Opening out of the little porch is a strong oak door, studded with iron nails. The height of the door is five feet eight inches, and it is below the level of the sill or threshold, so that when you enter the house you go down one step. As you enter you must take care both of your head and your feet, or you may come to grief at both ends. Dr. Troels Lund says that in Danish houses of the sixteenth century “the door was extremely low, so that a person entering had to bend down, and at the same time the sill was so high that the foot had to be well lifted up. And if a man had reason to fear a hostile attack, it was a considerable help that the entrance, which was always a weak point, should be as narrow and low as possible; if the door were burst open, the enemy might get his death-blow as he stepped over the sill with his back bent and his foot lifted up.”[65] [65] _Das Tägliche Leben in Skandinavien während des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts_, Copenhagen, 1882, p. 12. At Offerton Hall, instead of lifting your leg up you have to drop it down, and at the same time if you are a tall man you have to bend your neck. In the English, as in the Danish case, the intention was to make entrance difficult, and to prevent surprises. The thick oak door opens inwardly. As you go in you do not see the house-place; you face the great chimney wall, and to get into the house-place you pass through another door on your right. Thus the house contains both an inner and an outer porch, the inner porch answering to the “speer” of Lancashire cottages which have no outer porch. The door of entrance is fastened by an oak bolt one foot nine inches in length, and three inches by four in thickness. The bolt fits into a hole in the wall, and is drawn out by an iron ring. The house-place, or “house-body” as they call it at Halifax, is still the centre of domestic intercourse, as it has always been. As you enter, your back is turned to the great fireplace which once warmed all the house, and which was kept burning day and night. When you get inside the house-place the great vault of the chimney, more than eleven feet wide, is before you, spanned by a depressed arch. People in the neighbourhood speak of the chimney of Offerton Hall as “a lantern chimney.” If you ask them why it was so called, somebody may tell you, without blushing, that it was because a man went up to sweep it with a lantern. The term “lantern chimney” is not to be found in dictionaries, and may therefore be presumed to be unknown. There must once have been a louver or lantern at the top of the chimney at Offerton, like the one, for instance, at Tisbury, in Wiltshire, figured in Parker’s _Glossary_. The chimney at Tisbury is octangular, with a conical roof, like the top of a stable lantern, and with lateral holes for the emission of smoke. The summit of the chimney at Offerton may originally have been of this form.