In his manual of good manners, The Book of the Civilised Man, Daniel of Beccles advised keeping pigs and cats out of the hall, but allowed in a 'gentleman's animals': dogs, hawks and even horses. Poultry and other animals ran freely in the yard. There would be other buildings too: extra accommodation for visitors or senior servants, stables, a brewhouse, and workshops for jobs such as carding and spinning wool, or retting flax. These separate units were often linked by covered ways. The principal buildings were a hall, for receiving visitors and dining, a chamber block, where the lord's family had their private space, which it was rude to enter uninvited, a kitchen and at least one privy. For many centuries before this, the residences of the aristocracy had nearly always consisted of a number of buildings within an enclosure. In 1215 new fashions were beginning to change the way the houses of the aristocracy were designed. You no longer had to go outside to use a lavatory. Thick walls could contain corridors and private rooms - above all, latrines, usually approached round a sharp bend so that the person using it could have some privacy. The lead pipes in the Great Tower, King Henry II's keep, at Dover Castle drew water from a well sunk more than 240 feet into the chalk. Stone walls were not just fireproof and handy for keeping enemies out, they could also be used for plumbing in running water. While early fireplaces usually had short flues, by the later twelfth century it was known that an extended flue produced a stronger draft.

In stone buildings fireplaces and chimneys were encased in the thickness of the walls and one room could be piled on top of another to make a tower. Heat was provided by open fires or braziers in the center of the floor, the smoke being drawn out through a louver in the roof. Until the twelfth century most castles and great houses were built of timber, and usually one storey high. Instead, we should think of chimneys and fireplaces. When we see ancient, crumbling stone walls, we think of dungeons and sieges. But by the standards of the time, when they compared the way they lived with the way in which their parents and grandparents had lived, the rich families of King John's England felt they were enjoying all mod cons. And so they were by twenty-first-century standards. Surviving castle walls tend to make us think of cold, dark, drafty, damp and thoroughly uncomfortable rooms. It is hard for us to visualize this today. A wealthy magnate, possessing twenty or thirty manors, had an annual income of several hundred pounds and lived luxuriously in his castles and country houses. This was a time when a laborer was paid a penny a day, and when an income of ten pounds a year was enough for a country gentleman to maintain a comfortable lifestyle.

Neither we nor our bailiffs shall take other men's timber for castles or other work of ours, without the agreement of the owner.

1215 by Danny Danziger