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There were different sorts of houses. Of course there were fine manor houses, and simpler houses for poor people, but there were also cottages for families, and larger buildings with larger numbers of people in them, including longhouses, which were commonly used in northern Germanic areas. Small cottages might have included only a single room. A longhouse could have housed a farmer's family, a large group of people who worked on the farm and in the house, storage for food, storage for animal fodder, and space for the animals themselves. The interior of such a house could be partitioned in a variety of ways.

Most medieval houses had a timber frame. Panels that did not carry loads were filled with wattle and daub. Wattle was made by weaving twigs in and out of uprights. Hazel twigs were the most popular with Medieval builders. After the wattle had been made it was daubed with a mixture of clay, straw, cow dung and mutton fat. When it had dried, a mixture of lime plaster and cow hair was used to cover the surface and to seal the cracks. An alternate way to fill in the walls was with rubble, chinked with daub, or with brick.

Poor people sometimes had houses made of unshaped field stones pile up and chinked with daub. The shaping of stone was difficult and expensive. Shaped stones were therefore used sparingly, if at all. Squared stones were sometimes placed at the corners of buildings and around windows and door openings. Bricks were also very costly and in the Middle Ages they were only used to build houses for the very rich.

In cold parts of Europe, log cabins were used. They were very like many log cabins are today.

In the early Middle Ages most roofs were thatched. Fires were a constant problem and in 1221 a law was passed prohibiting the use of thatch in London. This new law stated that the roofs of new buildings had to be covered with wooden shingles, stone slabs or clay tiles. Shingles were cut by hand from local oak trees, or, where it was readily available, made from slate. Craftsmen travelled throughout Sussex making tiles from local clay. Shingles and tiles were fixed to oak or elm timbers by wooden pegs and were overlapped to prevent water getting into the buildings.

Houses of poor country people were one story and had dirt floors, or possibly floors covered with flat stone, if it was easily available. Poor town folk often lived in buildings that had more than one floor. Wealthy people had houses of more than one floor, and the floors would be wood, stone, or tile.

Chimneys were invented in the 11th or 12th century, and were only for wealthy people for a long time after that. This meant that most medieval people never saw a modern fireplace with a chimney. If the floor was dirt, a fire could be built on it, or a stone hearth could be built. Otherwise, a brazier had to be used, and these were expensive. The smoke went to the roof, and out through a hole, either in the roof, or right under the peaks of the roof in the walls. Sometimes the smoke was guided by what is called a hanging chimney or smoke canopy, a very light structure hung on the wall or roof.

I don't know, but I would guess that poor townsfolk might not have had heat of their own. There is archaeological evidence of a lack of kitchen utensils being used by townsfolk, and so there is an assumption that they might not have had fires in their rooms at all. A typical multistory tenement building had a fire on the ground floor on a hearth in the middle of a large room that had the roof for a ceiling. Residents would get the benefit of the heat in the smoke as it rose past their rooms. It must have been pretty bad for their lungs.

There are links below to pictures of medieval houses.

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14y ago

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