In the absence of actual examples, we are driven to glean what information we can from other sources. There remain to us a good many of the deeds of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, by which, on the impropriation of the benefices, provision was made for the permanent endowment of vicarages in them. In the majority of cases the old rectory house was assigned as the future vicarage house, and no detailed description of it was necessary; but in the deed by which the rectories of Sawbridgeworth, in Herts, and Kelvedon, in Essex, were appropriated to the convent of Westminster, we are so fortunate as to find descriptions of the fourteenth-century parsonage houses, one of which is so detailed as to enable any one who is acquainted with the domestic architecture of the time to form a very definite picture of the whole building. In the case of Sawbridgeworth, the old rectory house was assigned as the vicarage house, and is thus described--"All the messuage which is called the priest's messuage, with the houses thereon built, that is to say, one hall with two chambers, with a buttery, cellar, kitchen, stable, and other fitting and decent houses, with all the garden as it is enclosed with walls to the said messuage belonging." The description of the parsonage house at Kelvedon is much more definite and intelligible. For this the deed tells us the convent assigned--"One hall situate in the manor of the said abbot and convent near the said church, with a chamber and soler at one end of the hall and with a buttery and cellar at the other. Also one other house in three parts, that is to say, for a kitchen with a convenient chamber in the end of the said house for guests, and a bakehouse. Also one other house in two parts, next the gate at the entrance of the manor, for a stable and cowhouse. He (the vicar) shall also have a convenient grange, to be built within a year at the expense of the prior and convent. He shall also have the curtilage with the garden adjoining to the hall on the north side, as it is enclosed with hedges and ditches." The date of the deed is 1356 A.D., and it speaks of these houses as already existing. Now the common arrangement of a small house at that date, and for near a century before and after, was this, "a hall in the centre, with a soler at one end and offices at the other."[308] A description which exactly agrees with the account of the Kelvedon house, and enables us to say with great probability that in the Sawbridgeworth "priest's messuage" also, the two chambers were at one end of the hall, and the buttery, cellar, and kitchen at the other, the stable and other fitting and decent houses being detached from and not forming any portion of the dwelling house. [Illustration: _Rectory House, West Deane, Sussex._] [Illustration: A Entrance door. B Windows. C Cellar window. D Entrance to stair. E A recess. F Fire-place.