Can you guess what it is? If a previous member of Wiltshire Buildings Record hadn’t identified this feature I doubt I would have been able to. The team was called to look at Littleton House, Littleton Pannell, in the parish of West Lavington.

The Feature in Question...

This old farmhouse had been owned by generations of Pococks who farmed the land for sheep and arable. The house itself goes back to the 17^th century at least, and successive owners have each put their own stamp on it. Narrow mullioned windows gave way to broad, airy sashes in the 18^th century, and chunky, louring beams to fine plastered ceilings in the 19^th century.

As time went on the living accommodation proliferated, with more specialised functions being carried out in different rooms. By the end of the 19^th century there were in addition to the usual reception rooms and kitchens a dairy, butler’s pantry, pump house, brew house, coal and wood house, as well as separate cellars for wine and for beer. To find out the identity of the feature, please 'read more'...

This brings us to the interesting feature on the south wall of the house – a bee bole. At a time when sugar was scarce and everyone was encouraged to be self-sufficient bee-keeping was quite common from the lord in his manor house to the lowly cottager in his humble dwelling. A bee bole was a convenient way of incorporating a shallow recess to hold one or two bee skeps made of straw and sheltering it from the elements. Serious bee-keepers had rows of these often arched niches in their garden walls, or free-standing bee-houses, shelters and hives. Where the dedicated structures have been swept away along with the other trappings of antiquated living these bee-boles often remain, because they are part of the fabric of the house.

The bee-bole here has been added in the later 18^th or early 19^th century and probably hasn’t been used for its original purpose for a long time. The examples recorded by WBR are few and far between. A 19^th century set were found in a house wall in Farleigh Wick and Bradford-on-Avon, and recently bee-boles for overwintering skeps were found in a cellar in Aldbourne. Let us know if you find any in Wiltshire – we’d be most interested.