Wisson Hill’s traces of ‘Everyday Histories’ for Heritage Open Days 2026

Heritage Open Days 2026 theme is ‘Everyday Histories’ and, at Wisson Hill’s first tours as part of HOD, visitors can see the uncovered evidence of how people lived in the house right back to 1530, when it was built. We can imagine how people lived in this farmhouse through the centuries from the structures and marks left in the building, small broken or lost pieces, and documents: the building and finds are shared here but I am yet to navigate Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s copyright rules.

An original pot hook and chain is still in the inglenook below a stone shelf and, further up, iron bars which may have been used to smoke meat above the fire. [UPDATE: Since visiting Snowshill Manor and doing more research, it seems that the iron circle and bars are the remains of a smoke jack: a fan positioned in the circle would have been turned by the channelled smoke and hot air, driving a device for turning meat.] The same inglenook has ‘bites’ out of the brick side wall – could these have been to allow for some sort of rack to turn meat or move pots?

A second large fireplace dates to a similar time – probably late sixteenth or early seventeenth century – and raises questions about how the house was used, with two large early modern fireplaces, with cooking equipment associated with both. Outside the house and next to this fireplace there is the unmistakable shape of a bread oven, although nothing remains of the structure inside. Across the bressumer, which has a burn mark and a faint but distinct daily wheel apotropaic mark, are notches. What are these for? My best guess is that much later, when this part of the farmhouse was in decline, the inglenook may have been used as a dog or chicken pen, as the notches seem to leave room for an opening, or maybe a gate.

A separate stone wash house was probably originally a brew house. The washing copper is completely intact with grate and flue and could be used today. On the other side of a central hearth is the curved stone housing of what was probably a larger copper for brewing ale for farm workers.

As well as the many apotropaic marks in every room of the house, the small items found during renovation help us to get a feeling for how people lived here. The finds are displayed in the holiday house and include oyster shells (food for ordinary people), clay pipes, part of a bone flute, many shards of pottery from medieval to recent and even scraps of newspaper shoved into repairs over the years.

Very sadly, a fragment of stitched leather, likely an offcut from glove making, which was found and put in a ‘special place’ during renovation, cannot be found, but it did suggest another activity taking place in the farmhouse. Another special source of information about life at Wisson Hill is a set of farm accounts and inventory made in 1795/6, naming workers in the fields, along with what they were doing and how much they were paid. The inventory gives the value of every item in the house and across the farm, including the names and ages of all the horses and cows.

I often stand within the footprint of the smoke bay, defined on three sides by smoke-blackened timbers, and imagine how it must have been when the Payton family first moved into the house, life still steered by the Catholic faith and its annual calendar, and then how it changed through the rest of the Tudor period, as the Paytons thrived.

What about the bone flute, carefully carved from a large bone – maybe a deer – but then chewed to pieces by a dog? Maybe the musician consoled themselves with a pipe of tobacco and a pint of ale…

Conversations with Bill Beard, who lived in the house as a boy around World War II, have been fascinating. He told me about the time when he and some other children found deserters in the hay loft of the staddle stone barn that stood next to the house and how bad he felt ‘dobbing them in’. All we have now are a few photos and two staddle stone tops left in the garden, presumably from that little barn.

Two of our Heritage Open Day tours are fully booked but there are still a few places for Saturday 12th September.

Wisson Hill is now available for holiday rental.