Medieval architecture

ABOVE (click on gallery image to view larger picture): The Swan Hotel is a town landmark.

Roger Hunt describes the traditional building styles, materials and skills that characterise Lavenham in Suffolk – one of the best-preserved medieval towns in the country.

From the busy and populous market town of Bury St Edmunds, to the historic villages of Clare and Long Melford, the county of Suffolk is peppered with fine old houses and cottages to linger over in appreciation. Indeed, both the textures and colours of the vernacular architecture of some buildings display such longlasting vibrancy that it is impossible not to pause and savour the rich flavour of the place.

The materials of which these buildings are made spring from the surrounding, undulating lowland landscape of Suffolk and, having been dug from the ground or cut from the forests, were fashioned by craftsmen making use of a rich repertoire of ancient skills.

Timber, lime render, limewash, clay tiles, brick and occasionally flint are the essence of the style and provide a natural sense of harmony which is enlivened by the sharpness of the light. The skyline is interrupted by the magnificent towers of medieval stone churches built on the wealth of the wool and cloth trade when, in the 15th and 16th centuries, Suffolk was one of England’s most prosperous counties.

ABOVE (left-right): Little Hall is a fine 15th-century house; undulating walls are testament to the age of many houses.

Nowhere in Suffolk is the splendour of this period more evident than in Lavenham. Flemish weavers settled here in the 14th century and erected many of the buildings that have somehow survived with original features intact.

Often described as England’s finest and most perfect surviving medieval village, Lavenham has an impressive number of listed buildings – there are more than 300 – and you can wander down the High Street, Shilling and Prentice Streets to see a good selection of them. In some the close studded timber framing is brown but in others it is limewashed and stands ghostly pale against bold, earthen hued limewash.

Colour enlivens Lavenham and, while pink is particularly popular in Suffolk, here an artist’s palette, with every colour from mulberry, pastel shades and bold burnt oranges, is visible beneath the canopy of undulating clay tiled roofs.

Built to last

Until Tudor times Suffolk was rich in forests so, with no building stone available, oak forms the ‘skeleton’ of many of the houses. It is worth remembering the effort that would have gone into creating these structures. Trees were carefully selected to suit each part of the building – huge oaks for the sturdy cross beams that held up the roof for example – and, once felled, the timber was slowly dragged to a saw pit and cut by two men, one above and one below, pulling the saw between them.

While the oak was still freshly cut or ‘green’ and easy to work the frame was set out in a framing yard. Using saws, chisels and mallets, each joint was cut by hand and scribed with carpenters’ marks, a modified form of Roman numerals, to identify the sections and enable the frame to be reassembled on site. Tapered oak pegs driven into holes bored with an auger were used to hold the joints in place and acted as wedges to pull them tightly together.

Many of Lavenham’s buildings are ‘jettied’ with the first floor projecting beyond the wall below to form an overhang and provide more floor area in the upper storey. In the higher status houses these beams, sometimes called ‘bressumers’, were often refined with fine carving.

ABOVE (left-right): Pink is a favoured colour; Shilling Street is awash with listed buildings.

In between the close studded timber framing, infill panels of wattle and daub were used. This was formed from interlaced rods and twigs of hazel or willow with a mixture of clay, dung and straw, applied over them. A coating of lime plaster followed by a coat of limewash provided protection. Unlike cement based materials, lime produces soft textures, offers flexibility and, most important of all, is porous so allows these old walls to breathe and shed moisture, thus avoiding damp problems.

Lime kilns were once a common sight in villages and were used to burn limestone, chalks or seashells to form quick lime which was then slaked with water. Limewash is made using the resulting putty lime diluted with water to the consistency of milk and was often applied when farm labourers had no work on the land. Colours were obtained from pigments, particularly metal oxides from natural earths.

At the core of Lavenham is the 13th-century marketplace with timber-framed, brick and rendered buildings standing at its margins. Grade I listed Lavenham Guildhall, properly known as the Guildhall of Corpus Christi, dominates the south side and, together with two adjoining properties and No 1 Lady Street, represents a remarkably fine and well preserved example of late medieval architecture.

Built by the prosperous Guild of Corpus Christi around 1530, the Guildhall is one of the most important timber-framed buildings in the country. The guild was not concerned with trade, but was a religious and charitable fraternity. The Reformation saw the guilds abolished in 1547 and over time the Guildhall has had a chequered history, being at various times a bridewell (prison), workhouse and wool store. In 1951 it was vested in the National Trust and now houses a museum about Lavenham’s woollen cloth trade.

ABOVE (left-right): The jetty or overhang allows an upper floor to jut out and provide more room inside for residents; Oak timbers of Little Hall have gently silvered over the past 600 years; The magnificent entrance to the 1530 Guildhall in Lavenham.

Wander away from the marketplace and arrive at the High Street where the 15th-century timber-framed Swan Hotel incorporates several notable buildings including an Elizabethan house and a former wool hall.

Close by are cottages where the decorative exterior plasterwork or ‘pargetting’ depicts the fleur-de-lys and other designs relating to the wool and cloth industry. Pargetting was popular in the east of England and, while the simplest patterns were indented using sticks, more complex designs required great skill with the lime-based plaster being cast or built up layer by layer.

The skyline of Lavenham is dominated by the tower of the great ‘wool church’ of St Peter and St Paul, primarily built on the proceeds of the medieval wool trade. Largely financed by two families, it soars 141 feet into the air dominating the village and the walls are of exquisite flush flintwork formed from flint nodules, expertly ‘knapped’ or split to create a square block exposing the flint’s shiny inner face on five sides.

ABOVE: Built on the hill above the village the church of St Peter and St Paul ranks among the greatest of the Suffolk ‘wool churches‘.

Visit Roger Hunt's website at huntwriter.com

WORDS ROGER HUNT PHOTOGRAPHS HUGH PALMER (Courtesy of The Most Beautiful Villages of England )
Featured in the January 2011 issue of Period Living