What do medieval houses look like

Not having enough workers to work the fields led landowners to start hiring more and more able peasants and for the first time peasants could work for whoever was paying the most coin or offering the best deals. This led to the peasants having more coin to spend and automatically led to happier times for them and one of the major changes that happened with this increased wealth was that peasants and serfs improved their medieval homes.

Better Medieval housing was one of the first things on the list of things to buy for these wealthier Peasants and Serfs. New medieval houses were in demand for the lower classes after the Black Death and new House building techniques were introduced that produced much better houses.

A building style called wattle and daub was invented that allowed peasants to build taller and wider medieval houses than previously.

These new medieval houses were made of simple sticks, mud and straw. These Medieval houses not only provided more room but they offered protection against the weather and peasants could finally implement fires inside their own homes. The framework was constructed of timber, and the filling of the spaces was with wattle woven twigs these twigs were daubed in mud which when it dried made a strong hard wall.

The peasants would also make a hole in the top of the houses thatched roofs so that the smoke coming from the fire in the middle of the house could go out. This fire provided warmth, could be used for cooking and although the peasants reeked of smoke because only one hole in the roof acted as a chimney, their lives were greatly improved by the changes made in medieval housing design. Shingles were cut by hand from local oak trees.

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. Most of the houses in East Grinstead were two storeys high. These houses usually had very small frontages and were sometimes only 12 feet 3. In the 14th century jetties became very popular. A jetty is where the upper floor sticks out over the one below. The overhang provided a larger room in the upper story.

The large jettied medieval building close to Holy Trinity church at the junction of High Street and Bullace Lane dates from the fifteenth century. The house was owned by John Groveherst. It was originally made up of a principal hall or apartment measuring 25 x 20 feet, the walls of which were hung with tapestries said to be woven by the nuns of Dartford Priory.

Church houses, Overy Street Click for enlarged drawing Most surviving medieval town houses were the homes of rich merchants; much evidence for early construction is now hidden by later work.

There has been repeated rebuilding and remodelling of these older properties. The design of the medieval town house was determined largely by lack of space.

Land in towns was valuable, and the normal medieval town plot was long and narrow, running back from the street frontage; each property had a long narrow garden or yard at the rear. On the ground floor the front part of the property was often used as a shop or for some other trade purposes. In the later medieval period the houses of the rich were made out of brick. However, brick was very expensive so many chose to make the half-timbered houses that are now commonly referred to as Tudor houses.

Tiles were used on the roofs and some had chimneys and glass in the windows. These houses had two or more floors and the servants slept upstairs. They were one-roomed houses which the family shared with the animals. They made their houses themselves because they could not afford to pay someone to build them.