Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776Reilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Nobles, doctors, and attorneys wore tunics to the ankle and an
over-tunic almost as long, which was lined with fur and had long
sleeves. A hood was attached to it. A man's hair was short and curled,
with bangs on the forehead. The tunic of merchants and middle class men
reached to the calf. The laborer wore a tunic that reached to the knee,
cloth stockings, and shoes of heavy felt, cloth, or perhaps leather.
Ladies wore a full-length tunic with moderate fullness in the skirt,
and a low belt, and tight sleeves. A lady's hair was concealed by a
round hat tied on the top of her head. Over her tunic, she wore a
cloak. Monks and nuns wore long black robes with hoods.
Baron landholders' semi-fortified stone manor houses were
improved and extended. Many had been licensed to be embattled or
crenelated [wall indented at top with shooting spaces]. They were
usually quadrangular around a central courtyard. The central and
largest room was the hall, where people ate and slept. The hall had a
hearth for fire in the center of the room if the hall was one story
high. Sometimes the lord had a room with a sleeping loft above it. If
the hall was more than one story high, it had a fireplace at one end so
that the smoke could go up and out the roof. Other rooms each had a
fireplace. There were small windows around the top story and on the
inside of the courtyard. They were usually covered with oiled paper.
Windows of large houses were of opaque glass supplied by a glassmaking
craft. The glass was thick, uneven, distorted, and greenish in color.
The walls were plastered. The floor was wood with some carpets. Roofs
were timbered with horizontal beams. Many roofs had tiles supplied by
the tile craft, which baked the tiles in kilns or over an open fire.
Because of the hazard of fire, the kitchen was often a separate
building, with a covered way connecting it to the hall. It had one or
two open fires in fireplaces, and ovens. Sometimes there was a separate
room for a dairy.
Furniture included heavy wood armchairs for the lord and lady,
stools, benches, trestle tables, chests, and cupboards. Outside was an
enclosed garden with cabbages, peas, beans, beetroots, onions, garlic,
leeks, lettuce, watercress, hops, herbs, nut trees for oil, some
flowers, and a fish pond and well. Bees were kept for their honey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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