228 EVERYDAY LIFE
straw of some kind: rye straw being the most esteemed as longest
and strongest, and after that came wheat straw. The corn was cut
close up to the ear so that there was a great deal of stubble for
thatching purposes. In certain parts, such as Lincoln and Nor-
folk, where reeds were plentiful, they were almost invariably used
for thatching, and by some were considered the finest thatching
material of all. The men of the Ramsey manors, for example,
had to cut sedge for thatching the many buildings of the manors,
or if they wished to be excused from this duty they had to pay
"sedge silver" to the lord.1 When the thatcher came he was
served by his man or often by a woman, and received a compara-
tively high rate of pay for his skilled work—generally at least
twice as much as his assistant.
The ventilation of these houses was non-existent or rudi-
mentary. There was usually no chimney and the smoke from the
fire escaped as best it could from the door, windows and crevices
in wall and roof, just as it does in Alpine chalets to-day. The fire
was made, either on the bare floor, or on an iron plate placed on
the floor, and the peasants cooked and lived as best they
could in a "ful sooty" atmosphere. Not till the end of the
fifteenth century did chimneys become a fairly common feature
of any but the greatest houses (the architectural difficulties of
making a chimney were considerable), and even as late as 1557
conservatives like Harrison complained of this effeminate inno-
vation.2
Nor were the windows of much use in letting out the smoke,
for they were few and small. Glass was still far too expensive for
the peasant, and he covered his tiny window-opening with a
wooden shutter (thus excluding light as well as air) or less often
by framed blinds of cloth or canvas termed fenestralls? The con-
ditions resulting are vividly described by Langland who pictures
the peasant bleary-eyed, or worse, and hoarse with the "smoke
and smolder", so that he coughs and curses that God may
chastise those whose business it is to bring in dry wood, or at
least to blow it until it is blazing.4
1 Ramsey Cart. I, 308, 431, and see Cust. Rents, 57-8.
z Eliz. Engl. 119. "A room with a chimney*' was one of the signs of a
decadent age noted by Langland. Piers Plowman, B. 11. 94~ic>b.
* Prompt. Paro. 155.
* Piers Plowman, B. xvii, 322.