HALL OF THE KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN
One will find the houses more unclean than the streets. What can one expect? The floors are strewn thick with rushes, and it is costly to change them; they lie, therefore, thick with accumulations of refuse—bones, grease, and every abomination. Rushes are warm even after they are dirty, and warmth comes before cleanliness. Yet if we were to go into those houses where the better sort of citizens live, we should find sweet herbs and fragrant branches and strong perfumes scattered about to counteract the close and evil-smelling atmosphere of the sleeping-rooms.
Let us consider the construction and the furniture of a London citizen’s house. Not, that is, such a house as Crosby Hall, which was a palace, or that of the Earl of Warwick, which was a barrack as well as a Palace, but the house of the substantial merchant, one of the better sort, say the house of a retail trader, and the house of a craftsman.
Among the treasures collected by Riley may be found the specifications for building a new house. It is evidently a house meant for a man of position, one William de Hanington, a pelterer, i.e. a skinner or furrier: a member of a most wealthy and flourishing trade at a time when men and women of every consideration wore furs for half the year. Whatever the position of this pelterer, the house designed for him was evidently, though the dimensions are not given, large and commodious. Here are the exact words:—
“Simon de Canterbury, carpenter, came before the Mayor, etc.... and acknowledged that he would make at his own proper charges down to the locks, for William de Hanigtone, pelterer, before the Feast of Easter then ensuing, a Hall and a room with a Chimney, and one larder between the same hall and room: and one sollar over the room and larder: also, an oriole at the end of the Hall beyond the high bench: and one step with an oriole, from the ground to the door of the Hall aforesaid, outside of the Hall: and two enclosures as cellars, opposite to each other, beneath the Hall: and one enclosure for a sewer, with two pipes leading to the said sewer and one stable between the said Hall and the old kitchen and twelve feet in width with a sollar above and stable, and a garret above the sollar aforesaid: and at one end of such sollar there is to be a kitchen, with a chimney: and there is to be an oriole between the said Hall and the old chamber 8 feet in width.”
According to Riley, the first oriole is an oriel window such as is commonly found in a Hall, the second oriole is a porch, and the third is a small chamber. Without this explanation the document would be unintelligible.
“THE LADIES’ BOWER”
From MS. in British Museum. Harl. 2278.