We gave as an instance on p. 26 the case of Exton, in Rutland. There the houses even to-day, in spite of the fact that they have often been rebuilt and somewhat modified in the course of centuries, occupy the same sites as they did in Saxon times. No one would dream of laying out a village on those lines to-day, and in the great changes which we know are greatly needed in housing all over the country, and which are bound to affect every village in the land more or less and to change the whole aspect of these old-world villages, it will be well if some _specimens_, at least, can be preserved to us, so that those yet to come may be able to see how our ancestors for many generations were housed. But the health of the people will have to be safeguarded most carefully, and much of that which is old will have to give place to that which is new. [Illustration: _Old House, Cleveland, Yorkshire_ _The remains of a common type of rural dwelling in the Middle Ages. The wooden frame which supported the steep-pitched roof can be seen._] So for many hundreds of years an ordinary village house was, to our way of thinking, a very wretched, comfortless place. Even as late as the time of Queen Elizabeth a countryman's house is thus described:-- "Of one bay's breadth, God wot, a silly cote, Whose thatchèd spars are furred with sluttish soote A whole inch thick, shining like blackmoor's brows Through smoke that down the headlesse barrel blows. At his bed's feete feaden[11] his stallèd teame, His swine beneath, his pullen[12] o'er the beam." [11] _feaden_, that is, feed. [12] _pullen_, that is, poultry. CHAPTER XXIV Early Town Houses Houses in towns have been more frequently rebuilt and altered in various ways than those in the villages. The chief material used in building was wood, as it was in the villages, and one of the great dangers in the Middle Ages was that of fire. In the towns this danger was greater than in the villages, and fires happened more frequently. The leading men in a town had more money to spend, and the increase of business, or a desire for change, led them to improve their houses. It was easier for a wealthy townsman to get leave from the "corporation", or guild which ruled the town, to rebuild his house than it was for the villein in the village to get the leave of the manor court. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries all saw a great growth in architecture; they were the Early English, the Decorated, and the Perpendicular Periods of architecture. In most of the old churches, and in many of the old mansions, we have specimens of all these periods; but not very many of the town houses founded in the Middle Ages, and still standing, are much earlier than the fifteenth century. In that age there was a great development of woodwork, and there is hardly one old town which has not some woodwork of that time in some of its old houses.