Alexander Neckam has left us a sufficiently clear description of the Norman hall. He says that it had a vestibule or screen (_vestibulum_), and was entered through a porch (_porticus_), and that it had a court, the Latin name of which (_atrium_) he pretends was derived from _ater_ (black), “because the kitchens used to be placed by the side of the streets, in order that the passers-by might perceive the smell of cooking.” This explanation is so mysterious, that we may suppose the passage to be corrupt, but the _coquinæ_ of which Neckam is speaking are evidently cook’s shops. In the interior of the hall, he says, there were posts (or columns) placed at regular distances. The few examples of Norman halls which remain are divided internally by two rows of columns. Neckam enumerates the materials required in the construction of the hall, which seem to show that he is speaking of a timber building. A fine example of a timber hall, though of a later period, is, or was recently, standing in the city of Gloucester, with its internal “posts” as here described. There appears also to have been an inner court-yard, in which Neckam intimates that poultry were kept. The whole building, and the two court-yards, were no doubt surrounded by a wall, outside of which were the garden and orchard. The Normans appear to have had a taste for gardens, which formed a very important adjunct to the mansion, and to the castle, and are not unfrequently alluded to in mediæval writers, even as far back as the twelfth century. Giraldus Cambrensis, speaking of the castle of Manorbeer (his birthplace), near Pembroke, said that it had under its walls, besides a fine fish-pond, “a beautiful garden, inclosed on one side by a vineyard, and on the other by a wood, remarkable for the projection of its rocks, and the height of its hazel-trees.” In the twelfth century, vineyards were not uncommon in England.
[Illustration: _No. 70. A Man warming himself._]
A new characteristic was introduced into the Norman houses, and especially into the castles, the massive walls of which allowed chimney-flues to be carried up in their thickness. The piled-up fire in the middle of the hall was still retained, but in the more private apartments, and even sometimes in the hall itself, the fire was made on a hearth beneath a fire-place built against the side wall of the room. An illumination, in the Cottonian MS. Nero, C. iv., which we have already had occasion to refer to more than once, represents a man warming himself at a fireplace of this description. It appears, from a comparison of this (No. 70) with similar figures of a later period, that it was a usual practice to sit at the fire bare-legged and bare-foot, with the object of imbibing the heat without the intermediation of shoes or stockings. On a carved stall in Worcester Cathedral, represented in our cut No. 71, which belongs to a later date (the latter part of the fourteenth century), and the scene of which is evidently intimated to be in the winter season, a man, while occupied in attending to the culinary operations, has taken off his shoes in order to warm himself in this manner. The winter provisions, two flitches of bacon, are suspended to the left of him, and on the other side the faithful dog seems to enjoy the fire equally with his master. From a story related by Reginald of Durham, it appears to have been a practice among the ladies to warm themselves by sitting over hot water, as well as by the fire.[20] In some of the illuminations of mediæval manuscripts, ladies are represented as warming themselves, even in the presence of the other sex, in a very free and easy manner. The fuel chiefly employed was no doubt still wood, but the remark of Giraldus Cambrensis that the name of Coleshulle (in Flintshire) signified the hill of coals (_carbonum collis_) implies that mineral coals were then known.