The poorer houses were dirty
hovels, run up "anyhow," sometimes covered with turf, sometimes with
thatch. None of them had chimneys. Six hundred years ago houses with
chimneys were at least as rare as houses heated by hot-water pipes
are now. Moreover, there were no brick houses. It is a curious fact
that the art of making bricks seems to have been lost in England for
some hundreds of years. The labourer's dwelling had no windows; the
hole in the roof which let out the smoke rendered windows
unnecessary, and, even in the houses of the well-to-do, glass windows
were rare. In many cases oiled linen cloth served to admit a feeble
semblance of light, and to keep out the rain. The labourer's fire was
in the middle of his house; he and his wife and children huddled
round it, sometimes grovelling in the ashes; and going to bed meant
flinging themselves down upon the straw which served them as mattress
and feather bed, exactly as it does to the present day in the gipsy's
tent in our byways. The labourer's only light by night was the
smouldering fire. Why should he burn a rushlight when there was
nothing to look at? and reading was an accomplishment which few
labouring men were masters of.
As to the food of the majority, it was of the coarsest. The fathers
of many a man and woman in every village in Norfolk can remember the
time when the labourer looked upon wheat-bread as a rare delicacy;
and those legacies which were left by kindly people a century or two
ago, providing for the weekly distribution of so many _white_
loaves to the poor, tell us of a time when the poor man's loaf was as
dark as mud, and as tough as his shoe-leather.
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