Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen ElizabethReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen Elizabeth
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Many types of people besides the nobility and knights now had
property and thus were considered gentry: female lines of the
nobility, merchants and their sons, lawyers, auditors, squires,
and peasant-yeomen. The burgess grew rich as the knight dropped
lower. The great merchants lived in mansions which could occupy
whole blocks. Typically, there would be an oak-paneled great
hall, with adjoining kitchen, pantry, and buttery on one end and
a great parlor to receive guests, bedrooms, wardrobes, servants'
rooms, and a chapel on the other end or on a second floor. The
beds were surrounded by heavy draperies to keep out cold drafts.
Master and servants ceased to eat together in the same hall. In
towns these mansions were entered through a gate through a row
of shops on the street. A lesser dwelling would have these rooms
on three floors over a shop on the first floor. An average
Londoner would have a shop, a storeroom, a hall, a kitchen, and
a buttery on the first floor, and three bedrooms on the second
floor. Artisans and shopkeepers of more modest means lived in
rows of dwellings, each with a shop and small storage room on
the first floor, and a combination parlor-bedroom on the second
floor. The humblest residents crowded their shop and family into
one 6 by 10 foot room for rent of a few shillings a year. All
except the last would also have a small garden. The best gardens
had a fruit tree, herbs, flowers, a well, and a privy. There
were common and public privies for those without their own.
Kitchen slops and casual refuse continued to be thrown into the
street. Floors of stone or planks were strewn with rushes. There
was some tile flooring. Most dwellings had glass windows. Candles
were used for lighting at night. Torches and oil-burning
lanterns were portable lights. Furnishings were still sparse.
Men sat on benches or joint stools and women sat on cushions on
the floor. Hall and parlor had a table and benches and perhaps
one chair. Bedrooms had a curtained bed and a chest. On the
feather bed were pillows, blankets, and sheets. Better homes had
wall hanging and cupboards displaying plate. Laundresses washed
clothes in the streams, rivers, and public conduits. Country
peasants still lived in wood, straw, and mud huts with earth
floors and a smoky hearth in the center or a kitchen area under
the eaves of the hut.
In 1442, bricks began to be manufactured in the nation and so
there was more use of bricks in buildings. Chimneys were
introduced into manor houses where stone had been too expensive.
This was necessary if a second floor was added, so the smoke
would not damage the floor above it and would eventually go out
of the house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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