1-3 Imberhorne Farm Cottages

This group of former farm cottages originated as a high-status open hall built for Lewes Priory in the early 15th century. Numbers 2 and 3 formed an early 15th-century open hall aligned east-west, with timbers tree-ring dated to 1428. In the late 16th century the open hall was ceiled over and a chimneystack inserted. Number 1 is a late 18th-century or early 19th-century L-shaped wing addition to the north.

Construction and Materials

Numbers 2 and 3 are timber-framed, with the ground floor underbuilt in brickwork on a deep stone plinth, except to the west. The upper floor and gable end are tile-hung. The roof is covered in 20th-century machine-made tiles and has a central brick chimneystack, rebuilt above ridge level after 1926.

Original Plan and Later Alterations

The building was originally a two-bay open hall with an arch-braced hammerbeam roof. The central and western trusses remain within Number 3. The eastern bay and solar extended into Number 2, while the west service end, which probably comprised a narrow screens passage with a service bay or wing beyond, has not survived.

In the late 16th century the building was adapted to form a lobby entrance house by inserting a chimneystack and ceiling over the open hall. Probably in the late 18th or early 19th century the building was converted into two cottages, with a further cottage added in an L-wing to the north. The building is now two storeys with irregular fenestration.

Exterior

The ground floor brickwork is in English bond to the west and mainly Flemish bond to the north, south and east sides, except for the western half of the south side which has been refronted in 19th-century brown brick in stretcher bond. The north and west-facing sides of Number 1 are in English Garden Wall bond. The upper floor and gable ends are tile-hung, with a wide band of twelve courses of pointed tiles to the west gable end.

Windows are irregularly-spaced casements. The ground floor of the north gable has a 19th-century tripartite casement. A similar tripartite window on the south side has been replaced in uPVC. Number 3 retains three 19th-century wooden casements on the north and one on the south. Other windows are 20th-century, some wooden but most uPVC, within earlier openings.

Number 1 has a late 20th-century door and brick and tiled surround facing east. Number 2 has an entrance facing south and Number 3 one facing east, both with four-panelled doors in cambered arches under penticed tiled weatherhoods on wooden brackets. Both have narrower plank doors approached by stone steps facing north. On the north side ground floor where the L-shaped wing adjoins is a projecting rectangular bread oven, mainly of stone blocks, with the upper part in English bond brickwork and a tiled roof.

Interior

The most significant early features survive inside Number 3. The ground floor is divided into two rooms. The smaller northern room, now the kitchen, has a central axial beam and an early 19th-century fireplace in the eastern wall with a 19th-century cast iron range. The south ground floor room, the living room, has a continuation of the axial beam from the kitchen with a spine beam abutting it at right angles and a further short spine beam attached to the western wall. Although the fireplace is a small early 19th-century fireplace, identical to the one in the kitchen, it is thought that an open fireplace with bread oven may survive beneath and this would continue into Number 2.

To the south of the fireplace is an early 19th-century plank door on pintle hinges leading to a half-winder staircase. The staircase walls are lined with early 19th-century vertical beaded boards. A section of the wallplate is visible here, along with the upper part of the late 16th-century chimneystack.

A plank door leads to the large south bedroom where the lower part of the two medieval trusses are visible. The eastern truss was an arch-braced hammerbeam to the former open hall, later adapted to form a first floor partition when the chimneystack was inserted and the open hall ceiled over in the late 16th century. On the south side facing west the inner hammer spandrel has an inscribed, cusped quatrefoil, flanked by foil and dagger motifs, of a type more usual in stonework. The reverse side of the spandrel, now situated in a cupboard, is undecorated. The northern spandrel has an outer spandrel marked for the carving of a similar quatrefoil with teardrop, but this appears not to have been executed. The western truss has jowled posts, tie beam and mid-post visible. The north and south wallplates are exposed.

A smaller room has been partitioned off in the north west corner, now a bathroom, approached through a ledged plank door. The roof retains a virtually complete roof structure dated to 1428 with smoke-blackened timbers. The eastern truss has visible the vertical members of the hammerbeam, collar beam, a giant arch and scissor braces above the collar beam. A post-medieval wattle and daub partition now divides the roof of Number 3 from the adjoining property. Most rafters survive, with shorter rafters for a louvre to the west of the eastern truss. There are single clasped purlins and two rows of plain concave windbraces which form diamond patterns. The western truss has no signs of weathering, nor is there a sill beam beneath the western wall, which suggests it was a spere truss with a narrow bay for the screens passage and a service bay or wing beyond it originally.

Historical Context

According to the Chartulary of St Pancras, Lewes, in about 1100 a half-hide of land called Imberhorne was given to Lewes Priory by William Malfield. Lewes Priory continued to add land in the area and by 1275 had amassed the substantial manor of Imberhorne. The remaining timber-framed structure within Numbers 1-3 Imberhorne Farm Cottages has been tree-ring dated to 1428. Although no court rolls or Priory records have survived which refer to the construction of the property, from 1414 Lewes Priory was undergoing a period of building work on its decayed manors under Prior Nelond. Imberhorne is situated at the northern end of Lewes Priory's landholding about halfway along the main route between London and Lewes, roughly a day's ride to each, and is likely to have been constructed as a dwelling providing accommodation between London and Lewes on Lewes Priory lands.

Imberhorne Manor was held by Lewes Priory until the Dissolution of the Monasteries when it passed to Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex and royal minister. The manor was purchased by Sir Richard Sackville in 1560 and the first documentary reference to a property there is a lease of 1580 where it is described as a "capital Messuage". A building is shown here on a terrier map of 1597-98. The adjoining Imberhorne Farmhouse was built in 1808 and perhaps at that time the older building became farm cottages. Imberhorne Manor remained in the hands of the Sackvilles, the Dukes of Dorset, until 1872, when it was sold as an independent country estate.

On 26th June 1926 Numbers 1-3 Imberhorne Farm Cottages was struck by lightning. A contemporary photograph shows that the top of the chimneystack between Numbers 2 and 3 collapsed and the roof of Number 2 was extensively damaged.

Significance

This building is particularly interesting because it retains the surviving part of a 15th-century timber-framed open hall, tree-ring dated to 1428, built for Lewes Priory. This was a building of high quality which retains a decorated spandrel, two trusses and roof of an elaborate early arch-braced hammerbeam roof. Arch-braced hammerbeam roofs are rare and this is the only surviving example known of a vernacular building using a very close copy of Herland's design for the Great Hall at Westminster. This very special architectural survival merits this high grade of listing.