’, 84–5.
37 Dam Head, Northowram, has a timber-framed wall below the arcade plate, screening the rear aisle from the housebody. In this double-aisled house, only the front aisle was open to the housebody. Report on Dam Head in West Yorkshire Archaeology Advisory Service Historic Environment Record and RCHME 1986, Rural Houses, 29.
38 Stell, ‘Pennine Houses’, 6–9.
39 Smith, Houses of the Welsh Countryside, 86–7; Suggett, Houses and History, chapter 4, 57–83.
40 Mercer, English Vernacular Houses, Plate 4 and 222–23.
41 See, for example, Tabley Old Hall, Cheshire: RCHME, Monuments Threated or Destroyed, 27–8; Little Morton Hall, Cheshire: Cooper, Houses of the Gentry, 283; Rufford Old Hall, Lancashire: Hussey, English Country Houses, 58.
42 RCHME, Rural Houses, 14. For another examples of cusped timbers in West Yorkshire, see Webster and Cherry, ‘Medieval Britain’, 183, which illustrates the reconstructed solar wing at Old Hall, Elland, dating from the mid-fourteenth century.
43 For the use of painted cloths and soft furnishings in a peasant house of modest status in Warwickshire, Alcock and Miles, The Medieval Peasant House, 158–9.
44 For an illustration, see RCHME, Rural Houses, Plate 24, page 28.
45 For Bankhouse, see RCHME, Rural Houses, 30; for Broadbottom, see Giles and Cant, ‘Broadbottom’; for White Hall, see Mercer, English Vernacular Houses, Plate 12.
46 It is not known whether the canopy timbers were painted: such was the case in some gentry houses of the same period, for example, Adlington Hall, Cheshire, where the canopy was painted with heraldic designs; Hussey, English Country Houses, 56–8.
47 See New Hall, Elland cum Greetland: RCHME, Rural Houses, 6. Here, as in the local aisled houses, the central two-bay range provided a through passage and a one-and-a-half bay hall.
48 Vernacular Architecture Group, Spring Conference 1989, booklet, 14.
49 Atkinson and McDowell, ‘Aisled Houses’, 86–88, 93–4; the scissor-braced trussed-rafter roofs at Tabley Old Hall and Bagueley Hall, both in Cheshire, were both considered to date from the fourteenth century. See also the early- fourteenth century solar wing at Old Hall, Elland (note 7 above).
50 RCHME, Rural Houses, 207.
51 Ibid., 34.
52 Ibid., 35.
53 For convenience, the term ‘Vale of York’ is used very loosely to distinguish the area from the Calder valley. Most of the evidence for the statements made in relation to the Vale group of aisled houses is drawn from the records made by the Yorkshire Vernacular Research Study Group (YVBSG). The record number for each house is given in parentheses for purpose of reference.
54 Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, 21, 23.
55 To this number, two houses in the eastern part of West Yorkshire may be added: 30 Main Street, Thorner (also known as the Old Manor House), and Croft Holding, Walton in Ainsty, show strong characteristics which link them to the Vale houses of aisled construction, although there is some doubt about whether or not they are medieval in date: copies available in the West Yorkshire Archaeology Service Historic Environment Record.
56 The problems of identification were expressed very graphically in Barbara Hutton’s analysis of Vale of York houses, her tabulation having numerous question marks over ‘aisle’ or ‘outshut’: Hutton, ‘Timber-Framed Houses’, 93.
57 Very recently (2023), the Group has recorded two aisled houses in South Yorkshire. Further recording in this county may extend the numbers and distribution of aisled houses in the historic county.
58 See .
59 Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, 175.
60 For hipped roofs, see Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, 34–5; for replacement of hips by gables in a post-medieval house, see Oak Cottage, Helperby, Ibid., 123. For possible hipped roofs in the Calder valley group, see Atkinson and McDowell, ‘Aisled Houses’, 84–5 (High Bentley, Shelf), 88 (Lower Bentley Royd, Sowerby).
61 For evidence of two-cell medieval houses beyond Yorkshire, see Alcock and Miles, The Medieval Peasant House, 26, 28 (midland counties) and Gray, Surrey Medieval Buildings, 11.
62 Double aisled houses; Famars, Stillington (847); Cottage at Long Marston (294): single aisled - The Thatched Cottage, Carlton Husthwaite (1885).
63 Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, 31.
64 RCHME, Rural Houses, 155–9.
65 Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, 30–2.
66 Ibid., 202–15.
67 Ibid., 34.
68 The plank and muntin screen at Home Farm, Scriven (63) is interpreted in the report as a later insertion.
69 Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, 34–5.
70 But see Cant, ‘Craftsmen and Their Families’ for evidence of craftsmen in the Halifax area, 1570–1640.
71 Giles and Cant, ‘Broadbottom’, 1–3.
72 RCHME, Rural Houses, 152–5.
73 Ibid., 220–1.
74 Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, 203, 209.
75 Report on 15 Ingramgate Thirsk, record number 77, YVBSG Archive.
76 Smith, Houses of the Welsh Countryside, 12.
77 Pearson, Lancashire Pennines, 34–7.
78 Gilks, ‘Throstle Nest’, 222.
79 Moorhouse, ‘Rural Housing’, 809–11; Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, 158–9.
80 Defoe, A Tour, 500.
81 Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, 202–15.
82 RCHME, Rural Houses, 221–2 for Haigh House and South Clough Head, both in Warley.
83 Ibid., 217.
84 Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, chapter 6. Mercer, English Vernacular Houses, frontispiece: Mercer neatly illustrates the development of the fully-storeyed, double-pile house, English Vernacular Houses, 73.
85 Clark, ‘Pennine Aisled Barns’.
86 Harrison and Hutton, Vernacular Houses of North Yorkshire, 182–6, 206, 210.
87 See, for example, Peel House, Warley, dated 1598: RCHME, Rural Houses, 220–21.
88 RCHME, Rural Houses, 213. The inventory also shows the source of the family’s wealth. The shop end of the house contained a large stock of cloth pieces and trade tools, showing that Samuel Wade, the testator, operated on a large scale. The total value of his goods and chattels was £782.
89 RCHME, Rural Houses, 57–61.
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Colum Giles
Colum Giles worked for the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England and later for English Heritage. His publications include monographs on the rural vernacular houses of West Yorkshire, Yorkshire textile mills and English farmsteads. He is a member of the Yorkshire Vernacular Buildings Study Group.