arrangement must have been a common feature in many parts in Tudor England.
In eastern England makings are a familiar sight, although they, like other such buildings, are being either demolished or converted into other uses. Although the majority are of brick, there were some that were constructed of timber. Most of these would have been nineteenth-century, but at Myddlyton Place, Saffron Walden, Essex (206), there still survives a building which at one time was used as a making. Its original purpose is unknown for it is not characteristic of any building type so far recognized in Essex. One suggestion is that it was originally a guildhall, the shop to the front let to provide additional
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206. Former malting, Saffron Walden, Essex |
income, as at Felsted. Another hypothesis is that it was built as the house of a wealthy merchant, with extensive accommodation for trade, which, of course, would have been in saffron. The building is of early sixteenth-century date and certainly by the beginning of the eighteenth century was converted into a malting. The property now belongs to the National Trust and is leased to the Youth Hostels Association.
Timber was frequently used in the construction of workshops connected with local crafts or trades but, like other buildings which have now no practical use and being more vulnerable than those constructed of brick or stone, these old buildings have been rapidly disappearing or occasionally converted to other uses.
Of these buildings the smithy was the most important, as essential as the mill to the economy of even the smallest community. Close by the smithy, or in some cases forming part of the same building, was the wheelwright’s shop. Over most of eastern England and the South-East these buildings were constructed of timber, weatherboarded externally. A technique commonly employed on these simple structures was the use of wide planks set vertically, the joints being
covered with off-cuts of timber. This was a feature in parts of Sussex and can be seen at the smithy from South water re-erected at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum, Singleton. Although many of the early ones would have been well constructed of oak or elm, those from the nineteenth century, of which most remain, were generally rough and simple structures, using materials that were both cheap and close at hand, often secondhand oak or elm but generally softwood.
At one time toll cottages, numbering many thousands, mainly built between 1750 and 1810 for the network of roads administered by some 1,100 separate turnpike trusts, were a feature throughout the country, but most have fallen casualty to either road-widening or roadside improvement schemes. Most of these humble dwellings were built of brick or stone but some were of timber, particularly in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire and parts of Sussex. Generally these cottages were small, often only two rooms – a bedroom and living-room-cum-kitchen – although many were later extended, probably after the 1870s when most of the turnpike trusts were wound up. A few of these timberframed structures have been saved. The one now at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum at Singleton was originally situated at Upper Beeding and is the sole survivor of a group of weatherboarded toll cottages that once existed in the Worthing-Horsham-Shoreham area of Sussex. Another, rescued from the main Ipswich to Norwich road at Mendlesham, known as ‘the Mustard Pot’, has been re-erected at Needham Market. This, like others, was built in picturesque style, octagonal in plan with a thatched roof.