Presiding over the manorial courts, the lord of the manor dispensed justice within his jurisdiction. Typical manors consisted partly of the peasants' cottages, huts, barns and gardens, which were usually clustered together to form a small village.
Some had a church, a mill, and a wine or oil press. A manor had three main types of land: demesne land directly under the control of the lord , dependent land performed obligations to the lord , and free lands rented by free peasants. Manorialism was related to feudalism but was not itself feudal.
Given the legal, social and economic functions of the manor as a distinct societal unit, it was important for the lord of the manor to have a dwelling that would accommodate such functions. Functions of the medieval manor houses In general, the manor house was the dwelling of a lord of the manor or his residential bailiff, forming the administrative centre of the estate. A lord might possess several manors, each of which would typically have a manor house.
In this case, the manor house was only inhabited occasionally. Sometimes a steward or seneschal was appointed to supervise the different manorial properties. The administration was delegated to a bailiff or reeve. A manor house at Ightham Mote, Kent What was the manor house for? The primary function of the manor house was accommodation of the lord, that should be able to house important guests in comfort.
The manor house was a powerful statement of wealth and political prestige to impress the other nobles. The manor house could serve as a symbol of superiority and authority to the subjects of the lord of the manor. The manor house usually hosted the manorial court, where the lord of the manor exercised his judicial power. For this reason, it came to represent the legal centre of a fief. The drawbridge gave way to a fixed bridge over the moat, and the gatehouse became more elaborately decorative; a grand entryway rather than a forbidding barrier.
The upper floor of the gatehouse was often used as a chapel. The house itself was most often arranged around a central courtyard, with domestic buildings of one to three stories in height. With more space devoted to comfort, private bedrooms and reception rooms became common, as well as family areas like the solar.
Materials varied with the locale; half-timber, stone, brick, and flint were all used. To generalise about the post-Medieval manor, it is safe to say that buildings became more spacious and elaborate, more ostentatious and ornate.
The basic pattern of country houses evolved from the courtyard design to a more open E or H shape. Windows occupied a large proportion of wall space; advances in glazing techniques account for part of this approach, but so did less need for defence.
Another strain of influence was a burgeoning interest in classical design. More Englishmen were travelling abroad and they were influenced by Italian classicism, and still more by Flemish and French interpretations of that classical style. In this last ornate flowering of the medieval manor, we can see the origins of the neo-classical country house estates of the next several centuries.
Canvas prints, framed prints and greeting cards by award-winning photographer David Ross, editor of BritainExpress. National Trust membership. Membership details. About the National Trust. There is a decent chapel covered with tiles, a portable altar, and a small cross. In the hall are four tables on trestles.
There are likewise a good kitchen covered with tiles, with a furnace and ovens, one large, the other small, for cakes, two tables, and alongside the kitchen a small house for baking. Also a new granary covered with oak shingles, and a building in which the dairy is contained, though it is divided.
Likewise a chamber suited for clergymen and a necessary chamber. Also a hen-house. These are within the inner gate. Likewise outside of that gate are an old house for the servants, a good table, long and divided, and to the east of the principal building, beyond the smaller stable, a solar for the use of the servants.
Also a building in which is contained a bed, also two barns, one for wheat and one for oats. These buildings are enclosed with a moat, a wall, and a hedge. Also beyond the middle gate is a good barn, and a stable of cows, and another for oxen, these old and ruinous. Also beyond the outer gate is a pigstye. Like feudalism which, together with manorialism, formed the legal and organizational framework of feudal society, manorial structures were not uniform.
In the later Middle Ages, areas of incomplete or non-existent manorialization persisted while the manorial economy underwent substantial development with changing economic conditions. Not all manors contained all three kinds of land: typically, demesne accounted for roughly a third of the arable area, and villein holdings rather more; but some manors consisted solely of demesne, others solely of peasant holdings.
The proportion of unfree and free tenures could likewise vary greatly, with more or less reliance on wage labour for agricultural work on the demesne. The proportion of the cultivated area in demesne tended to be greater in smaller manors, while the share of villein land was greater in large manors, providing the lord of the latter with a larger supply of obligatory labour for demesne work.
The proportion of free tenements was generally less variable, but tended to be somewhat greater on the smaller manors.
Manors varied similarly in their geographical arrangement: most did not coincide with a single village, but rather consisted of parts of two or more villages, most of the latter containing also parts of at least one other manor. This situation sometimes led to replacement by cash payments or their equivalents in kind of the demesne labour obligations of those peasants living furthest from the lord's estate.
As with peasant plots, the demesne was not a single territorial unit, but consisted rather of a central house with neighbouring land and estate buildings, plus strips dispersed through the manor alongside free and villein ones: in addition, the lord might lease free tenements belonging to neighbouring manors, as well as holding other manors some distance away to provide a greater range of produce.
Ecclesiastical manors tended to be larger, with a significantly greater villein area than neighbouring lay manors. By extension, the word manor is sometimes used in England to mean any home area or territory in which authority is held, often in a police or criminal context.
Finchcocks,an early Georgian manor house in Goudhurst, Kent, View of the rear of the house, from the garden. Gainsborough Old Hall in Lincolnshire , one of the best preserved medieval manor houses in England. The title Lord of the Manor is a titular feudal dignity which is still recognised today as semi-extinct form of landed property.
Their Lord of the Manor of say Moorstones is still entitled to call himself Joe Soap, Lord of the Manor of Moorstones, but the title does not does not entitle him to a coat of arms. In England in the Middle Ages land was held of the English monarch or ruler by a powerful local supporter, who gave protection in return. The people who had sworn homage to the lord were known as vassals.
Vassals were nobles who served loyalty for the king, in return for being given the use of land. After the Norman conquest of England, however, all the land of England was owned by the monarch who then granted the use of it by means of a transaction known as enfeoffment, to earls, barons, and others, in return for military service. The person who held feudal land directly from the king was known as a 'tenant-in-chief'. Military service was based upon units of ten knights.
An important tenant-in-chief might be expected to provide all ten knights, and lesser tenants-in-chief, half of one.
Some tenants-in-chief 'sub-infeuded', that is, granted, some of their land to a sub-tenant. Further sub-infeudation could occur down to the level of a lord of a single manor, which in itself might represent only a fraction of a knight's fee. A mesne lord was the level of lord in the middle holding several manors, between the lords of a manor and the superior lord. The sub-tenant might have to provide knight service, or finance just a portion of it, or pay something purely nominal.
Any further sub-infeudation was prohibited by the Statute of Quia Emptores in Knight service was abolished by the Tenures Abolition Act At Penshurst, the Great Hall contained one large fire but the hall itself would have been very draughty.
All those who slept here would have slept on straw. Washing facilities would have very poor by our standards and there would have been a very limited amount of time to wash as workers worked from sunrise to sunset. There were no obvious toilets at Medieval Penshurst Place — as would have been true in Medieval England as a whole, except in the monasteries.
For the peasants who worked on the land, life was still difficult and the feudal system gave them no freedom. Even the lords of a manor were bound by the duties required by the feudal system — and manors could be taken from noble families who were deemed to have angered the king. The medieval section of Penshurst Place. The doorway at Penshurst Place.
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