Building record 1245040000 - LUCKINGS FARMHOUSE

Grade II. C17 altered. Painted roughcast, old tile roof. Two storeys. Door opposite chimney stack, modern casement windows. Interior: exposed C17 timber framing and large chimney stack (B1).
Luckings Farmhouse was a yeoman's house, and exhibited none of the concern for convenience and privacy shown by a gentleman's house such as Bowers Farmhouse (CAS 1245030000). The seventeenth century house was the 3 1/2 bays of the two-storey east-west range. The original lobby entrance is still in use. On the ground floor the two bays east of the stack formed a single large room, 28' x 18'9" (8.6 x 5.76 m), as is shown by the careful profiling of the midrail in the truss between them. This was a combined kitchen/hall. West of the stack was a heated parlour, 12' 9" x 18' 9" (3.9 x 5.76 m). Two upstairs rooms were also heated; in Bay III the upstairs fireplace has a four-centred arch of moulded brick. The bearers throughout have plain chamfers with roll-and-tongue stops. There is no evidence for the means of reaching the first floor: the present stair is modern, and elsewhere the joists are uninterrupted wherever they are visible — which is everywhere except in the half bay occupied by the stack. A stair or steps here would have had its head obstructed by a tie-beam brace. The roof-space was divided into two rooms, with the half bay and stack between them. Heads of doorways cut into the collars of the trusses flanking the stack seem to be original, being carefully curved and chamfered. The studs still carry the pintles for hanging the doors. One may postulate a large room for the men and a small one for the maids; access could only have been by the stair or steps used by the family.
A curious feature is that the posts are braced upward to the wallplate on the north side, facing the farmyard, but downwards to the rail on the south side. The reason for this is obscure. Downward bracing is common in the Chiltern region in the sixteenth century and earlier but (with only one exception known to the writer) always with curved braces. Those at Luckings are straight. (The Coleshill evidence seems to support the view that curved braces had a display significance.) None of the houses datable to the first quarter of the seventeenth century has this bracing, and this may indicate a different date for Luckings. It is suggested that Luckings was built by James Child on inheriting the land in 1636, aged 21. He seems not to have married until he was in his forties - the large kitchen/hall suits an unmarried farmer with a need for a number of servants. [Social and economic history of building, plan, elevation and sections] (B2).