It is evidently the intention in this picture to represent the walls of the rooms as being formed, in the lower part, of masonry, with timber walls above, and all the windows are in the timber walls. If we make allowance for want of perspective and proportion in the drawing, it is probable that only a small portion of the elevation was masonry, and that the wooden walls (parietes) were raised above it, as is very commonly the case in old timber-houses still existing. The greater portion of the Saxon houses were certainly of timber; in Alfric’s colloquy, it is the carpenter, or worker in wood (se treo-wyrhta), who builds houses; and the very word to express the operation of building, timbrian, getimbrian, signified literally to construct of timber. We observe in the above representation of a house, that none of the buildings have more than a ground-floor, and this seems to have been a characteristic of the houses of all classes. The Saxon word flór is generally used in the early writers to represent the Latin pavimentum. Thus the “variegated floor” (on fágre flór) of the hall mentioned in Beowulf (l. 1454) was a paved floor, perhaps a tessellated pavement; as the road spoken of in an earlier part of the poem (stræt wæs stán-fáh, the street was stone-variegated, l. 644) describes a paved Roman road. The term upper-floor occurs once or twice, but only I think in translating from foreign Latin writers. The only instance that occurs to my memory of an upper-floor in an Anglo-Saxon house, is the story of Dunstan’s council at Calne in 978, when, according to the Saxon Chronicle, the witan, or council, fell from an upper-floor (of ane úp-floran), while Dunstan himself avoided their fate by supporting himself on a beam (uppon anum beame). The buildings in the above picture are all roofed with tiles of different forms, evidently copied from the older Roman roof-tiles. Perhaps the flatness of these roofs is only to be considered as a proof of the draughtsman’s ignorance of perspective. One of Alfric’s homilies applies the epithet steep to a roof—on tham sticelan hrofe. The hall is not unfrequently described as lofty.

The collective house had various names in Anglo-Saxon. It was called hús, a house, a general term for all residences great or small; it was called heal, or hall, because that was the most important part of the building—we still call gentlemen’s seats halls; it was called ham, as being the residence or home of its possessor; and it was called tún, in regard of its inclosure.

The Anglo-Saxons chose for their country-houses a position which commanded a prospect around, because such sites afforded protection at the same time that they enabled the possessor to overlook his own landed possessions. The Ramsey Chronicle, describing the beautiful situation of the mansion at “Schitlingdonia” (Shitlington), in Bedfordshire, tells us that the surrounding country lay spread out like a panorama from the door of the hall—ubi ab ostio aulæ tota fere villa et late patens ager arabilis oculis subjacet intuentis.

CHAPTER II.
IN-DOOR LIFE AMONG THE ANGLO-SAXONS.—THE HALL AND ITS HOSPITALITY.—THE SAXON MEAL.—PROVISIONS AND COOKERY.—AFTER-DINNER OCCUPATIONS.—DRUNKEN BRAWLS.

The introductory observations in the preceding chapter will be sufficient to show that the mode of life, the vessels and utensils, and even the residences of the Anglo-Saxons, were a mixture of those they derived from their own forefathers with those which they borrowed from the Romans, whom they found established in Britain. It is interesting to us to know that we have retained the ordinary forms of pitchers and basins, and, to a certain degree, of drinking vessels, which existed so many centuries ago among our ancestors before they established themselves in this island. The beautiful forms which had been brought from the classic south were not able to supersede national habit. Our modern houses derive more of their form and arrangement from those of our Saxon forefathers than from any other source. We have seen that the original Saxon arrangement of a house was preserved by that people to the last; but it does not follow that they did not sometimes adopt the Roman houses they found standing, although they seem never to have imitated them. I believe Bulwer’s description of the Saxonised Roman house inhabited by Hilda, to be founded in truth. Roman villas, when uncovered at the present day, are sometimes found to have undergone alterations which can only be explained by supposing that they were made when later possessors adapted them to Saxon manners. Such alterations appear to me to be visible in the villa at Hadstock, in Essex, opened by the late lord Braybrooke; in one place the outer wall seems to have been broken through to make a new entrance, and a road of tiles, which was supposed to have been the bottom of a water course, was more probably the paved pathway made by the Saxon possessor. Houses in those times were seldom of long duration; we learn from the domestic anecdotes given in saints’ legends and other writings, that they were very frequently burnt by accidental fires; thus the main part of the house, the timber-work, was destroyed; and as ground was then not valuable, and there was no want of space, it was much easier to build a new house in another spot, and leave the old foundations till they were buried in rubbish and earth, than to clear them away in order to rebuild on the same site. Earth soon accumulated under such circumstances; and this accounts for our finding, even in towns, so much of the remains of the houses of an early period undisturbed at a considerable depth under the present surface of the ground.

It has already been observed that the most important part of the Saxon house was the hall. It was the place where the household (hired) collected round their lord and protector, and where the visitor or stranger was first received,—the scene of hospitality. The householder there held open-house, for the hall was the public apartment, the doors of which were never shut against those who, whether known or unknown, appeared worthy of entrance. The reader of Saxon history will remember the beautiful comparison made by one of king Edwin’s chieftains in the discussion on the reception to be given to the missionary Paulinus. “The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the hall where you sit at your meal in winter, with your chiefs and attendants, warmed by a fire made in the middle of the hall, whilst storms of rain or snow prevail without; the sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is visible is safe from the wintry storm, but after this short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged.” Dining in private was always considered disgraceful, and is mentioned as a blot in a man’s character.

Internally, the walls of the hall were covered with hangings or tapestry, which were called in Anglo-Saxon wah-hrægel, or wah-rift, wall-clothing. These appear sometimes to have been mere plain cloths, but at other times they were richly ornamented, and not unfrequently embroidered with historical subjects. So early as the seventh century, Aldhelm speaks of the hangings or curtains being dyed with purple and other colours, and ornamented with images, and he adds that “if finished of one colour uniform they would not seem beautiful to the eye.” Among the Saxon wills printed by Hickes, we find several bequests of heall wah-riftas, or wall-tapestries for the hall; and it appears that, in some cases, tapestries of a richer and more precious character than those in common use were reserved to be hung up only on extraordinary festivals. There were hooks, or pegs, on the wall, upon which various objects were hung for convenience. In an anecdote told in the contemporary life of Dunstan, he is made to hang his harp against the wall of the room. Arms and armour, more especially, were hung against the wall of the hall. The author of the “Life of Hereward” describes the Saxon insurgents who had taken possession of Ely, as suspending their arms in this manner; and in one of the riddles in the Exeter Book, a war-vest is introduced speaking of itself thus:—

hwilum hongige, Sometimes I hang, hyrstum frœtwed, with ornaments adorned, wlitig on wage, splendid on the wall, þær weras drinceð, where men drink, freolic fyrd-sceorp. a goodly war-vest. —Exeter Book, p. 395.

We have no allusion in Anglo-Saxon writers to chimneys, or fireplaces, in our modern acceptation of the term. When necessary, the fire seems to have been made on the floor, in the place most convenient. We find instances in the early saints’ legends where the hall was burnt by incautiously lighting the fire too near the wall. Hence it seems to have been usually placed in the middle, and there can be little doubt that there was an opening, or, as it was called in later times, a louver, in the roof above, for the escape of the smoke. The historian Bede describes a Northumbrian king, in the middle of the seventh century, as having, on his return from hunting, entered the hall with his attendants, and all standing round the fire to warm themselves. A somewhat similar scene, but in more humble life, is represented in the accompanying cut, taken from a manuscript calendar of the beginning of the eleventh century (MS. Cotton. Julius, A. iv.). The material for feeding the fire is wood, which the man to the left is bringing from a heap, while his companion is administering to the fire with a pair of Saxon tongs (tangan). The vocabularies give tange, tongs, and bylig, bellows; and they speak of col, coal (explained by the Latin carbo), and synder, a cinder (scorium). As all these are Saxon words, and not derived from the Latin, we may suppose that they represent things known to the Anglo-Saxon race from an early period; and as charcoal does not produce scorium, or cinder, it is perhaps not going too far to suppose that the Anglo-Saxons were acquainted with the use of mineral coal. We know nothing of any other fire utensils, except that the Anglo-Saxons used a fyr-scofl, or fire-shovel. The place in which the fire was made was the heorth, or hearth.