Pembrokes

Pembrokes is a timber-framed house built in the late 14th or early 15th century, with significant rebuilding in the 16th century and alterations continuing through the 17th and 18th centuries. It stands in Hartley Wespall on Hartley Lane.

The house has a timber-frame with brick infill, and parts of it were rebuilt in English bond brick. The roof is thatched with gabled and half-hipped ends; the right end has a higher roof level. There is a brick axial stack and a large battered gable-end stack of 16th or 17th century date.

Originally, the Medieval house comprised an unheated inner room on the left, an open hall with a spere truss and through passage, and a service end on the right. In the 16th century the service end was rebuilt. The right of the two bays may originally have been open to the roof and used as the kitchen, with its large gable-end stack added in the late 16th or early 17th century. Initially there was no internal access from the through passage to this rebuilt service end. In the early 17th century a floor was inserted into the open hall, creating a chamber above with a dormer at the front, and a stack was built backing onto the through passage and spere truss. In the 18th century the walls at the high end were rebuilt in brick and the infill at the service end was replaced in brick. In the 19th century internal partitions were inserted to create axial passages.

The exterior is one storey with an attic, the right end having higher eaves. The asymmetrical south-west front has four windows, comprising 19th-century casements with glazing bars of 1, 2 and 3 lights. There is a gabled dormer to the left of centre with an ogee bracket to the cill, and a plank door to the right of centre. The rear elevation has small casements, a plank door and a small 20th-century boarded outshut.

Internally, the inner room contains two unchamfered axial beams with mortices for partitions. The hall has chamfered axial beams with hollow step stops and a fireplace with a similarly chamfered lintel. The room to the right of the passage has large closely-spaced unchamfered joists supported on a low unchamfered bressumer. The smaller room on the right has closely-spaced joists and a partly blocked gable-end fireplace. The chambers are ceiled but the roof structure and trusses are exposed, with the roof-space accessible over the passage.

All four cruck-trusses at the high end survive, though their feet are cut off; the west-end cruck blades are cut off below the collar. These are Type-W crucks with arch-braces to the collar and infilled spandrels forming 2-centred arches. The spere truss has chamfered braces. The principals are terminated just above the collar with purlins clasped between the top of the principal and the common rafter above. The common rafter couples are joined at the apex by small yokes supporting a square-set ridgepiece. The truss on the right of the passage was a closed partition; the sooted apex panel survives. The puffins, curved wind-braces, common rafters and some battens are intact. Over the hall and passage the roof structure is heavily smoke-blackened. A narrow space exists between the passage partition and the rebuilt service end, which is of box-frame construction with cambered tie-beams, collars, clasped purlins and curved wind-braces.