THE DE LYONS HALL OR 'OLD REFECTORY'
All notes are subject to revision and we welcome further referenced information.
The original building. A cross wing to the medieval Great Hall.
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Construction date: The room and roof have been dated to the late 14th / early 15th century. It's quite likely a building existed here before the 1390s.
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Walls: The walls of the early manor were built using hard rubble lime and sandstones that were still quarried on the estate in the last century. It is likely that the walls were coated with a soft lime plaster made from burning local carboniferous limestone and decorated with biblical and nature scenes using mainly natural pigments or covered with colourful woven tapestries.
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Windows: The earliest windows may not have been glazed but filled with oiled cloth, animal hide, horn or just shuttered with wood.
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Before chimneys were introduced, smoke may have passed out through a smoke hood in the roof above a central fire. There may have been a stone hearth on a raised timber first floor or possibly a raised stone floor over a stone vaulted undercroft above the damp ground but removed long ago.
THE ROOF
THE ROOF
Image: FAM volunteer (2021)
Roof: Probably local oak, 3 tiered arch braced, collar beam roof; designed to create an open living space unbroken by wall top tie beams. It extends unseen but much damaged to the west courtyard. The central narrow bay may once have formed a narrow ‘smoke bay’ The roof was extensively but expertly repaired in works funded by Bristol City Council in the 1970s.
THE ROOF
Image: ©Bristol Post
Photos from the 1970s reveal the floor structure of the ‘mezzanine’ above the west end of this wing with a coved ceiling structure. The 1300s roof trusses of this hall survive here but it appears the apex was demolished when building the 2nd floor in the 1500s. A 1500s fireplace survives retaining a late Georgian fire basket, but modern brick was used extensively to repair walls.
THE ROOF
Image: FAM volunteer (2021)
700 years of building history have seen this building altered many times and like others at the medieval core of the manor, it clearly needs much more building archaeology, analysis & TLC.
EARLY HISTORY
Early History: Thomas de Lyons, 1369 to c1428, is thought to have built ‘De Lyons Hall’ in its current form. He inherited Ashton Lyons, as Ashton Court was then known, from his father but came into a lot of money when he married Margaret, the wealthy widow of wool merchant Edward Blanket.
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Spending his wife’s money: With this new wealth he founded the present Long Ashton parish church of All Saints where the family arms can be seen high on the church tower. In 1392 He gained a licence from parliament to ‘empark’ 250 acres to the north of the house for deer and a rabbit warren, for fun, food & fur, thus forming the foundation of today’s 850 acre estate.
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He also carried out extensive new building works to the manor including this stone built cross wing or hall. The exact nature of the building and the original openings are not visible today and remain open to conjecture.
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Building use: At the heart of the fortified medieval manor, this hall was a relatively secure living and sleeping room or ‘solar’ for the Lord and his family or his guests. It is possible that the high windows & arch braced roof indicate the principle living area would have been at first floor level and away from the hurly burly of the Hall. A typical Somerset building pattern shows a raised living floor often over partially cellared stone vaulted stores.
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The Last 100 years of Smyth family use: See Bantock’s sketches from servant’s accounts in the 1880s, 1930s, and in 1960, prior to demolitions. While not precise, they show a much divided area at ground and first floor for the butler & footmen, corridors & stairs, and a larder to the attached kitchen, all of which significantly downgraded this building from its former status.
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1960s: It stood among other medieval & later domestic buildings at Ashton Court until the City Council acquired the mansion & demolished some of the more derelict buildings around it on receipt of the Donald Insall report.
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Today: The high walls and finishes make the room look austere and uninviting, the plaster obscures hidden clues about its past. With careful reference to documents and the repair records(?) from the 1970s, it is likely that modern finishes could be removed, past structures investigated and the building restored to a softer, more sympathetic appearance of an earlier era.