During the period of which we are speaking, the richer the householder, the greater need he had of studying strength and security, and hence with him the soler, or upper story, became of more importance, and was often made the principal part of the house, at least that in which himself and his family placed themselves at night. This was especially the case in stone buildings, where the ground-floor was often a low vaulted apartment, which seems to have been commonly looked upon as a cellar, while the principal room was on the first-floor, approached usually by a staircase on the outside. A house of this kind is represented in one of our cuts taken from the Bayeux tapestry, where the guests are carousing in the room on the first-floor. Yet still the vaulted room on the ground-floor was perhaps more often considered as the public apartment. In this manner the two apartments of the house, instead of standing side by side, were raised one upon the other, and formed externally a square mass of masonry. Several examples of early manor-houses of this description still remain, among which one of the most remarkable is that at Millichope in Shropshire; which evidently belongs to the latter half of the twelfth century. It has not been noticed in any work on domestic architecture, but I am enabled to describe it from two private lithographed plates by Mrs. Stackhouse Acton, of Acton Scott, from which the accompanying cuts are taken. The first (No. 85) represents the present outward appearance of the ancient building, which is now an adjunct to a farm-house. The plan is a rectangle, considerably longer from north to south than in the transverse direction. The walls are immensely thick on the ground-floor in comparison to the size of the building, as will be seen from the plan of the ground-floor given in the next cut (No. 86). The original entrance was at _b_, by a late Norman arch, slightly ornamented, which is seen in the view. To the right of this is seen one of the original windows, also round arched. On the north and east sides were two other windows, the openings of them all being small towards the exterior, but enlarging inwards. The interior must have been extremely dark; nevertheless it contains a fireplace, and was probably the public room. The opening at _a_ is merely a modern passage into the farm-house. As this house stands on the borders of Wales, and therefore security was the principal consideration, the staircase, from the thickness of the walls, was safer inside than on the exterior. We accordingly find that it was worked into the mass of the wall in the south-west corner, the entrance being at _c_. The steps of the lower part--it was a stone staircase--are concealed or destroyed, so that we hardly know how it commenced, but there are steps of stone now running up to the soler or upper apartment, as represented in our plan of the upper floor. This staircase received light at the bottom and at the top, by