eherds the pigs. The Ponder impounded stray stock. There
were varieties of horses: war horses, riding horses, courier
horses, pack horses, and plough horses.

The majority of manors were coextensive with a single village.
The villeins lived in the village in one-room huts enclosed by a
wood fence, hedge, or stone wall. In this yard was a garden of
onions, leeks, mustard, peas, beans, parsley, garlic, herbs, and
cabbage and apple, pear, cherry, quince, and plum trees, and
beehives. The hut had a high-pitched roof thatched with reeds or
straw and low eaves reaching almost to the ground. The walls are
built of wood-framing overlaid with mud or plaster. Narrow slits
in the walls serve as windows, which have shutters and are
sometimes covered with coarse cloth. The floor is dirt and may be
covered with straw or rushes for warmth, but usually no hearth. In
the middle is a wood fire burning on a hearthstone, which was lit
by making a spark by striking flint and iron together. The smoke
rose through a hole in the roof. At one end of the hut was the
family living area, where the family ate on a collapsible trestle
table with stools or benches. Their usual food was beans and peas,
oatmeal gruel, butter, cheese, vegetables, honey, rough bread made
from a mixture of wheat, barley, and rye flour, herrings or other
salt fish, and some salted or smoked bacon. Butter had first been
used for cooking and as a medicine to cure constipation and for
puny children it could be salted down for the winter. The bread
had been roasted on the stones of the fire; later there were
communal ovens set up in villages. Cooking was done over the fire
by boiling in iron pots hung from an iron tripod, or sitting on
the hot stones of the fire. They ate from wood bowls using a wood
spoon. When they had fresh meat, it could be roasted on a spit.
Liquids were heated in a kettle. With drinking horns, they drank
water, milk, buttermilk, apple cider, mead, ale made from barley
malt, and bean and vegetable broth. They used jars and other
earthenware, e.g. for storage of salt. They slept on straw
mattresses or sacks on the floor or on benches. The villein
regarded his bed area as the safest place in the house, as did
people of all ranks, and kept his treasures there, which included
his farm implements, as well as hens on the beams, roaming pigs,
and stalled oxen, cattle, and horses, which were at the other end
of the hut. Fires were put out at night to guard agai