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This is a
reconstructed flint building from the medieval downland village of Hangleton
in East Sussex. It is the earliest of the Museum’s buildings and the only
one to have been rebuilt from an archaeological footprint. The medieval
settlement of Hangleton is what historians describe as a deserted medieval
village (DMV). The village was already in decline in the first half of the
fourteenth century (c.1300-1340) and never recovered from the Black Death
(1348-1349). The remains of 20 buildings were uncovered when the village
site was excavated between 1952 and 1954.
The building is
divided into two rooms, an outer room, with an open hearth and an inner room
with a large domed oven. The presence of the oven suggests that the building
may have been used as a detached kitchen for baking and brewing rather than
a dwelling house. However, the size and layout of the building is also
typical of many of the excavated dwelling houses in the village and gives us
a good idea of what a peasant house was like in medieval Sussex. Most of the
Hangleton villagers had two roomed houses and would have cooked over the
open hearth in the outer room. As well as providing living space for the
family, villagers would have used their houses to store valuable goods, such
as processed crops and wool.
This cottage enables children to imagine life in 13th century when many
families would have had this sort of cottage as their home. The people who
lived in this type of dwelling were not very poor. They were farmers who
owned a small amount of land. The poor lived in simple wooden shacks.
Suggested
Topics
- Unit 2 What were homes like long
ago
- Unit 3 How hard was life for medieval people in town and country
Other Information
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