| Description | Mare Hill, Warley. Stone house incorporating the remains of a c.1500 timber framed house.
Mare Hill was the subject of an archaeological assessment by Colum Giles in 1980 as part of the WYAS/RCHME Rural Houses Survey. The photographic images and sketch plan produced by the assessment are held by WYAAS. The fieldwork report is transcribed below:
'This is a stone house of indeterminate date, incorporating the remains of a timber framed house of c.1500. The stone house is of a number of phases, none of them easily distinguished from the others, and little need be said of it. It is worth pointing out, however, that the hall range was of single storey throughout its history, a form which may have been much more common than the surviving building indicates.
The timber framed house is represented by a few fragments. A principal post, set on a stone stylobate, rose to support a truss, but the tie beam and roof timbers have been removed. A mortise in the south face of the post shows the position of a brace up to the tie. The post supports an arcade plate running east west; to the west of the post the plate is visible for the width of the complete bay. It shows mortises for braces up from both the surviving post and from a post which has been removed to the west. The rest of the plate in this bay is free of mortises showing that the building was aisled to the north. To the east of the post the plate is also visible, and has mortises for braces up from the surviving post and from a removed post at the far end of a bay to the east. Again, as far as can be seen, the plate is otherwise free of further mortises.
The remains give evidence of a timber framed aisled hall of at least two bays. When the framing is considered in the context of the later stone house, part of the plan of the earlier house may be suggested. A through passage of the stone house occupies the eastern half of the eastern bay. If this house followed the local form, the passage would have occupied a half bay behind the firehood heating the open hall. It is possible that the western half of the eastern bay is the site of the firehood, for the main post has a mortise in its south face at just the right height for a bressumer running south to support the structure of the hood. This would leave the western bay as the body of the open aisled hall. The house may have had an upper end to the west giving a parlour and a lower service bay to the east, but this cannot be proved.
Why the open hall was abandoned in later times in preference for a single storey hall to the east is not clear'.
(Giles, C. (WYAS/RCHME). 1980. 'Mare Hill, Warley'). |