Posted:  Tuesday 05 May 2009

South East Associates
visit the
Weald and Downland Open Air Museum

- March 26th -

On a wet windy morning in late March, fourteen Associates set out on a journey into the past, our destination the "Weald and Downland Open Air Museum" set in fifty acres of the newly designated South Downs National Park.

Photograph:  Adrian Cable

The museum exhibits buildings from all over south-east England, rescued from destruction, dismantled and painstakingly re-erected.  There are 43 examples of all ages of rural buildings, traditional homes and workplaces of village and countryside.  These range from a tiny 13th century cottage to a pair of early Victorian labourer's cottages.

By the time we met our excellent and highly knowledgeable guide the weather had improved to scattered showers.  The next two hours were to be a veritable tour back through 700 years of social history.

The early 13th century exhibit consists of just one room in which a family lived complete with an open hearth and smoke escaping through the roof tiles.
Close by we saw demonstrations in another house, of open fire cooking 15th century style, bread, pottage, using contemporary vegetables and sweetmeats.

We moved on to Bayleaf Farmstead - a 15th century timber framed "hall house" - with an open hall in the middle entered through a screen passage and buttery-cum-pantry on the other side.  At the far end of the hall stairs lead to the upper chamber or solar.  Much more advanced with separate sleeping quarters and food storage, but still with open fireplace - without a chimney - and allso without glazing in the windows.

Nearby a 16/17th century farmhouse grew contemporary vegetables in raised box beds.  The farm animals were old English examples - Tamworth pigs, Southdown sheep and Shire horses.  The latter are still used by the museum for all cartage of goods.

Then we came to a small village centred on a market hall with street level space for medieval market traders stalls underneath the first floor level Town Council Chambers.  Clustered around were a pair of shops with overhanging upper chambers; medieval houses; plumber/joiners shops, a small school; and on the outskirts, a still working 17th century flour watermill.

After a good lunch in the almost adjacent "Partridge Inn" we spent the afternoon with another really good guide, in the Gridshell - built in 2002! This ultra modern building contains the museum's collection of tools and artefacts, with an upper deck workshop and conservation training area.

The Gridshell is architecturally unique, in that it is built with the shape and strength of a double curved shell and a grid using slender oak lathes bent into shape rather than a conventional solid surface.  The contents are as interesting as the building itself, containing tools and artefacts of just about all aspects of rural life over 700 years.

So much to see that a day's visit was just not enough.

Perhaps we will go again another time.

Colin Wood

(ph  05/05/2009)

« Back to News