Calico House: A modern home in an ancient house, lovingly restored and full of history

According to the antiquarian Edward Hasted, writing his voluminous History of Kent (1797–99), The ‘Calicoe-house’ on the main street of Newnham village took its name from ‘the red and white plaistering on the front of it’. By implication, the striking panels of floral decoration that still survive on the building — one dated 1710 — were inspired by the bold, printed patterns of this Indian cotton fabric that was being imported to Britain in quantity for the first time from the late 17th century. The colouring has been renewed over time, but then — and now — they make this remarkable building of brick and timber frame stand out (Fig 2).

The story of Calico House, however, is very much deeper than this association would suggest. Recent research by Rupert Austin and Sheila Sweetinburgh, published in Archaeologia Cantiana (2010), has revealed a complex history and architectural evolution that stretches back into the Middle Ages. Timber-frame buildings were relatively easy to adapt and this example shows exactly how much even a relatively modest house might change incrementally over time. In addition, their study has identified some of the individuals who occupied the house. Notable among them was a prosperous yeoman farmer, Stephen Hulkes, who transformed the building before 1617 as a modest family seat.

Newnham — which means ‘the new place’ — was seemingly constituted as a manor in the early 12th century and, in 1153, the parish church and its associated property formed part of the founding endowment of a Benedictine nunnery established at Davington nearby. That gift almost certainly included the site of Calico House, because centuries later ownership of it bestowed rights of appointment to the church living. Whether a house stood here at this date, however, is unknown. The story of the present building properly begins in about 1400, when the nunnery at Davington seems to have been struggling in the aftermath of the Black Death.

There is little documentation to illuminate the specifics of what happened in this Kentish locality, but, nationally, the pandemic is estimated to have carried off more than one-third of the population. Not only were most religious communities much reduced, but the universal shortage of labour transformed rural society as a whole. Rather than running their estates directly, landholders increasingly found it easier to lease out or ‘farm’ property in return for regular rents. That, in turn, brought into being a class of ‘farmers’, who owned or managed land independently and were free from what was effectively feudal enslavement.

One such farmer probably took control of Davington’s estate at Newnham and began Calico House. Neither their identity nor the precise date of construction are known, but, as first built, it took the form of a so-called Wealden house. About 800 extant examples of this timber-frame house type are known, nearly all in the South-East, with the majority in Kent, Surrey and Sussex. Of the 40 or so of these buildings that have been scientifically dated, all were constructed between 1340 and 1525, but the type seems to have been most common in the early to mid 15th century.

Wealden houses were laid out on a rectangular footprint and comprised a central hall neatly sandwiched between flanking two-storey blocks. Their internal organisation reflected the universal norms of medieval English domestic planning. The hall was heated by a central hearth and possessed a ‘high’ and ‘low’ end, the former occupied by a ‘high’ table for the head of the household and the latter an entrance and service area. At ground-floor level, corresponding to this hierarchy of space, the flanking blocks respectively accommodated a reception room or ‘parlour’ and a pair of chambers for storing food and drink, the buttery and pantry. Both blocks had bed chambers on the upper floor accessed up internal stairs.

What made the Wealden houses distinctive was that the upper rooms of the flanking blocks were jettied out over the walls of those on the ground floor (to make them bigger) and the whole structure was covered in a single roof. As a result, the roof eaves — which spanned from jetty to jetty — projected deeply to either side of the narrower central hall. Contrary to what their modern patterns of survival in predominantly rural settings suggest, the origins of this regular building type probably lay in an urban context.

All that survives of the Wealden-type building at Calico House is the much-altered service block at the low end of the hall. At ground level, the two doors to the buttery and pantry remain and, although the timbers have never been scientifically dated, their relatively massive dimensions would be typical of construction methods of about 1400 (Fig 1). Fossilised in the structure is evidence for an internal stair to the upper floor of the block. The remainder of the house has since been repeatedly redeveloped, all the while essentially preserving its medieval arrangement of rooms.

Probably in the 15th century, the hall of the building was reconstructed on a larger scale. One wall of this structure between the high end of the hall and the two-storey block beyond it remains today. Preserved in the framing are peg sockets for the fixed bench behind the high table. At about the same time, a free-standing building was constructed just to the rear of the main house. Then, in the 16th century, the hall was again rebuilt, this time as a two-storey range.

This change is a commonplace one for the period, creating an additional large room at first-floor level. The central hearth had to be abandoned and, to heat both interiors, a fireplace—since removed, but leaving a gap in the original framing—was added to the rear of the new range. An oriel window was also created to light the high end of the hall.

From the limited evidence available, it’s hard to attribute these changes to any particular owner. By 1535, however, the nunnery had failed and its property at Newnham passed through several hands during the 16th century. Eventually, in April 1617, it was bought by a certain Hulkes, described as being a ‘yeoman of Newnham’, together with his son, John, and grandson Thomas, for the considerable sum of £1,400. It’s possible that Hulkes was already a tenant of Calico House. Whatever the case, he was not a gentleman and the purchase underlines his considerable resources as a farmer.

In acquiring this property jointly, Hulkes’s principle aim must have been to establish the fortunes of his descendants because it seems likely that his health was already failing. Certainly, only eight months later, in December 1617, he drew up his will. The will and an appended inventory added after his death in July 1618, refer to his ‘new’ house, the names of the rooms it contained and their relatively sparse furnishings. Read in conjunction with the surviving fabric, they make clear that he had undertaken another important round of changes, creating much of Calico House as we see it today (Fig 7).

The central hall and the chamber above largely remained in 16th-century form. Hulkes’s armour, presumably for service in the local militia, was stored in the hall and there were two tables here. In the upper room over the hall, there was a featherbed, a desk and wall-hangings. Some evidence for wall paintings has also been found in this interior.

Meanwhile, by 1617, the medieval service block had been heavily reworked, creating what is described as ‘my painted chamber’ over the earlier buttery and pantry. Remarkably, much of this decoration remains (Fig 4). It depicts a grid of panelling inset with strapwork decoration and representations of polished stones. As is typical of domestic wall paintings, the design is executed in cheap pigments. There is also the fragment of a quotation from Proverbs 4:3-4; aphorisms and Biblical texts were another common feature of domestic wall-painting schemes in this period. The room contained a bed with curtains, window curtains, some oak stools and a chest with three locks for valuables.

Meanwhile, Hulkes completely rebuilt the block at the opposite end of the hall, creating two well-appointed rooms, a parlour still lined with wainscotting (Fig 6) and a chamber over it. The former included chairs, stools and tables as well as a cupboard, the latter a bed with pillows and curtains, window curtains and another chest. Both were lit by an oriel window and provided with an ornate fireplace rising from floor to ceiling. The overmantles are made of brick faced in decorative plaster and that in the parlour incorporates the initials SHIH for Stephen and his wife, Johan (or possibly his son, John), in its upper frieze. The same initials also appear in a brick panel on the exterior of the house.

At the same time as these additions were made, the lower floor of the free-standing 15th-century service building to the rear of the house was converted into a kitchen (Fig 8). Its new fireplace and oven were set back to back with the fireplaces in the adjacent parlour block and the flues share a massive brick chimney stack that links the two buildings together (Fig 9). The cooking utensils listed in the kitchen included a jack and weights and two wheeled spits for roasting meat. There was also a well in the back yard and a brew house for beer making.

It’s likely that Hulkes’s son, John, occupied Calico House until his own death in 1651. Assuming so, he or his wife, Elizabeth, who outlived him, might have been responsible for a further round of minor mid-17th-century changes. These involved building the present front porch (Fig 3) and, on the opposite side of the hall, a staircase turret. Access was also provided to an attic floor that was created in this period by flooring over the open roof of the hall range. Simultaneously, an entrance passage was formed across the low end of the hall interior by inserting another brick chimney stack within the volume of the room (Fig 5). Presumably, the 16th-century hall range fireplace was dismantled at this time.

Such was the prosperity of the family that by the late 17th century, Hulkes’s great-grandson, another John, made claim to be a gentleman. He also changed his surname to Hulse. Again, further minor changes to Calico House may be related to him, including some late-17th-century re-fenestration and further additions to the back of the building. An inventory of his possessions underlines a steadily growing quantity and variety of household contents.

Following his death in 1682, the property passed to his widow and then, in 1705, to his godson, also John Hulse. John presumably created the painted panels that give the house its modern name in 1710, but died in 1713 leaving it to his son, yet another John, a minor.

This last John died in turn before coming of age and, in 1720, the property was sold to Col William Delaun, then MP for Kent, and became part of the neighbouring Sharsted estate. With the sale, therefore, Calico House ceased to be a family seat. That may, in turn, explain why it escaped the 19th century without major alteration. The present owners purchased the house in 2006. Lloyd-Brunt is a garden designer and there has been particular emphasis on the development of the garden. They have also lovingly restored and furnished the building, creating a modern home in this ancient house.

This feature originally appeared in the April 15 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.