ANCIENT VILLAGE LIFE 63 



tagenet kings reigned, each little Downland village 

 still possesses one or two houses of pretension. 

 There is the lord's house, or manor, and some- 

 times a parish was divided among two overlords 

 and consequently two large houses remain. Even 

 if the actual buildings have been destroyed, we 

 know that they were not far distant from the 

 present ones. Usually a winding village street 

 leads to cross-roads, and here, grouped round or 

 near the church, which was once the site of the 

 stockade or fortress, are all the cottages. The 

 curved walls show in some cases which direction 

 the old coach road took as its heavily-laden vehicles 

 swung from side to side. The parson's house and 

 sometimes that of the miller stand out superior 

 to the rest, but all lie snugly, securely close to- 

 gether, where fear had originally dictated that 

 they could best gain protection, in days when the 

 settlers lived in wattle-built huts. Very few 

 distant outstanding homesteads date back to those 

 old days, for men found security in living in 

 groups and communities. Then, too, as each 

 village was more or less self-supporting it was 

 necessary that labour should be commingled and, 

 in our modern sense of the word, co-operative. It 

 is not therefore in the lie of the land or the position 

 of houses and cottages that change has taken 

 place. The difference since those old days consists 

 only in the way land is worked. Each village 

 then raised its own food supply and the cottagers 

 to a large extent made their own linen and cloth. 

 Arable land was in open strips and after the harvest 

 had been gathered it was used by all as common 

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