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Post by Hippolyta on Dec 1, 2009 18:50:45 GMT -5
Common Shelter Designs
The earliest forms of shelter were strictly temporary. Tents, pit houses, sod houses and tented pits were all common for short periods of time. As soon as time permitted, more substantial structures were put up. In many cases these were not big improvements. The common one-room houses had dirt floors and were often constructed of posts set in the ground. The more finely finished houses might have sills and timber frames. Walls were often wattle and daub, although settlers who came from an area of England that still had lots of wood might have riven siding, which could be built about as fast.
The forms had direct antecedents in English halls and yeomans’ cottages and the baernes of Scotland. The one-room hall was a common sleeping, eating and working space. Privacy, even for sex, was not common at this early date, nor was it expected. When these forms expanded, they became the manor house, with one wing growing off and added kitchen and another off the added parlor, which functioned as both private office and master bedroom. Regional variants developed as the settlers expanded from one room.
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Post by Hippolyta on Dec 1, 2009 18:51:01 GMT -5
Rooms and Outbuildings
Halls were not passages. Our modern usage of the term for a passageway is a corruption derived from stair hall, an evolutionary development of the fact that stairs often rose in the hall and later in the passage.
Rooms could be arranged in enfilade, so they ran in a row along the main axis of the building. Usually when so arranged, there was a series of doors in a row making a passage down one side of the room. This style was reserved for large buildings and was not common here, but examples did exist.
Closets were small, private spaces, much like a study or dressing room. It was a sign of high respect for a visitor to be shown into a closet, because closets were the most private spaces in a house, assuming it was large enough to have one. Closets were taxed as separate rooms back then, which they were. For confusion, they were sometimes called cabinets, because a cabinet of curiosities might expand to take a whole room, usually a closet.
A large room, particularly in taverns and other public buildings, might be called a Great Room. Any room might be called a chamber, and rooms above stairs usually carried that descriptor. Thus there might be a “chamber above stairs”. Offices could be separate buildings or one of the rooms at the rear of a double-pile structure. Front rooms were considered public spaces, the rear ones private spaces. All rooms might be multi-functional, and furniture was put against the walls when not in use to allow flexibility. The room was then said to be at rest.
Outbuildings were functional appendages. Kitchens could be inside or outside, as could offices. Most forms are self-explanatory: springhouse (used like a refrigerator is today), dairy (with lots of ventilation and maybe a spring to keep cheeses and other dairy products), scullery (where laundry, soap making and other dirty work was carried out), stable, coach house, barn, wood shed, garden house, corncrib, ice house (rare), granary, bath house (a shower house; it was rare) and privies or necessaries (the sanitary facilities). During the night and in inclement or cold weather, chamber pots were used in the house, then emptied, either into the necessary or out the window (more common early).
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Post by Hippolyta on Dec 2, 2009 15:14:06 GMT -5
Lighting
Artificial lighting was not nearly as common as Hollywood would have us think. Most people lived by the sun, rising at dawn and going to bed at dusk.
Candles were expensive, and a typical family might have only one hundred for a year. Still, one candle throws a lot of light. Most candles were used to light the way from hearth to bed and similar short-term uses. Philip Vickers Fithian was a tutor living in the home of Councillor Robert Carter, one of the richest men in Virginia. Fithian described a dinner at Peyton Randolph’s house as extravagant because they had ten candles burning during dinner.
Candle wax was derived from two main sources. Beeswax was considered the best and for Catholic services was the only allowable material. Spermaceti was finer than beeswax but much rarer. The cheapest was made from a thin coating found on the pinhead-sized bayberry, and it took a quart of berries to yield enough wax for an inch of candle that burned about one hour. The labor and cost involved is evident, but labor was cheaper than the other materials.
Because of the expense, large chandeliers were uncommon expect in public buildings. Those in taverns were often made of turned wood with iron arms. Those in public spaces were brass, silver or glass, which enhanced the light. Fine candlesticks were made of metals such as brass, silver or pewter, but more common ones were made of iron. Many had slide features to allow the candle to be totally used. Candle stands could be either a wooden stand on which candlesticks were placed (sometimes called a torchère by those literate in French) or an iron stand with a sliding arm holding candlesticks. The higher the arm was set, the more room illumination it provided; the lower it was set, the stronger the light on a specific work area.
Most people, especially poor families, used tallow (fat), which could be made into candles or used in fat lamps (sometimes called Betty lamps today), or in which rushes could be impregnated before burned. Tallow was undesirable because it produced a stench when burned. Rushlights were inverted pliers-like devices that held the rushes upright so they burned like candles. They do not appear to have been common in the colonies.
Some proper oil lamps were in use from an early date, but the most frequent use was late in the period, when whale oil became common.
Shoemakers’ and lacemakers’ lamps were glass globes filled with water placed between the light source and the work to magnify the light on the work area. The larger the globe, the greater the intensification, but most were about three inches in diameter. Some were fitted on stands, others on articulated arms. Mirrors or bright metal reflectors were placed behind candles to double the effective output of light.
The importance of the fireplace as a source of light cannot be overstated. Once a person’s eyes adjusted to the light, it was adequate for a fair amount of work.
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Post by Hippolyta on Dec 2, 2009 15:21:12 GMT -5
Heating
Fireplaces were the most common source of heat. Fireplaces heat by radiant heat, so fires were kept blazing and as much heat as possible was reflected into the room. Firebacks (cast-iron plates) behind the fire reflected the heat, absorbed some to radiate later, and protected the soft bricks from destruction.
In one-room homes where the fireplace doubled for heating and cooking, fireplaces were large enough to walk into. A blazing fire was kept burning in one area for boiling, and coals were raked out as needed to bake or broil on specific spots on the hearth. Early, almost all fireplaces was like this.
At night fires were banked and could be fanned again in the morning. If there were servants, one of their jobs would be to have this done before the master got up, so the room would be warm.
Fire Safety
For safety no fires (or candles) were kept burning in rooms that were not in use, except possibly the kitchen. Winter social patterns revolved around those rooms that were heated, such as the kitchen. If servants were present, they slept were they were assigned to work, so workshops, kitchens and offices might be monitored and kept warm.
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Post by Hippolyta on Dec 2, 2009 15:21:27 GMT -5
Gardens
Gardens were grouped by type. Formal or pleasure gardens were for entertaining, kitchen gardens grew vegetables and culinary herbs, medicinal or physic gardens grew medical herbs and fruit gardens contained fruit trees. The more functional gardens were utilitarian in layout, with simple beds.
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