LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 51 



17 feet broad, and 17 feet high, the roof being open as in the 

 hall; and the thalamus was 22 feet long, 16 feet broad, and 



1 8 feet high. About the same date the Manor house of Thorp 

 was larger, and contained a hall, a chamber, tresantia (apparently 

 part of the hall or chamber separated by a screen to form an 

 antechamber), two private rooms, a kitchen, brew-house, malt- 

 house, dairy, ox shed, and three small hen-houses. 



The ordinary manor house of the Middle Ages contained 

 three rooms at least, of mean aspect, the floor even of the 

 hall, which was the principal eating and sleeping room, being 

 of dirt ; and when there was an upper room or solar added, 

 which began to be done at the end of the twelfth century, 1 

 access to it was often obtained by an outside staircase. 



If the manor house belonged to the owner of many manors, 

 it was sometimes inhabited by his bailiff. 



The barns on the demesnes were often as important build- 

 ings as the manor houses ; one at Wickham, belonging to the 

 canons of S. Paul's 2 in the twelfth century, was 55 feet long, 

 13 feet high from the floor to the principal beam, and io| feet 

 more to the ridge board ; the breadth between the pillars was 

 19! feet, and on each side it had a wing or aisle 6^ feet wide 

 and 6\ feet high. The amount of corn in the barn was often 

 scored on the door-posts. 3 In the manor houses chimneys 

 rarely existed, the fire being made in the middle of the hall. 

 Even in the early seventeenth century in Cheshire there were 

 no chimneys in the farmhouses, and there the oxen were kept 

 under the same roof as the farmer and his family. 4 When 

 chimneys did come in they were not much thought of. 'Now we 

 have chimneys our tenderlings complain of rheums, catarrhs, 

 and poses (colds) ; ' for the smoke not only hardened the 

 timbers, but was said by Harrison to be an excellent medicine 

 for man. Instead of glass there was much lattice, and that 



1 Turner, Domestic Architecture, i. 59. 



2 Domesday of S. Paul, p. 123. 



3 Historical MSS. Commission Report, v. 444. 



4 Ormerod, History of Cheshire, i. 129. 



E 2 



