bout the same date the Manor house of Thorp was larger,
and contained a hall, a chamber, tresantia (apparently part of the
hall or chamber separated by a screen to form an antechamber), two
private rooms, a kitchen, brew-house, malt-house, dairy, ox shed, and
three small hen-houses.

The ordinary manor house of the Middle Ages contained three rooms at
least, of mean aspect, the floor even of the hall, which was the
principal eating and sleeping room, being of dirt; and when there was
an upper room or solar added, which began to be done at the end of the
twelfth century,[133] access to it was often obtained by an outside
staircase.

If the manor house belonged to the owner of many manors, it was
sometimes inhabited by his bailiff.

The barns on the demesnes were often as important buildings as the
manor houses; one at Wickham, belonging to the canons of S. Paul's[134]
in the twelfth century, was 55 feet long, 13 feet high from the floor
to the principal beam, and 10-1/2 feet more to the ridge board; the
breadth between the pillars was 19-1/2 feet, and on each side it had a
wing or aisle 6-1/2 feet wide and 6-1/2 feet high. The amount of corn
in the barn was often scored on the door-posts.[135] In the manor
houses chimneys rarely existed, the fire being made in the middle of
the hall. Even in the early seventeenth century in Cheshire there were
no chimneys in the farmhouses, and there the oxen were kept under the
same roof as the farmer and his family.[136] When chimneys did come in
they were not much thought of. 'Now we have chimneys our tenderlings
complain of rheums, catarrhs, and poses (colds);' for the smoke not
only hardened the timbers, but was said by Harrison to be an excellent
medicine for man. Instead of glass there was much lattice, and that
made either of wicker or fine rifts of oak in checkerwise, and horn
was also used. Beds, of course, were a luxury, the owner of the manor,
his guests, and retainers flung themselves down on the hall floor
after supper and all slept together, though sometimes rough mattresses
were brought in.

Furniture was rude and scanty. In 1150 the farm implements and
household furniture on the Manor of 'Waleton' was valued and consisted
of 4 carts, 3 baskets, a basket used in winnowing corn, a pair of
millstones, 10 tubs, 4 barrels, 2 boilers of lead with stoves, 2
wooden bowls, 3 three-legged tables, 20 dishes or platters, 2
tablecloths worth 6d., 6 metal bowls, half a load of th