Rich houses

Lots of high status Tudor and Stuart houses survive in Buckinghamshire. Do a search on Buckinghamshire’s Heritage Portal and try to find the following houses and write down what date they were built next to each:

Dorney Court. Date:                                         Chenies Manor House. Date:

Dinton Hall. Date:                                             Stewkley manor house. Date:

See if you can find any more sixteenth or seventeenth century houses on Buckinghamshire’s Heritage Portal. What do the houses in your search all have in common? Tick if you agree with the following statements: 

1. Tudor and Stuart houses were timber-framed
2. Tudor and Stuart houses were built of brick
3. Tudor and Stuart houses were large and had lots of rooms
4. Tudor and Stuart houses were small and cramped

Poor houses

Some people were richer and had bigger houses made of brick and some people were poorer and had smaller, timber-framed houses.

Do a simple search on Buckinghamshire’s Heritage Portal to find the house called The Kya in Ludgershall and find the answers to these questions: 

1. When was The Kya built?
2. How did the archaeologists find that out?
3. What were the house walls and roof made of?
4. How many rooms did the house have?
5. Did the house belong, in your view, to a rich or a poor person?

The house was demolished in 2002 and a new one built in its place. The house was thought to be eighteenth or nineteenth century before it was investigated and so wasn’t made a listed building, which would have saved it from being knocked down. It is unusual to find a small sixteenth century house surviving to the present day.

The Kya was a small house, probably lived in by a poor family who worked a little bit of land for the lord of the manor, kept a couple of pigs, grew some of their own vegetables and made their own clothes. Imagine you were someone living in this house and write a story about a day in your life in the sixteenth century. 

Gardens

Do a search for the Tudor house and gardens at Quarrendon on the Unlocking Buckinghamshire’s Past website. Try to find the answers to the following questions:

1. Who was the owner of this house and garden?
2. What was the house surrounded by? Circle the answer:
   Fence                         Moat                           Bank
3. Who is supposed to have visited in 1592?
4. Circle the kind of gardens the house had:
   Water                          Walled                        Kitchen 
5. Did the house belong, in your view, to a rich or a poor person? 

The water gardens were thought to be where the sixteenth century house once stood but recent survey work revealed that the house sat inside a moat where a later house was built. The Tudor house was pulled down in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the family lived mainly elsewhere. The later house has also now disappeared.

However, archaeologists think that the house was big and that the owner, Sir Henry Lee, evicted people from the nearby villages so that he could graze his sheep, set up a deer park and construct some rabbit warrens. There was also a church nearby, now in ruins, that was much older and went back to the medieval period. Sir Henry Lee built a hospital for the poor and infirm next to the church but there is nothing left to see of that now. Sir Henry was Queen Elizabeth I’s champion and would joust for her at tournaments. He would be in London for most of the winter and come to Quarrendon in the summer. Imagine you were someone living in this house and write a story about a day in your life in the sixteenth century.

Go back to find out more about the Rich and poor.