These remarks on the general character of the house are, of course, intended to apply to the ordinary dwelling-house, and not to the more extensive mansion—which already in the thirteenth century was made to surround, wholly or partly, an interior court—or to the castle. These more extensive edifices consisted only of a greater accumulation of the rooms and details which were found in the smaller house. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, no great change took place in the general characteristics of a private house. The hall was still the largest and most important room, and was now usually raised on an under vaulted room, which, to whatever use it may have been applied, was usually called the cellar. Part of it appears to have been sometimes employed as the stable. In the carpenter’s house, in Chaucer’s Milleres Tale, the hall, which is evidently the main part of the building, was open to the roof, with cross beams, on which they hanged the troughs, and the stable was attached to it, and intervened between the house and the garden. In the Cokes Tale of Gamelyn, the hall has its posts, or columns, and there is attached to it a room called a spence, which was more frequently called the buttery, in which victuals of different kinds, and the wine and plate, were locked up, and the man who had the charge of it was called the spencer or despencer, which it is hardly necessary to say was the origin of two common English surnames. The gentleman’s house, in Chaucer’s Sompnoures Tale, was a “large halle,” and is called a court, which had now become an ordinary term for a manor-house. A stordy paas doun to the court he goth,
Wher as ther wonyd a man of gret honour.
—Chaucer’s Cant. Tales, l. 7,744.
In the Nonne Prestes Tale, the poor widow’s cottage also has its hall and bour, or chamber, although they were all sooty, of course, from the fires, which had no chimney to carry off the smoke. Ful sooty was hir bour, and eek hir halle.
—Ib. l. 16,318.
This house was situated within a court, or, as it is called, yard, which was enclosed by a hedge of sticks, and by a ditch:— A yerd sche had, enclosed al aboute
With stikkes, and a drye dich withoute.
In the Tale of Gamelyn, the yard, or court, as we use the Anglo-Saxon or the Anglo-Norman name for it, had a stronger fence, with a gate and wicket fastened by lock and bolt, and apparently a lodge for the porter. In the yard there was a draw-well, seven fathoms deep. While Gamelyn took possession of the hall, his brother shut himself up in the cellar, which could be made a safe place of refuge, when all the rest of the house was in the power of an enemy. The yard here had also a postern-gate. In the carpenter’s house, in Chaucer’s Milleres Tale, the chamber has a low window, to swing outwardly— So mote I thryve, I schal at cokkes crowe
Ful pryvely go knokke at his wyndowe,
That stant ful lowe upon his bowres wal—
which is immediately afterwards called the “schot wyndowe”—
Unto his brest it raught, it was so lowe.
A new apartment had now been added to the house, called in Anglo-Norman a parlour (parloir), because it was literally the talking-room. It belonged originally to the monastic houses, where the parlour was the room for receiving people who came to converse on business, and, when introduced into private houses, it was a sort of secondary hall, where visitors might be received more privately than in the great hall, and yet with less familiarity than in the chamber. In the story of Sir Cleges, the knight finds the king seated in his parlour, and listening to a harper. In a Latin document of the year 1473, printed in Rymer’s Fœdera, a citizen of London has, in his mansion-house there, a parlour adjoining the garden (in quadam parlura adjacente gardino).
Houses were, as I have before stated, usually built in great part of timber, and it was only where unusual strength was required, or else from a spirit of ostentation, that they were made of stone. There appear to have been very few fixtures in the inside, and, as furniture was scanty, the rooms must have appeared very bare. In timber houses, of course, it was not easy to make cupboards or closets in the walls, but this was not the case when they were built of stone. Even in the latter case, however, the walls appear not to have been much excavated for such purposes. Our cut [No. 89] represents a cupboard door, taken from an illuminated manuscript of the thirteenth century, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford; it is curious for its ironwork, especially the lock and key. The smaller articles of domestic use were usually deposited in chests, or placed upon sideboards and moveable stands. In the houses of the wealthy a separate room was built for the wardrobe.
| No. 89. A Cupboard Door. | No. 90. The Cellarer of St. Alban’s. |
The accompanying figure (cut No. 90), taken from a manuscript in the Cottonian Library (Nero, D. vii.), represents the cellarer, or house-steward, of the abbey of St. Alban’s, in the fourteenth century, carrying the keys of the cellar door, which appear to be of remarkably large dimensions; he holds the two keys in one hand, and a purse, or, rather, a bag of money, in the other, the symbols of his office. A drawing in the same MS., copied in our cut [No. 91], shows us the entrance-door to an ordinary house, with a soler, or upper room, above. The individual intended to be represented was Alan Middleton, who is recorded in the catalogue of officers of St. Alban’s as “collector of rents of the obedientiaries of that monastery, and especially of those of the bursar.” A small tonsure denotes him as a monastic officer, while the penner and inkhorn at his girdle denote the nature of his office; and he is just opening the door of one of the abbey tenants to perform his function. The door is intended to be represented opening outwards. These Benedictines of St. Alban’s have also immortalised another of their inferior officers, Walterus de Hamuntesham, who was attacked and grievously wounded by the rabble of St. Alban’s, while standing up for the rights and liberties of the church. He appears (cut [No. 92]) to be attempting to gain shelter in a house, which also has a soler.
No. 91. Alan Middleton.
There was one fixture in the interior of the house, which is frequently mentioned in old writers, and must not be overlooked. It was frequently called a perche (pertica), and consisted of a wooden frame fixed to the wall, for the purpose of hanging up articles of clothing and various other things. The curious tract of Alexander Neckam, entitled Summa de nominibus utensilium, states that each chamber should have two perches, one on which the domestic birds, hawks and falcons, were to sit, the other for suspending shirts, kerchiefs, breeches, capes, mantles, and other articles of clothing. In reference to the latter usage, one of the mediæval Latin poets has the memorial line—
Pertica diversos pannos retinere solebat.