The vocabularies of the Anglo-Saxon period furnish us with the names of most of the parts of the ordinary dwellings. The entrance through the outer wall into the court, the strength of which is alluded to in early writers, was properly the gate (_geát_). The whole mass inclosed within this wall constituted the _burh_ (burgh), or tun, and the inclosed court itself seems to have been designated as the _cafer-tun_, or _inburh_. The wall of the hall, or of the internal buildings in general, was called a _wag_, or _wah_, a distinctive word which remained in use till a late period in the English language, and seems to have been lost partly through the similarity of sound.[1] The entrance to the hall, or to the other buildings in the interior, was the _duru_, or door, which was thus distinguished from the gate. Another kind of door mentioned in the vocabularies was a _hlid-gata_, literally a gate with a lid or cover, which was perhaps, however, a word merely invented to represent the Latin _valva_, which is given as its equivalent. The _door_ is described in Beowulf as being “fastened with fire-bands” (_fyr-bendum fæst_, I. 1448), which must mean iron bars.[2] Either before the door of the hall, or between the door and the interior apartment, was sometimes a _selde_, literally a shed, but perhaps we might now call it a portico. The different parts of the architectural structure of the hall enumerated in the vocabularies are _stapul_, a post or log set in the ground; _stipere_, a pillar; _beam_, a beam; _ræfter_, a rafter; _læta_, a lath; _swer_, a column. The columns supported _bigels_, an arch or vault, or _fyrst_, the interior of the roof, the ceiling. The _hrof_, or roof, was called also _thecen_, or _thæcen_, a word derived from the verb _theccan_, to cover; but although this is the original of our modern word _thatch_, our readers must not suppose that the Anglo-Saxon _thæcen_ meant what we call a thatched roof, for we have the Anglo-Saxon word _thæc-tigel_, a thatch-tile, as well as _hrof-tigel_, a roof-tile. There was sometimes one story above the ground-floor, for which the vocabularies give the Latin word _solarium_, the origin of the later mediæval word, _soler_; but it is evident that this was not common to Anglo-Saxon houses, and the only name for it was _up-flor_, an upper floor. It was approached by a _stæger_, so named from the verb _stigan_, to ascend, and the origin of our modern word _stair_. There were windows to the hall, which were probably improvements upon the ruder primitive Saxon buildings, for the only Anglo-Saxon words for a window are _eag-thyrl_, an eye-hole, and _eag-duru_, an eye-door.