THE MANOR-HOUSE
Evolution of a country house—Saxon house—Addition of separate sleeping-chambers—Castles—Tudor houses—Old manor-houses—Secret chambers—Rectories and vicarages—Duty of hospitality—Kelvedon Rectory—Allington—Tithe-barns—Alfriston clergy-house—Almshouses— Hermitages—Little Budworth—Knaresborough—Reclusorium or anchor-hold— Laindon—Rattenden—Female recluses—Whalley.
The two principal houses in an English village are the manor-house and the rectory, wherein according to the theories of the modern political Socialist and agitator “the two arch-tyrants” of the labourers dwell, the squire and the parson. There is much of interest in the growth and evolution of the country house, which resulted in the construction of these old, pleasant, half-timbered granges and manor-houses, which form such beautiful features of our English villages.
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SOUTHCOTE MANOR SHOWING MOAT AND PIGEON-HOUSE
In our description of the village in Anglo-Saxon times we gave a picture of a house of a Saxon gentleman, which consisted mainly of one large hall, wherein the members of the household lived and slept and had their meals. There was a chapel, and a kitchen, and a ladies’ bower, usually separated from the great hall, and generally built of wood. In Norman times the same plan and arrangements of a country house continued. The fire still burnt in the centre of the hall, the smoke finding its way out through a louvre in the roof. Meals were still served on tables laid on trestles, which were removed when the meal was finished. The lord and lady, their family and guests, dined at the high table placed on the dais, as in a college hall, the floor of which was boarded. The household and retainers dined in the space below, which was strewn with rushes and called “the marsh,” which, according to Turner’s History of Domestic Architecture, “was doubtless dirty and damp enough to deserve that name.” The timbers of the roof in the better houses were moulded, the walls hung with tapestry, and at the lower end of the hall was a screen, above which in later times was the minstrels’ gallery. The screen formed a passage which led into a separate building at right angles to the hall, containing the cellar, buttery, and kitchen. Parallel with this at the upper end of the hall was a building of two stories, one used as a parlour, and the other was called the “great chamber,” where the lady and her guests retired after dining in the hall.
