Summary
Oast of about 1850
Reasons for Designation
The oast 15m to the east of Hunters Hall is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* as a mid-C19 oast with roundel and stowage which retains a number of features associated with the hop drying process.
Historic interest:
* as an illustration of small-scale hop-production as part of a mixed agricultural economy in rural Sussex.
Group value
* for its historical and geographical relationship with Hunters Hall.
History
Based on map evidence, the oast which stands approximately 15m to the east of Hunters Hall dates from between about 1840 and 1870.
Hunters Hall was historically a small farmstead; the farmhouse is thought to date from the C17. On 19 February 1783 the Sussex Advertiser carried an advertisement for the let of Hunters Hall (p 3), noting that the farm included two barns and other out-buildings together with 40 acres including a ‘hop ground’. The Tithe map of about 1840 shows a large outbuilding, possibly one of the two barns mentioned in the advertisement, where the oast now stands.
During the C18 it was common for hop drying kilns to be located within the footprint of a barn, which would also be used for stowage. It is therefore possible that the oast was built to replace the function of the preceding building, introducing a round kiln, or roundel, which had become the preferred technology for hop drying by the mid-C19 for its greater efficiency.
The brickwork of the stowage range indicates some alteration to the openings and areas of re-building. The framing of the first floor and roof may include ex-situ timbers from an earlier structure as well as later, renewed, timbers. Within the building, weights are pencilled onto one of the doors, recording hop yields between 1922 and 1929, indicating the building’s continued agricultural use into the interwar period. In the late C20 the building appears to have been partially converted for storage/ subsidiary domestic use and there is a quantity of joinery which appears to relate to this period.
Details
Oast, of about 1850
MATERIALS: the building is of red brick and timber frame construction. The upper floor of the stowage range is clad in stained weatherboard. The roofs are of clay tile.
PLAN: the building comprises two elements: a rectangular stowage range which is two storeys high with two rooms to each floor and has a half-hipped roof, and to the immediate east, a round kiln, or roundel, with first floor and conical roof.
EXTERIOR: despite some alteration, the building retains much of its simple agricultural character. The stowage range is of brick construction at ground floor, the bricks laid in Flemish bond with vitrified headers. The upper floor is framed and weatherboarded.
To the south the stowage stands on a course of stone blockwork. This does not extend round to the west and north elevations. There is a break in the brickwork on the west end wall, with the brickwork to the north being of a similar, but slightly different, character to that to the south.
There are few openings at ground floor: a door and window to the north occupy what might be an infilled cart entrance, there is a second window on this same elevation and a single door to the south. At first floor there are three windows each to the north and south, and two to the west. Some of the apertures are likely to be early, albeit altered, and some are later insertions. All of the door and window joinery is C20/C21.
The roundel has a cogged eaves cornice and a single door to the east. The roof terminates with a timber cowl and vane.
INTERIOR: the floor frame and the wall and roof frames of the stowage show evidence of alteration, renewed timber and the reuse of ex-situ timber. The basic arrangement of the space, however, appears little altered and a number of features relating to the building’s original use survive.
A plank and ledge door between the two ground floor rooms has hop yields for several years during the 1920s recorded in pencil on one side. The ladder stair to the first floor is C20/C21, but it appears to rise through an original, if altered, hatch. In the west room on the first floor there is a hop press. The lower parts of the frame and the circular opening for the pressing plate is visible from the room beneath, where there is also evidence of several hatches, now floored over.
The roundel retains its brick stove, comprising a vaulted brick chamber with pierced back and sides and cast-iron grate. A vaulted brick antechamber connects the stove with the east room of the stowage, from where the fire could be tended, and with the plenum chamber (the space around the stove beneath the drying floor). A C20/C21 solid timber floor has replaced the drying floor.
