Hitherto, we have mostly spoken of palaces and mansions. It is, however, very difficult to discover any fragments of houses inhabited by the gentry, before the reign, at soonest, of Edward III., or even to trace them by engravings in the older topographical works; not only from the dilapidations of time, but because very few considerable mansions had been erected by that class. It is an error to suppose that the English gentry were lodged in stately, or even in well-sized houses. They usually consisted of an entrance-passage, running through the house, with a hall on one side, a parlour beyond, and one or two chambers above; and on the opposite side, a kitchen, pantry, and other offices. Such was the ordinary manor-house of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. "In the remains of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Somersetshire is especially rich. Almost every village has a house, a parsonage, or some building or other of this class, to say nothing of extensive monastic remains, as at Glastonbury, Woodspring, Muchelney, and Old Cleve. Among the Somersetshire houses, the original portions of Clevedon Court may claim the first place. Then comes a long list, of which, perhaps, the manor-house and 'fish-house' of Meare, near Glastonbury, are the most curious and beautiful."[38] Larger houses were erected by men of great estates during the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV.; but very few can be traced higher; and Mr. Hallam, in his _History of the Middle Ages_, conceives it to be difficult to name a house in England, still inhabited by a gentleman, and not of the castle description, the principal apartments of which are older than the reign of Henry VII. There may be a few solitary specimens of earlier date. The Rev. Mr. Lysons says:--"The most remarkable fragment of early building which I have anywhere found mentioned, is at a house in Berkshire, called Appleton, where there is a sort of prodigy--an entrance-passage with circular arches in the Saxon (? Norman) style, which must, probably, be as old as the reign of Henry II. No other private house in England, as I conceive, can boast of such a monument of antiquity."