“Agreement between Master Walter Cook and Sir Henry Jolypas, clerks, and John More, tymbermongere, and John Gerard, carpenter, citizens of London, for the erection of three shops in Friday Street, with one cellar below. The three shops are to have three ‘stalles’ and three ‘entreclos’ on the ground floor. On the first floor each house is to have ‘une sale, une spence, et une cusyne,’ and in each ‘sale’ there are to be ‘benches et speres.’ The second floor in each house is to be divided into ‘une principal chambre, une drawying chamber, et une forein,’ and was to have ‘une seylingpece.’ Each house is to have two ‘esteires.’ The height from the ground to the ‘gistes del primer flore’ is to be ten feet and a half, and the ‘punchons’ of the first floor are to be nine feet up to the ‘gistes’ above, and the ‘punchons’ of the second floor eight feet up the ‘resoner.’ Each house is to have a gable towards the street on the east, according to a ‘patron’ made on parchment. The ‘huisses’ and ‘fenestres’ are to be made of ‘Estricchebord.’ Dated, August 20, 11 Henry IV.” It is generally stated that access to the upper chamber of a mediæval house was by stairs on the outside. I venture to think that this statement requires explanation. The houses of London at first consisted of nothing more than a room below and a smaller room above, and in the upper room—oh! so tiny—were a bed and a cradle, and the cushions or pillows of which the Londoner was so fond. I have seen one or two old houses in which a ladder from the room below served for access to the room above, and this arrangement, I believe, was that commonly adopted. But early in the fourteenth century we find houses of two or three storeys, each of which in some cases formed the freehold of different persons; in fact, it was an early kind of “flat.” It is observed that communication to these upper storeys could not be made through the lower rooms and must have been by an external staircase. (See also below, p. 252.) We find this arrangement in the modern flat; and in Edinburgh in the old flats. There were quarrels among the occupants of these “flats.” King Edward II. passed an ordinance directing each owner to keep his own part in due repair. Riley quotes a case in which a widow claimed Free Bench in a tenement belonging to her late husband in the parish of St. Nicholas Flesh Shambles. The sheriffs gave her a wing (alam) or perhaps the principal room (aulam) with a chamber, a cellar, and the right of easement in the kitchen, stable, common drain, and courtyard; the rest of the house remained in possession of the heirs and next-of-kin of the deceased.