The rooms are
broad and spacious and include hall, great parlor, little parlor,
matted chamber, and study. In the hall was still the great, heavy
table. Dining tables were covered with cloth, carpet, or printed
leather. Meals were increasingly eaten in a parlor. Noble men
preferred to be waited upon by pages and grooms instead of by
their social equals. After dinner, they deserted the parlor to
retire into drawing rooms for conversation and desserts of sweet
wine and spiced delicacies supplemented by fruit. Afterward, there
might be dancing and then supper. In smaller parlors, there was
increasing use of oval oak tables with folding leaves. Chests of
drawers richly carved or inlaid and with brass handles were coming
in. Walls were wainscotted and had pictures or were hung with
tapestry. Carpets, rugs, and curtains kept people warm. There were
many stools to sit on, and some arm chairs. Wide and handsome open
staircases separated the floors, instead of the circular stone
closed stairwells. Upstairs, the sitting and bedrooms open into
each other with broad, heavy doors. Bedrooms had four-post beds
and wardrobes with shelves and pegs. Under the roof are garrets,
apple-lofts, and root-chambers. Underneath is a cellar. Outside is
a farmyard with outbuildings such as bake house, dairy, cheese-
press house, brewery, stilling house, malt house, wood house, fowl
house, dove cot, pig stye, slaughter-house, barns, stable, and
sometimes a mill.
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