No. 85. Ancient Manor-House, Millichope, Shropshire.
During the period of which we are speaking, the richer the householder, the greater need he had of studying strength and security, and hence with him the soler, or upper story, became of more importance, and was often made the principal part of the house, at least that in which himself and his family placed themselves at night. This was especially the case in stone buildings, where the ground-floor was often a low vaulted apartment, which seems to have been commonly looked upon as a cellar, while the principal room was on the first-floor, approached usually by a staircase on the outside. A house of this kind is represented in one of our cuts taken from the Bayeux tapestry, where the guests are carousing in the room on the first-floor. Yet still the vaulted room on the ground-floor was perhaps more often considered as the public apartment. In this manner the two apartments of the house, instead of standing side by side, were raised one upon the other, and formed externally a square mass of masonry. Several examples of early manor-houses of this description still remain, among which one of the most remarkable is that at Millichope in Shropshire; which evidently belongs to the latter half of the twelfth century. It has not been noticed in any work on domestic architecture, but I am enabled to describe it from two private lithographed plates by Mrs. Stackhouse Acton, of Acton Scott, from which the accompanying cuts are taken. The first ([No. 85]) represents the present outward appearance of the ancient building, which is now an adjunct to a farm-house. The plan is a rectangle, considerably longer from north to south than in the transverse direction. The walls are immensely thick on the ground-floor in comparison to the size of the building, as will be seen from the plan of the ground-floor given in the next cut ([No. 86]). The original entrance was at b, by a late Norman arch, slightly ornamented, which is seen in the view. To the right of this is seen one of the original windows, also round arched. On the north and east sides were two other windows, the openings of them all being small towards the exterior, but enlarging inwards. The interior must have been extremely dark; nevertheless it contains a fireplace, and was probably the public room. The opening at a is merely a modern passage into the farm-house. As this house stands on the borders of Wales, and therefore security was the principal consideration, the staircase, from the thickness of the walls, was safer inside than on the exterior. We accordingly find that it was worked into the mass of the wall in the south-west corner, the entrance being at c. The steps of the lower part—it was a stone staircase—are concealed or destroyed, so that we hardly know how it commenced, but there are steps of stone now running up to the soler or upper apartment, as represented in our plan of the upper floor. This staircase received light at the bottom and at the top, by a small loop-hole worked through the wall. Although the walls were so massive in the lower room, the staircase was secured by extraordinary precautions. At the top of the steps at d, again at e, and a third time at f, were strong doors, secured with bolts, which it would have required great force to break open. The last of these doors led into the upper apartment, which was rather larger than the lower one, the west wall being here much thinner. This was evidently the family apartment; it had two windows, on the north and east sides, each having seats at the side, with ornamentation of early English character. A view of the northern window from the interior, with its seats, is given in our cut [No. 88]; it is the same which is seen externally in our sketch of the house: this room had no fireplace.
No. 86. Plan of Ground-Floor of House at Millichope.
No. 87. Plan of the Upper Floor.
No. 88. Inside of Window at Millichope.
Towards the fourteenth century, the rooms of houses began to be multiplied, and they were often built round a court; the additions were made chiefly to the offices, and to the number of chambers. They were still built more of wood than of stone, and the carpenter was the chief person employed in their construction. In the fabliau of Trubert, printed by Méon, a duke, intending to build a new house, employs a carpenter to make the design, and takes him into his woods to select timber for materials. It may give some notion of the simplicity of the arrangement of a house, and the small number of rooms, even when required for royalty itself, when we state that in the January of 1251, king Henry III., intending to visit Hampshire, and requiring a house for himself with his queen and court, gave orders to the sheriff of Southampton to build at Freemantle a hall, a kitchen, and a chamber with an upper story (cum estagio, sometimes called in documents written in French chambre estagée), and a chapel on the ground, for the king’s use; and a chamber with an upper story, with a chapel at the end of the same chamber, for the queen’s use. Under the chamber was to be made a cellar for the king’s wines.
The chamber had, indeed, now become so important a part of the building, that its name was not unusually given to the whole house, which, in the documents of the thirteenth century, is sometimes called a camera ad estagiam—an upper-storied chamber. Such was the case with a house built in 1285 for Edward I. and his queen in the forest at Woolmer, in Hampshire, the account of the expenses of which are preserved in the Pipe Rolls. This house was seventy-two feet long, and twenty-eight feet wide. It had two chimneys, a chapel, and two wardrobes. The chapel and wardrobe had six glazed windows. There was also a hall in it, but the two chimneys appear to have belonged to the chamber. The windows of the chamber and hall had wooden shutters (hostia), but do not appear to have had glass. The kitchen was the only other apartment in the house. The ordinary windows of a house at this time were not usually glazed; but they were either latticed, or consisted of a mere opening, which was covered by a cloth or curtain by day, and was closed by a shutter, which turned upon hinges, either sideways, like an ordinary door, or up and down, and which seems generally to have opened outwards. The rooms were, in this manner, very imperfectly protected against the weather, even in palaces. A precept of Henry III. has been quoted, which directs glass to be substituted for wood in a window in the queen’s wardrobe at the Tower, “in order that that chamber might not be so windy;” and in the same reign a charge is made in the accounts relating to the royal manor at Kennington, “for closing the windows better than usual (et in fenestris melius solito claudendis).”[24]