CHAPTER III - The Kitchen and Offices
As one would suppose, when a
large household was fed in the hall of a manor house, the kitchen was generally
a big building, placed at a short distance from the hall.
Near the kitchen, and opening out from it, would be the larder, the buttery, and
the pantry; while beneath it was the cellar. In those early days there were no
shops in the country and very few in towns, so that large quantities of food had
to be stored up in the houses, and even the richest lord of a manor had little
to rely on in the way of food beyond the produce of his own estate.
When the kitchen was placed under other rooms it was generally vaulted, or built
on arches, and some fine kitchens of this kind can be seen at Warwick Castle,
and at the Prior’s House, Wenlock, in Shropshire. Old manor-house kitchens
usually have very large fireplaces, which sometimes have projecting hoods over
them. Such fireplaces needed to be large when oxen and sheep were roasted whole,
and not cut up into small joints before cooking as they are to-day.
Near the kitchen, and usually at the lower end of the hall, were the pantry and
buttery. In the pantry the bread was given out, and in the buttery the liquors
were served. Within easy reach of the kitchen also were other small chambers
like the lardarium, the salsarium, the bakehouse, and the brewhouse. In the
lardarium was kept the potted meat for winter use, the mouths of the pots being
covered over with lard.
The salsarium was the room in which the salted food and fish were kept as a
reserve supply in case of siege or other emergency. The bakehouse was often near
the kitchen, and it had its own ovens for the baking of bread and other foods.
The brewhouse was always an important part of an old house. In it was brewed the
malt liquor for the use of the household.
The kitchen illustrated is a very fine one at Stanton Harcourt. It is built in
the form of a tower with a timber roof, and the original fireplaces and oven
remain. This is one of the finest old kitchens we have left. The fireplace is at
Chale, in the Isle of Wight.
Among the other important parts of a manor house would be the dairy, the
granary, the mill, and the stables.
The dairy was, of course, used for the same purposes as it is to-day – the
storage of milk and eggs and the making of butter. The granary was the large
barn in which the corn was kept after it had been threshed in a smaller barn. In
the granary also would be stored the malt and hops for brewing.
A mill was essential at a time when the corn grown on the estate was eaten on
the spot, and when bad roads made it difficult to send it any distance to be
ground. The same stream of water that filled the moat would turn the mill-wheel.
In the days when all travelling and transport were performed by horses, stables
were of the greatest
importance, and they usually formed a part of the house
itself, so that the horses could not be taken away or otherwise interfered with
in times of danger. When the stables did not form a part of the house itself,
they were placed either in the inner court, as at South Wraxall, or in the outer
court, as at Tisbury.
In may be remarked here that nearly every part of a modern house can be traced
back to olden times. Thus, our dining-room is but a smaller hall; the
“withdrawing-room” is a larger solar; the “lord’s chamber” exists in the library
or study; and the “lady’s chamber” is the dressing-room, or boudoir.
The buttery and pantry are now rolled into one and given the name “pantry” in
houses and “buttery” in colleges. The cellars exist as they did formerly, and we
cannot say that the kitchen is of less importance to-day than it was in past
ages.
With the growth of brewing and baking into great trades, the private brewhouse
and bakehouse have vanished, and as the butcher calls at our house every day for
orders, we have no need to lay up stores of provisions in a lardarium or a
salsarium. Lastly, we shall find that stables for horses remain in country
districts, but in towns they have mostly been turned into garages.
