What was the manor house like in a medieval village?

Answer 1

A typical manor was in general ,each manor included a large house or castle,pastures,fields,and forests

Answer 2

A manor house was the largest and most comfortable house on a manorial estate. It was the home of the lord of the estate.

Manor houses ranged in size from a large house, by today's standards, to enormous, and the architecture ranged from that of a well built farmhouse to a fortified manor house, which was not very different from a castle to the modern eye.

The manor house typically had living quarters for the lord of the manor and his family, and for the servants who worked in the house. There was usually room for guests, and areas for eating and gathering.

Most manor houses had a single large room called the great hall, in addition to smaller rooms. This room was usually partitioned, and it was usually were the various living quarters were. The reason for this was that chimneys were not invented until the 12th century, and so the fire for heating was on a hearth in the middle of the room and vented through a hole in the roof or under the roof peaks. The great hall had to go all the way to the roof, and be very tall, for this to work. Of course, the wind blew through the vents, which is why we always hear about castles, which had the same feature, being drafty and cold. With the introduction of chimneys, people could heat individual rooms for the first time.

There are links below

Answer 3

Manor houses were the large houses on manorial estates. They were the homes of the lords of the estates, and tended to be large and much more comfortable than the houses of other people.

Some of the manor houses were fortified, and these could look very much like castles, complete with moats and turrets. Other manor houses were mansions.

There is a related question below, at which there are links to pictures of manor houses.

Answer 4

You phrased your question in the present tense, which will provide a different answer to "What did manor houses look like in medieval times?"

There are very few remaining manor houses today that have not been reconstructed, added to or obliterated by later (post-medieval) alterations. Most places called a manor house today are actually later re-builds on the site of a medieval manor.

Manor houses were originally rectangular, built of stone, with tiny windows and a lower and upper floor. The ground floor was for storage (the undercroft) while the upper floor was divided into a hall, chambers and a solar (sun room) with perhaps a larger window.

Stairs, often external, led up to a door on the upper floor, while a larger door led straight into the undercroft.

This would be the living area for a nobleman (knight) and his family. Around the house would be many other building of timber and thatch: kitchen, workshops, barn, stables and byres, pigsty and living quarters for servants. The entire complex would be surrounded by a bank and ditch with a timber palisade, or later by a stone wall.

See links below for images:

Answer 5

Not every village had a manor house, since a manor might include more than one village. On the other hand, some villages had two manor houses, such as Widdington in Essex and the "lost medieval village" of Wharram Percy.

In the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries manor houses were generally plain, two-storey stone buildings with tiled or thatched roofs and were surrounded by other buildings that were usually of timber, wattle and daub and thatch - so only the stone manor house survives into later periods.

Around the entire manor complex would be a ditch and bank, surmounted by a palisade of logs. Later this was replaced by a moat and stone wall, with a stone tower over the gateway.

The manor house itself had a large door (sometimes with a smaller one next to it) leading into the undercroft - a ground floor storage area where food, wine, tools, carts and other items were kept. An external stair led up to a door at first floor level - here the nobleman and his family lived, with bed chambers, private apartments and a main hall where the family would eat and sit during the day. There might be stone seats built each side of a large window or a small room with a south-facing window called a solar room, where the lady of the house would sit and do her needlework.

Servants would sleep in the outbuildings, which would include a barn, stables, storehouses, a bakery, a kitchen and often a tower-shaped dovecote.

Answer 6

Very early manor houses were built of timber with a thatched roof, but by the 12th century most had been rebuilt in stone and had stone tiled roofs. They were normally rectangular in plan and with two floors: the ground floor was for storage of food and supplies, while the upper floor was the living area for the knight and his family.

The manor house was never alone, but built among a range of other structures which were normally of wood - so only the manor house itself survives. Around the whole complex would be a bank and ditch (moat) with a wooden palisade fence, or sometimes a stone wall with a gatehouse.

Many manor houses were completely rebuilt in the post-medieval period, so they no longer resemble a medieval building.

A typical example of a 12th century manor house is Boothby Pagnell in Lincolnshire, which has several later windows added to the 12th century building - none of the original outbuildings survive (see link below):