A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle AgesWright, Thomas
History
A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages
Wright, Thomas
England -- Social life and customs -- 1066-1485
The chamber had, indeed, now become so important a part of the
building, that its name was not unusually given to the whole house,
which, in the documents of the thirteenth century, is sometimes called
a _camera ad estagiam_--an upper-storied chamber. Such was the case
with a house built in 1285 for Edward I. and his queen in the forest
at Woolmer, in Hampshire, the account of the expenses of which are
preserved in the Pipe Rolls. This house was seventy-two feet long,
and twenty-eight feet wide. It had two chimneys, a chapel, and two
wardrobes. The chapel and wardrobe had six glazed windows. There was
also a hall in it, but the two chimneys appear to have belonged to
the chamber. The windows of the chamber and hall had wooden shutters
(_hostia_), but do not appear to have had glass. The kitchen was the
only other apartment in the house. The ordinary windows of a house at
this time were not usually glazed; but they were either latticed, or
consisted of a mere opening, which was covered by a cloth or curtain
by day, and was closed by a shutter, which turned upon hinges, either
sideways, like an ordinary door, or up and down, and which seems
generally to have opened outwards. The rooms were, in this manner,
very imperfectly protected against the weather, even in palaces. A
precept of Henry III. has been quoted, which directs glass to be
substituted for wood in a window in the queen’s wardrobe at the Tower,
“in order that that chamber might not be so windy;” and in the same
reign a charge is made in the accounts relating to the royal manor
at Kennington, “for closing the windows better than usual (_et in
fenestris melius solito claudendis_).”[24]
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