GROWTH OF THE MANOR 15 



I 



^Hbr the men ; and one or two other rooms. ^ It is probable 

 ^Bhat in early times the thegns possessed in most cases only 

 one manor apiece,^ so that the manor house was then nearly 

 always inhabited by the lord, but after the Conquest, when 

 manors were bestowed by scores and even hundreds by 

 William on his successful soldiers, many of them can only 

 have acted as the temporary lodging of the lord when he 

 came to collect his rent, or as the house of the bailiff. Ac- 

 cording to the Gerefa^ written about 1000 — and there was very 

 little alteration for a long time afterwards — the mansion was 

 adjacent to a court or yard which the quadrangular homestead 

 surrounded with its barns, horse and cattle stalls, sheep pens 

 and fowlhouse. Within this court were ovens, kilns, salt- 

 house, and malt-house, and perhaps the hayricks and wood piles. 

 Outside and surrounding the homestead were the enclosed 

 arable and grass fields of the portion of the demesne which 

 may be called the home farm, a kitchen garden, and probably 

 a vineyard, then common in England. The garden of the manor 

 house would not have a large variety of vegetables ; some onions, 

 leeks, mustard, peas, perhaps cabbage ; and apples, pears, 

 cherries, probably damsons, plums,^ strawberries, peaches, 

 quinces, and mulberries. Not far off was the village or town of 

 the tenants, the houses all clustering close together, each house 

 standing in a toft or yard with some buildings, and built of 

 wood, turf, clay, or wattles, with only one room which the 

 tenant shared with his live stock, as in parts of Ireland to-day. 

 Indeed, in some parts of Yorkshire at the beginning of the nine- 

 teenth century this primitive simplicity still prevailed, live stock 

 were still kept in the house, the floors were of clay, and the 



* Andrews, Old English Manor ^ p. iii. 



' Domesday of S. Paul, p. xxxvii. 



^ Thorold Rogers, Agriculture and Prices, i. 17 ; Cunningham, Industry 

 and Commerce, i. 55 ; Neckham, De Natura Rerum, Rolls Series, ch. 

 clxvi. Rogers says there were no plums, but Neckham mentions them. 

 See also Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 64. Matthew Paris 

 says the severe winter of 1257 destroyed cherries, plums, and figs» Chron. 

 Maj., Rolls Series, v. 660. 



