FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 69 



been drying, and shapes his forks and rakes against his summer 

 labours. The cottages of the labourers, each with its garden 

 and curtilage, are built on the bare earth, with upright posts, 

 wattled with willow or hazel rods, and smeared outside and in 

 with clay or mortar. Half way up is a rude floor made of 

 unhewn poles, and reached by a ladder. The whole is thatched 

 with straw reeds or broom. Sometimes the hut is wholly made 

 of mud or clay, kneaded with a little straw and a few sticks to 

 give it cohesion, and carefully thatched to keep the wet from 

 the walls. Close to each cottage or farm-house is the mud 

 heap, streams from which in rainy weather pour down to and 

 fertilise the lower meadows. In many of these huts, however, 

 strong cloth and home-spun linen are woven, and when col- 

 lected by the chapmen are sold at the great fairs. 



The only building of any pretension in the ordinary village 

 is the parish church. As I have stated before, this was the 

 common hall of the parish, in which most of the local business, 

 when religious services were over, was transacted, and even 

 produce was stored. Nor in the matter of domestic comfort 

 was the house of the medieval burgher much more spacious and 

 comfortable than that of the rustic. His guildhall was his club, 

 and the funds of the guild, till they were ravished from him by 

 Somerset, were his benefit society. Only his municipal build- 

 ings 1 , in which he transacted the business of his borough, were 

 handsome, though far inferior to the Flemish halls; but his 

 churches vied in size and beauty with the best in Europe. 



1 There is a very good specimen of a fifteenth-century town-hall and offices in that 

 of Norwich. 



