Picturesque English Cottages and Their Doorway Gardens 
the ground, and the walls of clay or rubble. 
Some houses bad two rooms, one of which was 
occupied by the cow, and a rude partition 
called “brattish” rose to the eaves and sepa¬ 
rated this “shippon” from the only dwelling 
room of the family. The floor was of clay, or 
paved with large pebbles. There was no 
second storey, and the floors were often below 
the level of the ground, and very dirty, just 
outside the doorway stood the “midden” or 
Act was passed in the reign of Henry VIE 
(A. D. 1489) prohibiting the wholesale pulling 
down of farms and cottages, many of which 
must have disappeared, or the order would not 
have been necessary. 
Before the dawn of the sixteenth century, 
many of the laborers lived in the farmhouses, 
eating and sleeping in the large halls which 
were the principal feature of the houses. In 
the sixteenth century there was a great de- 
A ROW OF OLD STONE COTTAGES AT CASTLE COMBE 
heap of refuse, and in rainy weather pesti¬ 
lential matter festered there and drained into 
the village brook and “dip-holes.” No won¬ 
der that the Black Death and oft recurring 
plagues found congenial homes in such insani¬ 
tary dwellings. 
There was a great destruction of cottages in 
the fifteenth century, when many parts of the 
country were thrown into pasture, and the 
keeping of sheep and the trade in wool were 
more profitable than the growing of corn. An 
mand for cottages. The abbeys were pillaged 
of their lands, and the great landlords who 
obtained the fair acres of the monasteries, 
required men to till their estates. Hence 
there was a great increase in cottage building 
in the sixteenth century, and an immense 
majority of our old farmsteads and humbler 
dwellings date from this period. 
Ehen were our English vales and hills 
dotted over with these fair edifices, the 
remains of which give a peculiar charm to 
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