Willo House
Located on Main Street edge of the village, Willo House is a well-built but quite plain timber framed house, thought to date from the early 17th C but with an earlier core .. this being one of the very few known medieval “great halls” that remain immediately recognisable as such. This was dramatically confirmed at the beginning of the 20th C when removal of boxing covering the entrance hall ceiling revealed obvious smoke residue. This is still easily visible. Indeed, the property is felt to be of such importance that a model has been commissioned and made to aid academics in their research of similar houses – images of this model are available.
The house was extended around the medieval core for a prosperous, no-nonsense Quaker merchant / farmer and his family at the end of the 17thC. Although large and imposing, it was never a “manor house” – a great hall was typical of many substantial buildings of the medieval period, although often very prominent in the house of the lord of the manor.
Early Quakers were always at risk from bailiffs, because they refused to pay tithes to the church. Their goods were often confiscated (‘distrained’) in lieu. Farmers were particularly vulnerable, because their possessions were very difficult to conceal. Their implements and animals were often distrained, which made their livelihoods precarious. By contrast, combing, spinning and dyeing were easier to sustain, so many Quakers became small artisans in the cloth trade[1]. The extant records for this family confirm this.
The house now retains many of its original features … with the comforts necessary for 21st C living. The current owners are descendants of the Quaker family who are thought to be very early occupiers of the property, but certain proof of ownership is only present for the last two centuries.
The house is of two storeys facing the street frontage with a pitched slated roof, an attic level within the roof space and a jettied first floor. It is formed of 3 bays of substantial oak timber framing with white rendered infill panels made of traditional wattle and daub. It retains a fine set of oak mullioned casement windows with leaded lights. The two front dormer window projections are not an obvious historic feature and are likely to be a more modern addition, probably in the early 20th C, to improve the attic space and light in the servant’s accommodation and replacing more traditional rooflights which would have been considered adequate up to that date. There is a brick chimney at each gable end and to the rear serving small fireplaces on each floor.
The plan form comprises a (double height) central hallway and front entrance from which timber stairs rise to the landings and upper floors. The entrance hall is likely to be the oldest part of the building. Its structure exhibits a type of cruck frame design in the process of evolution and not hitherto recorded. Cruck design is typical of the medieval open hall (here possibly dating from the late 15th C), with long curved timbers in pairs, a very numerous type of construction which continued to be found up to the 19th C. Around it, post and truss cross frames support the enlarged, possibly early 17th C, later house, with tie beams providing the basis for its roof structure. Its design at this time represents the era of small houses tending towards the prevailing style of the day rather than the local vernacular.
Room divisions are formed by substantial timber framed walls and oak panelling, suggesting a continuing plentiful local supply of timber at this period. The infill panels for the timber framing are constructed of wattle and daub – oak staves woven with hazel and cleft oak then daubed with a mixture of clay, dung and chopped straw, and the complete panel limewashed. The frame is of fairly large panels in common with most late medieval buildings, a tradition of buildings put together by carpenters who had served a long apprenticeship to learn the skills of their craft from early times when this county was well forested and raw materials plentiful. Most surviving timber framed buildings date from the 16th, 17th and 18th C. The series of timber frames (sides, cross walls, roofs and floors) would have been pre-fabricated then erected and jointed together to create a skeleton which was then covered or infilled.
The jetty is a feature common in 15th and 16th C town buildings and for superior farmhouses such as this in countryside villages. They were an architectural symbol of wealth and status and also gave practical advantages with an increase in floor space on the upper levels. The upper wall projects beyond the wall below and floor beams are cantilevered to provide a base for the wall of the upper storey, including around adjacent sides of the building.
The windows are glazed with leaded lights, common after the late 16th /early 17th C and are in line with the wall frame. Horizontal runs of mullioned windows were appropriate to the storied late medieval house and replaced the tall windows of the earlier single storey medieval hall. By this date a need for some form of ventilation had become common, as shown in the side hung opening casements evident here. Luckily the house retains its early glass, cut from blown discs, and escaped replacement by sheet glass in the 19thC. The modern attic windows have been designed to follow this tradition.
The front door is treated similarly to the windows, with the jambs and head being incorporated as part of the main wall frame. There is a simple plain door surround and a heavy door with a 3-centred arch and no detail or embellishment. The door itself is early, possibly a remnant of the early house, made of heavy vertical planks, battened at the rear and hung on heavy hinges.
The arrangement of fireplaces has been dictated by the position of the chimneys at either end and at the rear of the later house. However the earlier hall is likely to have had an open hearth and subsequently perhaps an earlier end wall fireplace so the rear chimney may continue this legacy. The fireplaces which provide heat to each floor are relatively small, apart from the kitchen, and show no evidence of having been reduced in size in recent times. Often in the past only larger rooms were heated, however the owner of this house seems to have valued his comforts! Chimney stacks built of brick are built into the fabric of this house, again with little embellishment.
The main staircase from ground to first floors, though narrow, is of the same solid timber construction as the rest of the house so is likely to date from the same time. The balustrade to the landing gives one of the few opportunities for decorative carving of the timberwork. From first to second floors the narrower staircase up to the servant’s accommodation is screened by panelling.
The origin of the name “Willo House” is uncertain. Clearly there is likely to be some connection with the name of the village (Willoughby) but the name is only present on the records from 1830 onwards.
Archive records and evidence from the blocked west church doorway suggests that the village shrunk in the medieval period but then expanded more to the east in the early 17thC as prosperity from trade increased and this may have led to the rebuilding of early houses in accessible locations, such as this one. The sizeable plot of land on which it stands accommodates a series of outbuildings at the rear on 19thC OS maps, which perhaps included a coachhouse and stable to provide the family with transport and other necessities.
https://www.quakersintheworld.org/
26 February 2022
This is very interesting .... and educational. Do pictures of the model of this house exist?