Picturesque English Cottages and Their Doorway Gardens 
front of them ; the other has a courtyard 
with two or three ranges ot chambers set 
around three sides ot it, while the fourth 
side is closed by a wall with an entrance 
gate leading from the street. All the larger 
houses have winter rooms heated by elabo¬ 
rately constructed hypocausts. The roofs 
were constructed of thatch, or tile, or stone. 
The stone roofing was cut in thin slabs, hex¬ 
agonal in shape, lapping over each other, 
like fishes’ scales. The tiles were large and 
Hat, with a strongly raised edge on each side. 
1'hey were nailed close together, and these 
raised edges were covered by semicircular 
tiles narrower at the upper end, but broaden¬ 
ing towards the bottom. Of the architectural 
details, the profusion of rich coloring, the 
magnihcent mosaic pavements, the ingenious 
methods of warming the chambers, we can¬ 
not now tell. The Roman influence has 
had little effect on our smaller domestic 
buildings, though occasionally we find Ro¬ 
man bricks, the pillage of a Roman villa, or 
city, built up in the walls of cottages, as well 
as in great minsters, like St. Albans, or in 
churches like Brixworth. 
The germ of the Roman plan of a house 
was the atrium or court, an uncovered en¬ 
closure. It prevails in every form of Orien¬ 
tal plan, from the earliest times to the present 
day. 
The Anglo-Saxon and the Dane brought 
with them to England’s shores their own ideas 
of building construction. The Gothic plan, 
coming from the cold North, differed essen¬ 
tially from the Roman. Their ideas were 
rude, and lacked the refinement of the Ro¬ 
man artificers. T heir primary object was 
shelter from the elements. Their type was 
not an atrium , but a hall. The Saxon thane’s 
house stood in the center of the village. It 
was not a very lordly structure. It was 
usually built of wood, which the neighboring 
forests supplied in plenty, and had stone or 
mud foundations. The house consisted of 
an irregular group of low buildings, almost 
all of one storey. In the center of the 
group was the hall with doors 
opening into the court. On 
one side stood the kitchen ; 
on the other the chapel. 
There was a tower for pur¬ 
poses of defense in case of an 
attack, and other rooms with 
lean-to roofs were joined to 
the hall; and stables and barns 
were scattered about outside 
the house. With the cattle 
and horses lived the grooms 
and herdsmen, while villeins 
and cottiers dwelt in the hum¬ 
ble, low, shed-like buildings 
which clustered around the 
Saxon thane’s dwelling-place. 
An illustration of such a 
house appears in an ancient 
illustration preserved in the 
Harleian MSS. No. 603. 
The hall of the Saxons was the great com¬ 
mon living-room for both men and women, 
who slept on the reed-strewn floor, the ladies’ 
sleeping place being separated from the men’s 
by the arras. Lord and lady, guest and serf, 
alike used the hall. The floor was made of 
earth; the door was woven of osiers, or made 
of boards, and there were small windows 
along the sides, closed by wicker shutters. 
A peat or log fire burned in the center of the 
hall, and the smoke clinging for a time to 
the blackened roof timbers and the stock of 
dried meats, escaped through openings in the 
gables, or a hole in the roof. 'This common 
hall remained the prominent feature ot the 
English house throughout the whole of the 
medieval period, and though the advance of 
A FARMHOUSE NEAR HERNE BAY, KENT 
28 
