The Ties That Bound

by Barbara A Hanawalt

  Apparently, peasants did not live so intimately with their animals out of preference, but because of the economy of building the longhouse. The more prosperous peasants planned their housing in a type called the farm. Here the house was separated from the animal shelter and a barn was set at right angles to the house, thus emphasizing the distinction between the living quarters and farming operation. The buildings might be clustered around a courtyard, suggesting that they were built in imitation of the manor houses. This type of house and barn arrangement has been found as early as the thirteenth century, but it became increasingly popular with yeoman farmers in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.5

  House sites were even more mobile than village locations. Until the end of the thirteenth century most houses were built to last only one generation (about twenty years). When the old house began to disintegrate a new one was erected, usually on a completely different alignment, sometimes turned by 90 degrees, and in a completely different location on the croft. The old structure became an outbuilding for animals or farm equipment. Even in such places as Wharram Percy, where houses were built of stone, old houses were abandoned and new ones constructed.' As mentioned in the last chapter, the houses were not necessarily aligned with the village street nor placed in such a way as either to minimize or maximize contact with other villagers.

  Archaeological evidence provides a useful warning not to oversenti mentalize village life. Peasant sons apparently did not have strong attachments to an ancestral house, not even to the home of their father, but readily allowed the old structure to decay and built a new one. Even in the fourteenth century, when houses might be built to last forty or fifty years, changes in house location were frequent. Familial feelings of identity were with family members and family property and land, not with a particular domicile.

  One reason that sons were so willing to dispense with the old house was that it was often so insubstantially constructed that it had fallen apart or needed major repairs by the time they inherited it. Manorial court rolls highlight the problems of decay. In 1439 in Worcestershire the lord directed an inheritor to build a new house within two years because the old house was decayed. In another case, an old woman who had lived in a house had let it deteriorate and the new tenant was to build a new one in two years.' The cases explain why the house location changed. Obviously John Tailor, who took the old woman's tenement, would live in the dilapidated dwelling until his new one was ready for habitation. The old one might then be torn down or patched up for use as an outbuilding.

  Decaying buildings were present in all villages and posed a threat to inhabitants. For instance, Richard Wygod came from Blomhurst church to his courtyard and stood under the wall of an old, weak building which collapsed on him. And in Lincolnshire in 1352 a whole gable fell over on three women.8

  Peasants used a variety of materials for house construction. As long as it was readily available, wood was the preferred building material. But it was so scarce by the fourteenth century that it was only used as a frame and the walls were filled in with turf in Devon and similar areas, cob in clayland, and wattle and daub through most of England. Cob was a combination of mud and straw mixed with chalk. It would dry almost as hard as concrete but, since it was unbaked, had to be protected from water or it would gradually dissolve. Cob walls had the advantage of being very thick and thus keeping out drafts. In East Anglia clay lumps sometimes substituted for cob.

  Wattle and daub was very popular for filling in the spaces in the timber skeleton and also for internal partitions. It consisted of a screen woven of twigs and small branches covered with mud and finished off with a lime wash that left the house sparkling white. The timber frame showed through, as is characteristic of the later Tudor vernacular houses with which we are so familiar.9 Wattle and daub was a cheap, quick solution for walls but had the disadvantage of being very insubstantial. For instance, "on the night of 17 November 1269 felons and thieves came to a house in Roxton ... broke a wall, entered, and robbed and carried away all the goods of the house." They went to the next house and broke its west wall and entered, and then on to the next house, whose windows and doors they also broke.10

  The house frames were of two types. The cruck type was perhaps the older of the two. The cruck was a marvelous structure requiring considerable skill to make. A venerable tree, usually an oak, was cut and the trunk and the lowest branch split in half and shaped; or, possibly, two smaller trees were used. The two pieces were put together to form an arch, the branch portion providing the roof frame and the trunk providing the wall frame. The tie beam between roof and wall portions and the other wooden parts all were constructed on the ground and then the whole cruck was raised into place. As the crucks were assembled they were raised in order, starting at one end. Because trees for such a purpose were scarce, it is possible that some trees were groomed for crucks by constraining the growth of the lower branches to form the correct curve. By the fourteenth century trees large enough to serve as crucks were rare, so an alternative, the truss, was also used. In this construction posts made up the frame for walls and supported rafters for the roof. Tie beams held the structure together. Less mature timber could be used in this type of structure.

  The cruck or truss made up the gable ends, the space between being called a bay. Cottages had only one bay, but the long-house might have two or more bays. Thus a house of two bays would have two gable ends and also an intermediate cruck in the center for support. Houses with more bays added another cruck.11 By the fifteenth century on the Worcestershire estates two- and three-bay houses were the most common, and even four-bay houses are mentioned.12 While houses could be extended by adding more crucks or trusses, the width depended on the cruck or on the length of timber available for the tie beam. Both types of frames tended to produce rather narrow houses. Outshoots, however, provided extra living space.

  The roofs of the cruck and truss houses were usually thatched with straw and sometimes with rushes. Both types of frames left a natural hip that made thatching easy. Because there were no chimneys in peasant houses, the smoke exited directly through a hole in the thatch. To prevent the thatch from catching fire, tiles were placed around the opening.13 In some of the higher-quality houses, where appropriate materials were available, stone or slate roofs, were used in the fourteenth century.14 The wood supports for the thatch were probably quite flimsy, being made of roughly cut branches and not carpentered. A case from Wakefield manor court graphically demonstrates their insubstantiality. Two women complained that John del Bondroke knocked off the roof of Henry's grange and Nicholas, a tenant of Henry, "carried the roof away."15 It was the poor quality of roofs that made peasant housing so short-lived, for once water got into the mud walls they began to disintegrate.16

  Where stone was not readily available, timber-frame houses continued to be built. The ends of the posts or crucks rested directly on the ground in the twelfth century, but as the climate became wetter and timber was in shorter supply, stone pads were used as studs to protect timber ends from the damp. Where building stone was readily available-and for the most part that meant on the site, for carting stone was expensive-houses began to be made of rough-cut stone in the thirteenth century, and increasingly so in the fourteenth century. Thus, the stone houses at Wharram Percy were built of natural chalk that could be quarried in the village itself. Lacking mortar, which is found only in manor houses, the peasants filled the cracks with clay to keep out wind and water. Like timber houses, houses built of stone were erected directly on the ground without foundation trenches. Yet another variation was the erection of a low wall of stone that kept out rising dampness; a timber structure was then placed on it with wattle-anddaub fillers. Carpenters and masons made little attempt to align squarely either stone walls or timber-frame houses, so that they seldom had square corners, straight walls, or doors opposite each other."

  Manorial accounts give some indication of expenses involved in building these houses. In Bishops Clyst, Devon, the lord u
ndertook responsibility for repairing and building cottages. They were built on stone foundations with cob walls. The account rolls showed that the lord's expenses included pulling down the old walls, buying stones, and hiring a mason to lay the floor and foundation. To erect the wall he paid for straw, water carrying, and workers' wages. A thatcher was hired for the roofs, but on the higher-quality houses stone tiles replaced straw. The frames were cruck style and partitions within the houses were wattle and daub. The expenses came to ;E3 4s. for single-bay cottage and E5 18s. for a long-house in 1406. This compares to 10s. to 30s. in 1295-1306 in Northamptonshire for constructing cottages of unknown size and E4 19s. in 1559-1560 in Leicestershire for a one-bay 18 cottage.

  Not all lords provided cottages and long-houses for tenants. On the Worcestershire estates there was a mix of solutions for bearing costs. The lord almost always granted a period of two to four years for the construction of a new house, so that the costs could be spread out, but he retained considerable control over the type of house to be built on a newly leased toft. A cottager and his wife had to agree to build a one bay house on their new property while a half-virgater or virgater would have to build a two- or three-bay house. Two men who reached an agreement on the descent of property on the older man's death split the cost. The inheritor was to build, at his own expense, a hall with one room twenty feet long; the owner was to be responsible for the cost of the walls. Sometimes the lord helped by providing from his forest the timber for the frame.19 But theft cases in manorial courts indicate that the peasants tried to help themselves to building materials. The tithingmen of Chalgrave claimed that three men cut down ash trees to repair their houses without paying a fine to the lord. One of the three had permission, but he sold the tree rather than repairing his house.20

  The floors were usually of clay, although some stone, cobbles, and stone flags have been found. Wooden floors were very rare. On some house sites floors showed considerable wear. In clayland areas often the only visible remains of a house is a U-shaped depression formed by the sweeping of tidy housewives. In other sites wear from heavy traffic, such as in doorways, forced owners to repair them with cobbles and stones. In general, house sites are very clean, indicating that peasants did not live in filthy hovels but regularly swept them out and threw the rubbish in the close. Thus no well-stratified layers of deposits on the floors remain to help date houses or locate house sites. The peasants also took measures to keep the floors dry. Doorsills were often built up and were favorite places to sit, particularly for children, who could watch their parents at work and look at the chickens and ducks in the yard.21 The line of drip under the eaves was trenched to prevent seepage; cobbled pathways led up to some houses; and within the houses themselves a drainage ditch was added, if it had proved necessary.22 Peasants apparently tried to control the mud and filth about their dwellings.

  Coroners' roll cases indicate that floors were covered with straw. For instance, when Alice Saddler left the house on an errand, in closing the door she created a draft that spread the fire from the hearth to the straw on the floor and burnt down the house. Or consider the case of the fifty-year-old chaplain, John of Norfolk, who went to bed on a Friday night and placed his candle on the partition above his head. He fell asleep without blowing out his candle and it fell on the straw on the floor and burnt down the rectory.23 Straw on the floor must have absorbed dirt brought in on shoes and droppings of chickens and pigs who were allowed to wander freely in houses, as well as giving the house a general air of coziness. When the straw was dirty, the housewife swept it out and put down new straw. Even a fastidious medieval housewife would not clean frequently enough for our sensitive noses, and floors would have seemed rank by our standards. Barn odors from the adjoining byre would have added to the smell.

  Houses had substantial doors and windows that were closed with shutters. A cottage usually had only one door, but long-houses had two or more, one for each bay or one on either side of the passage between the byre and the living quarters. The doors were not simple screens of wattle or canvas, but rather substantial wooden ones. A boy of ten was killed when the wind blew one of these solid doors shut on him.24 Excavation sites indicate a number of hinges, latches, keys and locks. Smaller latches may have been for window shutters.

  The presence of locks indicates that villagers were fearful of intruders. These were not safe rural communities where people left their doors unlocked at night, although they did leave them open during the day. Doors locked from the inside with a bar of wood to close them securely. Even so, William Brien, son of John Aylmar of Salford, experienced a burglary and the very crossbar on the door was used to bash in his head.25

  Since no pieces of glass provide physical evidence that windows in peasant houses were glazed, archaeologists have assumed that windows were small and covered with shutters. Criminal records, however, indicate that windows must have varied in size. Sometimes felons are described as entering through windows, so that some must have been large enough to permit an armed man to enter. For instance, two neighbors who had murdered their chaplain came back in the morning to check on him and were described as having "opened the windows [and] entered." But in another case a would-be burglar climbed a ladder to the top window of a house, and when he got there he discovered that the window was too small for him to enter and too small for him to remove the goods he wanted.26

  This last case and other criminal cases suggest that houses had second stories. Archaeologists have argued that second stories were rare, but they cannot be completely sure with only physical remains with which to work. The limitations of the building materials in a cruck-style house would lead one to conclude that second stories were not feasible, but the truss style could easily accommodate them. Documentary evidence mentions second stories, but only sporadically. In the Worcestershire court rolls only one of the houses described specified that an upper room be built, and this was on a larger tenement in the fifteenth century.27 Second stories are occasionally mentioned in the coroners' inquests. A curious case from the market town of Salisbury indicates the entire layout of an inn:

  In the middle of the night of Thursday after the feast of St. John at Latin Gate 42 Edward III a bear of Robert Cotiller broke its chain and broke through the wall of the chamber in which it was kept in the cellar of Thomas Stoke's inn. It left the chamber and climbed the stairs to a high room where Emma daughter of Edward Putton, 7 years old, lay sleeping in her bed. It entered her room and mauled her.28

  In another case a servant girl slipped out of her second-floor room by dangling a rope from her window into the garden.29

  While full second stories were rare, coroners' roll cases and manorial court records indicate the presence of solars, small rooms or lofts in the rafters of houses. The solar was used for storing grain and other agricultural products, but it might also be used as a bedroom. Retirement contracts, which are discussed in Chapter 15 on old age, sometimes specified that a solar be built for the retiring peasant. Agnes Watrot of Abyton, more than fifty years old, had spent a day in August 1356 gleaning and returned to her home with grain. She took her grain and a candle up the solar, where her bed was, and fell asleep without putting out her candle. It fell on the straw, and she burned to death. Access to the solar and to the beams of the house, which were also used for storage, was by ladder.30 But all told, less than a dozen accidental deaths mention a solar.

  The general layout of house interiors on the ground floor is most clearly seen in the case of a Devonshire farmstead, Dinna Clerks, which burned, burying its contents. This excavation showed a central granite hearth in the main room and a wattle-and-daub hood over it that channeled smoke through the roof. Four small cooking pots were found, a green glazed jug, and a cooking pot buried to its rim in the floor. The purpose of this latter pot is not known, but it may have been used for water. In the inner room of the house, which served as a storage or sleeping room, there was a cistern.31

  The use of various rooms and outshoots of the house
s is not always clear in archaeological excavations. The main room with the hearth was the center of activity and might also have been used for sleeping, as it certainly was in one-room cottages. Other rooms, referred to as chambers in the coroners' inquests, served a variety of purposes including storage of grain and sleeping. One woman who was staying with a kinsman had a separate chamber with a separate hearth. She caused a fire when she fetched coals from the main hearth to start her own fire. Another case described the relationship of the chamber to the main room. John Clarice was lying in bed near his wife, Joan, in a chamber in his house. His son was in the main room and troubled because his father had not gotten up. He entered the separate chamber and found him dead.32

  Digs all over England have shown the persistence of the central hearth and a fairly common use of clay canopies, which should not be confused with chimneys, a sixteenth-century addition to peasant homes. If stone was not readily available, a clay platform was built up or the fire was built on the floor. Various postholes have been found near hearths and were perhaps used to hold spits. We know of one man who was sitting and turning a spit when he had an epileptic attack and fell on the fire.33 Most of the cooking, however, was done in pots and pans held over the hearth on trivets. Many of the children who appear in accidental-death cases were scalded when the trivet broke or when they knocked over the unstable pots. A pair of twins, John and Joann, were sitting by the fire when a tripod holding a caldron of hot water broke, scalding the two children.34 The open hearth was a potential cause of house fires as well, so the fires were covered at night with a ceramic lid that was shaped like a large inverted bowl and had a strap handle across the top and a series of perforations. It kept the coals glowing but prevented sparks from setting the straw on the floor ablaze.35 The housewife removed the cover in the morning and lit her fire with straw and twigs.