52 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



made either of wicker or fine rifts of oak in checkerwise, and 

 horn was also used. Beds, of course, were a luxury, the owner 

 of the manor, his guests, and retainers flung themselves down 

 on the hall floor after supper and all slept together, though 

 sometimes rough mattresses were brought in. 



Furniture was rude and scanty. In 1150 the farm imple- 

 ments and household furniture on the Manor of ' Waleton ' was 

 valued and consisted of 4 carts, 3 baskets, a basket used in 

 winnowing corn, a pair of millstones, 10 tubs, 4 barrels, 

 2 boilers of lead with stoves, 2 wooden bowls, 3 three-legged 

 tables, 20 dishes or platters, 2 tablecloths worth 6d., 6 metal 

 bowls, half a load of the invaluable salt, 2 axes, a table with 

 trestles (the usual form of table), and 5 beehives made of 

 rushes.^ These articles were handed down from one genera- 

 tion to another, and in a lease made 150 years afterwards of 

 the same manor most of them reappear. The greater part 

 of the furniture, until the fifteenth century, was most likely 

 made by migratory workmen, who travelled from village to 

 village ; for except the rudest pieces it was beyond the village 

 carpenter, and shops there were none. 



It is not to be expected that when the master lived in this 

 manner the lot of the labourer was a very good one. His 

 home was miserably poor, generally of 'wattle and dab', 

 sometimes wholly of mud and clay ; many with only one room 

 for all purposes. A bill is still in existence for a house, if it 

 can be called one, built in 1306 for two labourers by Queen's 

 College, Oxford, which cost 20i-. in all, and was a mere hovel 

 without floor, ceiling, or chimney.^ Their wretched houses 

 appear to have been built on the bare earth, and unfloored. 

 Perhaps as time went on a rude upper storey was added, 

 the floor of which was made of rough poles or hurdles and was 

 reached by a ladder. The furniture was miserably poor : a few 

 pots and pans, cups and dishes, and some tools would exhaust 



^ Doomsday of S. Paul^ p. xcvii. 



^ Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century. 



