Surrey Homes | SH30 | April 2017 |Gardens supplement inside

Left: The gun above the fireplace is from Saudi Arabia, it’s a
Bedouin Tribal Rifle
was painted in a striking pillarbox red by Jane’s father. It
is smaller, darker and with a lower ceiling than the other
rooms and, despite Jane’s assurance that the house does not
have any unusual spirits, the room is strikingly cold. Perhaps
my childish imagination is getting the better of me?
We proceed to the front of the house, where the couple
have created an unusual but effective downstairs washroom.
“This wall here,” says Jane, “would have been part of the
‘solar’ in the original hall house, with sliding screens that
opened into the main hall and cooking / social area.” You
can still see where the sliding doors would have fitted.
Typically, a Wealden hall house, or yeoman farmer’s house,
would have had four bays with the two central ones forming
the main hall, open to the roof, with the hearth in the middle.
There would also have been two doors to the outside, at one
end, forming a cross passage. The open hearth would later
have been moved towards the cross passage and become a
fireplace with chimney. The fact that this house was spun on
its axis in the 17th century, makes it all the more curious.
Jane has her theories about various rooms, including their
current reception room, on the eastern end of the house...
“This sunken fireplace is an interesting thing. My theory
is, that the man who did all the work in the 1930s raised
the floor – making the fireplace appear sunken. It’s believed
that this room had a loom in it. It wouldn’t fit a loom
101 wealdentimes.co.uk