A woman could inherit a fief if she married. The primary way for a man to acquire control of land was to marry an heiress. If a man were in a lower station than she was, he had to pay for his new social status as well as have royal permission. A man could also be awarded land which had escheated to the King. If a noble woman wanted to hold land in her own right, she had to make a payment to the King. Many widows bought their freedom from guardianship or remarriage from the King. Women whose husbands were at war also ran the land of their husbands.
Barons were lords of large holdings of farmland called "manors". Many of the lesser barons left their dark castles to live in semi-fortified stone houses, which usually were of two rooms with rug hangings for drafts, as well as the sparse furniture that had been common to the castle. There were shuttered windows to allow in light, but which also let in the wind and rain when open. The roof was of thatch or narrow overlapping wood shingles. The stone floor was strewn with hay and there was a hearth near the center of the floor, with a louvered smoke hole in the timber roof for escape of smoke. There were barns for grain and animals. Beyond this area was a garden, orchard, and sometimes a vineyard. The area was circumscribed by a moat over which there was a drawbridge to a gatehouse.
The smaller room was the lord and lady's bedroom. It had a canopied bed, chests for clothing, and wood frames on which clothes could be hung. Life on the manor revolved around the larger room, or hall, where the public life of the household was passed. There, meals were served. The daily diet typically consisted of milk, soup, porridge, fish, vegetables, and bread. Open hospitality accompanied this communal living. There was little privacy. Manor household villeins carried the lord's sheaves of grain to the manor barn, shore his sheep, malted his grain, and chopped wood for his fire. At night some slept on the floor of the hall. Others, who were cottars and bordars, had their own dwellings nearby.
The manor house of lesser lords or knights was still built of wood, although it often had a stone foundation.
About 35% of the land was arable land, about 25% was common pasture land (for grazing only) or meadow land (near a stream or river and used for hay or grazing), and about 15% was woodland. There were these types of land and wasteland on each manor. The arable land was allotted to the villeins in strips to equalize the best and worst land and their distance from the village where the villeins lived. There was three-way rotation of wheat or rye, oats or barley, and fallow land. Cows, pigs, sheep, and fowl were kept. The meadow was allocated for hay for the lord's household and each villein's. The villeins held land of their lord for various services such as agricultural labor or raising domestic animals. The villeins worked about half of their time on their lord's fields [his demesne land], which was about a third of the farmland. This work was primarily to gather the harvest and to plough with oxen, using a yoke over their shoulders, and to sow in autumn and Lent. They threshed grain on barn floors with flails cut from holly or thorn, and removed the kernels from the shafts by hand. Work lasted from sunrise to sunset and included women and children. The older children could herd geese and pigs, and set snares for rabbits. The young children could gather nuts and berries in season and other wild edibles, and could pick up little tufts of wool shed by sheep. The old could stay in the hut and mind the children, keep the fire going and the black pot boiling, sew, spin, patch clothes, and cobble shoes. The old often suffered from rheumatism. Many people had bronchitis. Many children died of croup [inflammation of the respiratory passages]. Life expectancy was probably below thirty-five.
The villein retained his customary rights, his house and land and rights of wood and hay, and his right in the common land of his township. Customary ways were maintained. The villeins of a manor elected a reeve to communicate their interests to their lord, usually through a bailiff, who directed the labor. Sometimes there was a steward in charge of several of a lord's manors, who also held the manorial court for the lord. The steward held his land of the lord by serjeanty, which was a specific service to the lord. Other serjeanty services were carrying the lord's shield and arms, finding attendants and esquires for knights, helping in the lord's hunting expeditions, looking after his hounds, bringing fuel, doing carpentry, and forging irons for ploughs. The Woodward preserved the timber. The Messer supervised the harvesting. The Hayward removed any fences from the fields after harvest to allow grazing by cattle and sheep. The Coward, Bullard, and Calvert tended the cows, bulls, and calves; the Shepherd, the sheep; and the Swineherds the pigs. The Ponder impounded stray stock. There were varieties of horses: war horses, riding horses, courier horses, pack horses, and plough horses.
The majority of manors were coextensive with a single village. The villeins lived in the village in one-room huts enclosed by a wood fence, hedge, or stone wall. In this yard was a garden of onions, leeks, mustard, peas, beans, parsley, garlic, herbs, and cabbage and apple, pear, cherry, quince, and plum trees, and beehives. The hut had a high-pitched roof thatched with reeds or straw and low eaves reaching almost to the ground. The walls are built of wood-framing overlaid with mud or plaster. Narrow slits in the walls serve as windows, which have shutters and are sometimes covered with coarse cloth. The floor is dirt and may be covered with straw or rushes for warmth, but usually no hearth. In the middle is a wood fire burning on a hearthstone, which was lit by making a spark by striking flint and iron together. The smoke rose through a hole in the roof. At one end of the hut was the family living area, where the family ate on a collapsible trestle table with stools or benches. Their usual food was beans and peas, oatmeal gruel, butter, cheese, vegetables, honey, rough bread made from a mixture of wheat, barley, and rye flour, herrings or other salt fish, and some salted or smoked bacon. Butter had first been used for cooking and as a medicine to cure constipation and for puny children it could be salted down for the winter. The bread had been roasted on the stones of the fire; later there were communal ovens set up in villages. Cooking was done over the fire by boiling in iron pots hung from an iron tripod, or sitting on the hot stones of the fire. They ate from wood bowls using a wood spoon. When they had fresh meat, it could be roasted on a spit. Liquids were heated in a kettle. With drinking horns, they drank water, milk, buttermilk, apple cider, mead, ale made from barley malt, and bean and vegetable broth. They used jars and other earthenware, e.g. for storage of salt. They slept on straw mattresses or sacks on the floor or on benches. The villein regarded his bed area as the safest place in the house, as did people of all ranks, and kept his treasures there, which included his farm implements, as well as hens on the beams, roaming pigs, and stalled oxen, cattle, and horses, which were at the other end of the hut. Fires were put out at night to guard against fire burning down the huts. The warmth of the animals then helped make the hut warm. Around the room are a couple of chests to store salt, meal, flour, a broom made of birch twigs, some woven baskets, the distaff and spindle for spinning, and a simple loom for weaving. All clothes were homemade. They were often coarse, greasy wool and leather made from their own animals. The man wore a tunic of coarse linen embroidered on the sleeves and breast, around with he wore a girdle of rope, leather, or folded cloth. Sometimes he also wore breeches reaching below the knee. The woman wore a loose short-sleeved gown, under which was a tight fitting garment with long loose sleeves, and which was short enough to be clear of the mud. If they wore shoes, they were clumsy and patched. Some wore a hood-like cap. For really bad weather, a man wore on his head a hood with a very elongated point which could be wrapped around his neck. Sometimes a short cape over the shoulders was attached. Linen was too expensive for commoners.
The absence of fresh food during the winter made scurvy prevalent; in the spring, people eagerly sought "scurvy grass" to eat. Occasionally there would be an outbreak of a nervous disorder due to the ergot fungus growing in the rye used for bread. This manifested itself in apparent madness, frightening hallucinations, incoherent shouting, hysterical laughing, and constant scratching of itching and burning sensations.
The villein and his wife and children worked from daybreak to dusk in the fields, except for Sundays and holydays. He had certain land to farm for his own family, but had to have his grain milled at his lord's mill at the lord's price. He had to retrieve his wandering cattle from his lord's pound at the lord's price. He was expected to give a certain portion of his own produce, whether grain or livestock, to his lord. However, if he fell short, he was not put off his land. The villein, who worked the farm land as his ancestor ceorl had, now was so bound to the land that he could not leave or marry or sell an ox without his lord's consent. If the manor was sold, the villein was sold as a part of the manor. When his daughter or son married, he had to pay a "merchet" to his lord. He could not have a son educated without the lord's permission, and this usually involved a fee to the lord. His best beast at his death, or "heriot", went to his lord. If he wanted permission to live outside the manor, he paid "chevage" yearly. Woodpenny was a yearly payment for gathering dead wood. Sometimes a "tallage" payment was taken at the lord's will. The villein's oldest son usually took his place on his land and followed the same customs with respect to the lord. For an heir to take his dead ancestor's land, the lord demanded payment of a "relief", which was usually the amount of a year's income but sometimes as much as the heir was willing to pay to have the land. The usual aids were also expected to be paid.
A large village also had a smith, a wheelwright, a millwright, a tiler and thatcher, a shoemaker and tanner, a carpenter wainwright and carter.