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.
[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."