A HISTORY OF SURREY 



Before further considering the details of such buildings, it may be 

 well to say something of the plans. Those of the larger houses present 

 no local peculiarities and have been dealt with m textbooks but smaller 

 houses such as those lived in by the Elizabethan settlers and the farmers 

 of the Weald have not been fbUy described or illustrated and it may be 

 useful to give plans where the plan is fairly preserved 



Up to the middle of the fifteenth century the plan of all houses 

 included a central hall open to the roof; an outer door led into a 

 passage cut off by a screen from the hall. From this passage three 

 doors led to the offices ; two of these led to the pantry and buttery, and 

 the other, sometimes to a passage to the kitchen, sometimes to stairs to 

 the upper floor, sometimes to a cellar, and in larger houses to another 



Fig. 7. House at Lingfield. 



parlour. About the middle of the sixteenth century the mode of life 

 had become different, and the halls commonly had a floor put in so as 

 to form rooms above ; a fireplace and chimney had then to be added 

 to take the place of the old central hearth. In houses built during the 

 century, the hall had already a large open fireplace and a floor over it. 

 Later on, a state room was formed on the first floor and the stairs at 

 the same time improved, the stairs winding round a newel being super- 

 seded by those with balustrades with which we are familiar. 



A very usual, indeed almost universal, form of early timber house, 

 had the upper storeys corbelled out on each side of the open hall. 

 The roof was carried straight over all, leaving a recess in the centre, 

 the wallplate over which was carried by curved struts. A typical 



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