Mike Adams looks back on the early days of the Weald & Downiand Museum, Singleton.

In the summer of 1971, I was a student planner heavily into industrial archaeology and folk music, and had my usual summer job labouring for Cementation. I must have learned about the Weald & Downiand Museum from one of the duplicated ncwsheets that were circulated by industrial archaeologists. I wrote offering to spend a few weeks volunteering in the summer, and clutching my encouraging reply from John Lowe, the Museum’s first director, I left London with a tent and a few other essential supplies.

My first impression was of a superb site extending from a wooded scarp slope down to rich green pasture on the bottom of the Lavant valley. I later discovered that the site was part of the West Dean Estate and had been provided on a peppercorn rent through the generosity of the Edward James Foundation. A grant from the Countryside Commission had helped to provide fencing and toilets and the Museum had opened to the public a few months earlier in May 1971.

I was directed to the far corner of the site and met the rest of the building gang, which comprised Mr Tilley, a retired stonemason from Brighton, his wife, and a couple of schoolgirls on summer holiday. Our task was to construct a medieval cottage based on the evidence of an archaeological excavation at Hangleton on the South Downs in 1954. Mr Tilley had

taken part in the dig, and there was a sureness about his approach. The archaeological evidence was good, with the base of the flint walls remaining and the height of the walls calculated by measuring the volume of flint that had fallen.

The following morning I managed to coax the ancient cement mixer into life and set about preparing mortar for the others. A load of flints had been obtained free as waste from a local chalk quarry and we set to work reconstructing the flint walls. These were pre-Ashurst days and the mortar comprised a mix of sand and hydrated lime with a touch of cement ‘for safety’s sake’. To someone used to Readymix concrete and knocking up for brickies it seemed positively medieval. I now know differently!

Building work in a gang develops its own pace and rhythm. Once programmed to knock up mortar or lay flints, little further thought is required so the mind turns to banter. At that time a student working on a real building site had to have his wits about him, as the days of the campus sit-ins had only just ended. Considerable tact on the subject of ‘bloody students’ was required, especially on Friday afternoons with fellow workers spoiling for fights following the lunchtime pub session. The banter was altogether more relaxed at the Weald & Downland Museum as all the building tradesmen had a love for their work which they were keen to communicate to others. Thus I learned of Mr Tilley’s life as a stonemason, and in particular his restoration of masonry at the

Brighton Pavilion. He told me of his work repairing the onion-shaped domes and his reluctant recommendation that replicas should be made in grp as the timber frames supporting the domes were too weak to support stone. This policy is now being reversed with the benefit of resources to fund a more extensive restoration programme, and Mr Tilley’s son is engaged in the masonry work (see elsewhere in this issue).

‘While our talkative gang proceeded with the flint walls of the cottage from Hangleton, Roger Champion was repairing the timbers of a Wealden farmhouse called Bayleaf which had been removed from the site of the proposed Bough Beech Reservoir. His workshop was the timber frame of a cattle shed from Lurgashall, Sussex, covered in polythene sheeting. Unlike our labours, it seemed to be much more thoughtful work, requiring decisions on whether to replace or repair timber, reading the clues provided by mortice holes and then working Out the sequence for reerection.

On my return the following year, great progress had been made. The Hangleton cottage was complete, with a thatched roof, and had been brought to life by a company making an educational film for schools on medieval England. Roger Champion had completed the erection of the frame of Bayleaf and had inserted wattle panels. Once again I was working the cement mixer, but this time with a mix of straw, brick earth and fresh cowpats, collected that morning from the adjoining

EARLY DAYS AT SINGLETON

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