ft. in. Length of exterior 35 6 Width of interior 14 10 Thickness of wall 2 6 Height of rooms 8 0] Confining ourselves, however, to the Kelvedon house, a little study will enable us to reconstruct it conjecturally with a very high probability of being minutely accurate in our conjectures. First of all, a house of this character in the county of Essex would, beyond question, be a timber house. To make our description clearer we have given a rough diagram of our conjectural arrangement. Its principal feature was, of course, the "one hall" (A). We know at once what the hall of a timber house of this period of architecture would be. It would be a rather spacious and lofty apartment, with an open timber roof; the principal door of the house would open into the "screens" (D), at the lower end of the hall, and the back door of the house would be at the other end of the screens. At the upper end of the hall would be the raised dais (B), at which the master of the house sat with his family. The fireplace would either be an open hearth in the middle of the hall, like that which still exists in the fourteenth-century hall at Penshurst Place, Kent, or it would be an open fireplace, under a projecting chimney, at the further side of the hall, such as is frequently seen in MS. illuminations of the small houses of the period. There was next "a chamber and soler at one end of the hall." The soler of a mediæval house was the chief apartment after the hall, it answered to the "great chamber" of the sixteenth century, and to the parlour or drawing-room of more modern times. It was usually adjacent to the upper end of the hall, and built on transversely to it, with a window at each end. It was usually raised on an undercroft, which was used as a storeroom or cellar, so that it was reached by a stair from the upper end of the hall. Sometimes, instead of a mere undercroft, there was a chamber under the soler, which was the case here, so that we have added these features to our plan (C). Next there was "a buttery and cellar at the other" end of the hall. In the buttery in those days were kept wine and beer, table linen, cups, pots, &c.: and in the cellar the stores of eatables which, it must be remembered, were not bought in weekly from the village shop, or the next market town, but were partly the produce of the glebe and tithe, and partly were laid in yearly or half-yearly at some neighbouring fair. The buttery and cellar--they who are familiar with old houses, or with our colleges, will remember--are always at the lower end of the hall, and open upon the screens, with two whole or half doors side by side; we may therefore add them thus upon our plan (H, I). [Illustration: _Conjectural Plan of Rectory-House at Kelvedon, Essex._]