INGENUITY AND LUXURY 



measure. It may, however, be accepted as a general 

 proposition that the country house tends to spread 

 laterally and longitudinally, the city house perpen- 

 dicularly. In the narrow streets of the Middle Ages 

 a form of city architecture developed which, striving 

 after light and air, hung one story out beyond another, 

 so that the profile of the house was like an inverted 

 staircase. This style was fostered by the custom 

 of having booths at the front of houses for the display 

 of wares. These wares showed to advantage in the 

 jutting stories, till the street became so darkened by 

 the over-arching gables that the purpose of the style 

 was quite defeated. In these structures we first see 

 the tendency to turn the face of the house outward 

 upon the street. 



After the close of the Roman occupation timber 

 architecture prevailed in England till the feudal castle 

 was introduced after the Norman conquest. When 

 Alfred the Great rebuilt London and founded the 

 University of Oxford he built of wood and thatch. 

 The timber used was oak, framed together by mortice 

 and tenon. The gaps in the framework were filled in 

 with clay, and with straw plastered over. The founda- 

 tion was usually a three-foot stone structure. 



The nucleus of the feudal castle was the tower. 

 Its battlemented turrets gave wide views over the sur- 

 rounding country, and in its depths dark deeds could 

 be perpetrated without probability of their being 

 revealed. A central tower was connected by walls of 

 masonry, often twenty feet thick, with end towers, 

 toward which at right angles again ran massive walls 



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