THE MANORIAL BUILDINGS 5 



only the church, the manor-house, and perhaps the mill, rose out 

 conspicuously. There were no detached, isolated farm-houses ; but 

 the remaining buildings of the village, grouped together in a sort 

 of street, were the homes of the peasantry, who occupied and 

 cultivated the greater part of the land. At some little distance 

 from the village stood the manor hall or grange, with its out- 

 buildings, garden, and fishpond, surrounded by clay-built walls 

 with thatched tops. The style and extent of the buildings depended 

 on whether the house was the permanent or occasional residence 

 of the lord ; they also varied with the importance of the manor, 

 and the wealth of its owner. The house itself was built either of 

 timber and clay, or of stone, for brickmaking was still a forgotten 

 art. It often consisted of a single hall, plastered inside, open to 

 the roof, and earth-floored, which served as court of justice, dining- 

 room, and bedchamber. At one end of the central room was a 

 stable ; at the other a chamber, kitchen, or larder. Below one 

 part of the ground floor was a cellar ; above another part was, 

 perhaps, a " solar," or parlour, approached by an outside staircase. 

 If the manor was sufficiently important, there were probably added 

 a detached building for the farm servants, and a chamber for the 

 bailiff. The outbuildings consisted of bake-house, stables, dairy, 

 cattle and poultry houses, granary, and dove-cote. Some of the 

 oldest specimens of domestic architecture are granaries, like Hazel- 

 ton or Calcot in Gloucestershire, or the dove-cotes which still in 

 country districts mark the former sites of manor-houses. Repairs 

 of the walls and buildings of the manor-house were among the 

 labour services of the tenantry, who dug, tempered, and daubed 

 the clay, cut and carted the timber, and gathered the straw or reeds 

 for thatching. Where technical skill was needed they were aided 

 by craftsmen, who either held land in reward for their special 

 services, or, on the smaller manors, were hired for the occasion. 



Tufts of trees, conspicuous in the hedgeless expanse of arable 

 land by which they were surrounded, marked the sites of villages, 

 as they still do in the high table-land of the Pays de Caux. Under 

 their shelter clustered the homes of the peasantry, clay-walled, 

 open-roofed, earth-floored, chimneyless sheds, covered in with 

 straw or reeds or heather, and consisting of a single room. Here, 

 divided by a hurdle or wattle partition, lived, not only the human 

 inhabitants, but their cows, pigs, and poultry. Close by were the 

 tofts and crofts of the open-field farmers, each with its miniature 



