CHAPTER I
BARNS, HOSPITALS, DWELLING-HOUSES, AND "HÔTELS" OR TOWN-HOUSES OF THE NOBILITY
Civil architecture could boast no special characteristics before the close of the thirteenth century. Its earlier buildings bore the impress of religious and monastic types, as was natural at a period when architecture was practised almost exclusively by monks and by the lay disciples trained in their schools.
It was not until the following century that domestic architecture threw off the trammels of religious tradition, and took on the character appropriate to its various functions. Artists began to seek decorative motives in the scenes and objects of daily life, no longer borrowing exclusively from sacred themes, and convention in form and detail was abandoned in some degree for the study of nature.
Barns.—Throughout the Romanesque and Gothic periods, barns, hospitals, and houses were constructed in the prevailing style. We propose, of course, to deal only with buildings possessing real architectural features.
200. TOWN-HALL AT ST. ANTONIN (TARN ET GARONNE). THE UPPER PART OF THE BELFRY WAS REBUILT ABOUT 1860
The barns or granaries of mediæval times were rural dependencies of the abbeys, but were built outside the enclosure of the monastery proper, and formed part of the priory or farm. The entrance of the barn was a large door, opening upon the yard in the centre of the front gable end; access was also obtained by means of smaller doors in the side walls, and often a postern was constructed beside the main entrance for ordinary use. The great central doors were then only thrown open for the passage of carts, which, entering at the front, passed out through a similar door in the opposite gable end, as at the barn of Perrières, which, though situated in Normandy, was a dependency of the Abbey of Marmoutier, near Tours.
