The ordinary manor house of the Middle Ages contained three rooms at least, of mean aspect, the floor even of the hall, which was the principal eating and sleeping room, being of dirt; and when there was an upper room or solar added, which began to be done at the end of the twelfth century,[133] access to it was often obtained by an outside staircase. If the manor house belonged to the owner of many manors, it was sometimes inhabited by his bailiff. The barns on the demesnes were often as important buildings as the manor houses; one at Wickham, belonging to the canons of S. Paul's[134] in the twelfth century, was 55 feet long, 13 feet high from the floor to the principal beam, and 10-1/2 feet more to the ridge board; the breadth between the pillars was 19-1/2 feet, and on each side it had a wing or aisle 6-1/2 feet wide and 6-1/2 feet high. The amount of corn in the barn was often scored on the door-posts.[135] In the manor houses chimneys rarely existed, the fire being made in the middle of the hall. Even in the early seventeenth century in Cheshire there were no chimneys in the farmhouses, and there the oxen were kept under the same roof as the farmer and his family.[136] When chimneys did come in they were not much thought of. 'Now we have chimneys our tenderlings complain of rheums, catarrhs, and poses (colds);' for the smoke not only hardened the timbers, but was said by Harrison to be an excellent medicine for man. Instead of glass there was much lattice, and that made either of wicker or fine rifts of oak in checkerwise, and horn was also used. Beds, of course, were a luxury, the owner of the manor, his guests, and retainers flung themselves down on the hall floor after supper and all slept together, though sometimes rough mattresses were brought in. Furniture was rude and scanty. In 1150 the farm implements and household furniture on the Manor of 'Waleton' was valued and consisted of 4 carts, 3 baskets, a basket used in winnowing corn, a pair of millstones, 10 tubs, 4 barrels, 2 boilers of lead with stoves, 2 wooden bowls, 3 three-legged tables, 20 dishes or platters, 2 tablecloths worth 6d., 6 metal bowls, half a load of the invaluable salt, 2 axes, a table with trestles (the usual form of table), and 5 beehives made of rushes.[137] These articles were handed down from one generation to another, and in a lease made 150 years afterwards of the same manor most of them reappear. The greater part of the furniture, until the fifteenth century, was most likely made by migratory workmen, who travelled from village to village; for except the rudest pieces it was beyond the village carpenter, and shops there were none.