Outside this little separate world of the Jewry the general manner of life was much the same in all ranks of society. The domestic arrangements of the castle or manor-house differed little from those of the citizen’s dwelling. In both the accommodation usually consisted merely of a hall, a “solar” or upper chamber raised on a substructure of cellars, and a kitchen with its appendant offices.[157] The hall was the general living, eating, and sleeping-apartment for the whole household. Its floor was of wood, strewn with hay or rushes;[158] a fire blazed upon a great stone hearth in its centre, or in a wide recess at one end; and round the fire were ranged in due order the tables and benches at which the family, guests and servants all assembled for meals. In the higher ranks of society the king’s friend Count Robert of Meulan had set a fashion of taking but one daily repast--the mid-day dinner--and those who wished to ape courtly manners followed his example; the practice, however, found little favour with the mass of the people, who attributed it to aristocratic stinginess, and preferred their four meals a day according to ancient English custom.[159] It was in the hall that noble or merchant transacted his business or conversed with his friends; and it was in the hall too that at nightfall, when the tables were cleared and the wooden shutters which closed the unglazed windows safely barred,[160] guests and servants, divided at most by a curtain drawn across the room, lay down to sleep in the glow of the dying fire.[161] The solar was used at once as bedroom and private sitting-room by the master and mistress of the house;[162] a curtainless bed and an oaken chest,[163] serving as a wardrobe and fastened with lock and hinges often of elaborate ironwork,[164] made up its ordinary furniture; in the story of S. Thomas we catch a glimpse, too, of the cradle in which a burgher-mother rocked her baby to sleep, wrapped in a dainty silken coverlet.[165] The whole house, whether in town or country, was commonly of wood.[166] With open hearths and chimneys ill-constructed, or more probably altogether lacking, the natural consequence was that fires in towns were of constant occurrence and disastrous extent; Gilbert Becket’s house was burnt over his head several times, and in each case a large part of London shared in the destruction.[167] But the buildings thus easily destroyed were as easily replaced; while the cost of a stone house was beyond the means of any but the great nobles, unless it were here and there some exceptionally wealthy Jew; and there was no other building material to be had except wood or rubble, for the nearest approach to a brick which had yet come into general use was a tile;[168] and although these were sometimes used for roofing, the majority of houses, even in great cities like London, were covered with thatch.[169] All the architectural energy of the time spent itself in