A Database of Aisled Buildings in England and Wales

Abstract

The Vernacular Architecture Group Aisled Buildings Database is described. It contains entries for 391 aisled halls and 2,127 aisled barns, with a handful of other aisled buildings. Their distribution and dating are presented, and the remarkable 700-year date-span of aisled barns is emphasised. Individual features of the buildings in the database are summarised, including the number of bays and the roof types recorded for halls and barns.

Keywords:

• aisled halls
• aisled barns
• dendrochronology
• listed buildings

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Neil Guiden of Historic England was extremely helpful in generating the original searches from the listed building database; Andy Moir worked through the majority of these records to extract the database records. Nick Hill generously shared his information on early aisled halls. Groups and individuals who have reported on aisled buildings in their areas include Colum Giles, Bob Edwards, David and Barbara Martin, John Walker and David Cook for the Yorkshire Vernacular Buildings Study Group. All their help is greatly appreciated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Smith, “Medieval Roofs,” 133; Sandall, “Aisled Halls in England and Wales,” VA 1975; Sandall, “Aisled Halls in England and Wales,” VA 1976.

2 Ordinary users can carry out such searches, but the results are limited to 1,000 entries, and the information provided with each result is very limited, comprising only the entry name and location, the list number and listing grade, with a link to the full list description, which would have been impossibly cumbersome to have attempted. Fortunately, Neil Guiden at Historic England was able to provide the full information from the HE database, in a form that (with some difficulty) could be converted into a spreadsheet for further processing.

3 Some list descriptions include such confusing phrases (in this context) as ‘an unaisled barn’.

4 By John Walker, David and Barbara Martin and David Cook (from the Yorkshire Vernacular Buildings Study Group records).

5 By the time of publication of this article, the database should be available online at https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/vag_2019/.

6 Rigold, “The Distribution of Aisled Timber Barns.” This omits most northern aisled barns, as they were originally built with stone walls, and it does not indicate how many barns were plotted, estimated at about 780. Unfortunately, also, no list of the buildings plotted is known to survive.

7 Nick Hill, who has been studying early aisled halls, kindly shared his lists of buildings of these types with me.

8 TNA, C54/55, m. 10; [Calendar] of Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, 1242–7 (HMSO, 1916), p. 23. Discussed in Duffy et al., Dublin Castle (2022), 33–5, 274.

9 Giles, “Medieval Aisled Houses in Yorkshire,” 83.

10 E.g., Hornthwaite Farm, Penistone, Yorkshire West Riding (now demolished) (Alcock and Roberts, “Crucks in the North-East and Yorkshire,” 190.]

11 Although the term spere is distinctive, it is rarely obvious from the descriptions if the buildings also contain aisled closed trusses, so some of those listed in this category probably belong with the Aisled closed/end trusses. Wales is an exception to this uncertainty, since the buildings have been fully described by Peter Smith, Houses of the Welsh Countryside.

12 The aisled hall from Newington, Kent, now at the Weald and Downland Museum, West Dean, Sussex has also been identified as a former kitchen or service building.

13 Giles, “Medieval Aisled Houses in Yorkshire.”

14 Suggett, “Crucks in Wales,” 279.

15 Troydale Farm, Pudsey, the latest of these, contains ‘a timbered arcade with 2 large posts on padstones’, which sounds unlikely to be as late as 1706.

16 The handful of post-1600 dates elsewhere probably only indicates the absence of datable features. Thus, Turners, Belchamp St Paul, Essex is dated in HEL as C18 or earlier, but has given a dendro-date of 1329. 40/42 Westhorpe, Southwell, Nottinghamshire (early seventeenth century in HEL) is described as having arch-braced aisle posts and would surely repay further study.

17 Rigold, “The Distribution of Aisled Timber Barns,” refers to ‘great aisled barns with […] stone piers’, but it is not clear what he had in mind, as the Canon’s Barn is the only one identified in the present study.

18 The dates, mostly taken from those given in HEL, should be reasonably reliable for these later buildings.

19 Harvey, Old Farm Buildings, 20, gives details of the building (cited in HEL).

20 Townley, “Benson.”