LITir.K HUCKI-OW : IIS CUSTOMS AND OI,D HOUSES. 57 



(•(Uirtyard, with a right-of-way thereto, and he has also two 

 fields in the middle of his neighbour's land. This is not less 

 remarkable than the case of a single acre wedged in between 

 two acres belonging to two other men, as we find it in the 

 ancient open-field system. 



The two chambers of the house marked " C," one of which, 

 as I have said, extends over the scullery and pantry of the 

 house marked " B,'' are separated from each other by a wooden 

 framework made of strong beams of oak resting on a thick 

 joist (fig. 2), with a doorway in the centre. This framework, 

 which stands in the position of the dotted line on the plan, 

 is far too strong to have been intended as a mere partition 

 wall, and the sockets or mortises in the blades or side-trees 

 show that rafters have once been fitted into them. The present 

 roof, therefore, is not the original roof, but was substituted 

 for an older roof laid close to the blades, the side walls being 

 raised when the new roof was put on. Hence, as may be 

 seen in the photograph, the present decapitated chamber 

 windows were originally dormer windows, the chambers being 

 contracted and low. Owing to the ruinous and dangerous state 

 of the building I could neither photograph nor measure the 

 framework (fig. 2), and could only make a sketch. The 

 framework is locally known as a coupling, and is very 

 interesting because it gives us an actual representation of what 

 was known in the fourteenth century as a coujjle of syles.* 



Writing of old Scottish buildings, Jamieson says in his 

 Dictionary : "Two transverse beams go from one sile-blade to 

 the other, to prevent the siles from being pressed down by the 

 superincumbent load, which would soon make the walls ' skail ' 

 — that is, jut outwards." The newer roof of the house marked 

 " C " on the plan has already made the walls jut outwards to 

 a dangerous extent. 



* " Unam domum, vocatam le Fire-house, continentem quinque copies 

 de s)'Ies et duo gavelforkes." — Lease, dated 1392, in Greenwell's 

 Feodarium Prioratus Dunelmensis (Surtees Soc), p. 167. The lease was 

 for 200 years, and the lessees undertook to repair and maintain these 

 " syles " and '' gavelforkes " during that period, and to yield them up 

 at the end of the term in good condition. 



