81. Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire.
Chimney-piece on Upper Floor, showing Heraldic Decoration.
82. Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire.
Chimney-piece on Ground Floor (1430–40).
83. Fawsley, Northamptonshire.
Chimney-piece in Great Hall (15th cent.).
The great halls of manor houses, which, as already said, were usually of one storey, were covered with fine open timber roofs, and although no early examples are left, there are plenty of the fifteenth century and even earlier. The construction of such roofs is probably more or less familiar to most people. The outer covering of lead, slates, or tiles rested on the rafters, which were supported on longitudinal beams called purlins; these in their turn were carried by strongly framed supports called principals (i.e., principal rafters), which spanned the hall from side to side at intervals of twelve feet or thereabouts. Sometimes, though rarely, as at Mayfield Palace (Fig. 55) and Ightham Mote in Kent, the principal was a great stone arch.[3] But as a rule, it was of massive timber framed together, and it was in the construction of this feature that the most obvious opportunities for ornamental treatment occurred. In churches it was carried occasionally to the most astonishing lengths; but in houses this exuberance was restrained, and as a rule the open timber roofs of houses, although extremely handsome, were quite soberly treated. A fairly early example of the thirteenth century is to be seen at Stokesay (Fig. 20). Of the fourteenth century may be mentioned Drayton House in Northamptonshire (Fig. 84), now quite hidden by a ceiling of much later years, and Penshurst Place (Fig. 71). Of the fifteenth century is Little Sodbury (Fig. 85), while of the late fifteenth is Eltham Palace (Fig. 86).