13th Century House

The dimensions of a modest thirteenth century house are given in Worcestershire court roll of 1281; it was one story, 30 feet long and 14 feet broad, with three doors and two windows. The windows were on each side, to be left open when a cool breeze blew, but stuffed with straw or fern in inclement weather. The family would have eaten and slept together within the same room. This was not a period in which the private self can said to exist. A thirteenth-century cottage excavated by Berkshire consisted of one room, 10 by 12 feet, and another in Yorkshire had dimensions of 10 by 20 feet. The longhouses of the same period the rooms were used for livestock as well as people, together with store of grain. The inhabitants were living and sleeping side by side with their animals.

The houses were lengthened, or rebuilt, or extended, as time and occasion demanded. Certain improvements, from human industry and human ingenuity, were possible. The houses of the eleventh century were made of clay without timer frames; but the thirteenth century most houses were constructed with timber frames and, less than a century later, the walls were being erected on stone bases to curb damp and decay. The beaten-earth floors were generally strewn with rushes that became so moist and dirty that they were from Whitefrairs, just south of Fleet Street, in London; in 1278 Ralph de Crockerlane was selling clay chimney pots in that quarter. ~ Page 94 (“Foundation” ~ Peter Ackroyd)

Women managed the house. The size and quality of peasants’ houses varied according to their relative prosperity, and that prosperity usually depended on the amount of land held. Poorer peasants lived in windowless cottages built of wood and clay or wattle and thatched with straw. These cottages consisted of one large room that served as the kitchen and living quarters for all. Everyone slept there. The house had an earthen floor and a fireplace. The lack of windows meant that the room was very sooty. A trestle table, several stools, one or two beds, and a chest for storing clothes constituted the furniture. A shed attached to the house provided storage of tools and shelter for animals. Prosperous peasants added rooms and furniture as they could be afforded, and some wealthy peasants in early fourteenth century had two-story houses with separate bedrooms for parents and children. ` Page 288