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PART IV

Part four looks at the sixty sites whether a timber cottage, a longhouse type smallholding, a copyhold cottage or a farm on the A and B manors. A few properties have ground plans and elevations to aid the description. No map was found before 1775 so the small sketch maps have had to rely upon descriptive aids from terriers, deeds and the Holloway records. The sites were paced out on the ground as well as the buildings when permission was given to try and make the maps as accurate as possible. The family "trees" have been made from the parish registers, wills, grave memorials, deeds, terriers and letters from descendants. A great deal of information can be gained by reconstituting the families who occupied the sites, especially when it is possible to use the buildings and records to place people within the parish rather than isolating the family away from the home, work and community which helped to shape their lives.In Part IV we can visit the houses and cottages to meet the people.

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Norman's Timber cottage with outer Stone walls [48].

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24. Rebuilding in Stone.

"A METHOD of Censuring, or passing

one's judgement on a Building (that is already

compleated or finished) as to it Commodious-

ness Firmness, and Delightfulness, which are

the Principal Qualities in a good Fabrick."

[Neve R. From The City and Country Purchaser 1736 p xiv David & Charles 1969].

Cropredy is a township of medium and small sized houses which were built in the traditional manner. They continued to develop over the centuries according to the needs of the occupiers. Each household rebuilding, adapting and improving their timber houses with the aid of local craftsmen in the vernacular style. By the 1570's, when stone rather than timber was used to rebuild, the husbandman and craftsman must have had very definite ideas on how the new material would be able to add to their status, their comforts and provide a dwelling to last through the centuries like the church. This was a costly investment for a tenant requiring several profitable years, unless the landlord was purchasing the stone and the tenant providing the cartage, inner partitions and roofing straw.

Freeholders in other parishes had managed to rebuild, some before and others after Queen Elizabeth's reign. In Cropredy low rents and higher prices for their surplus goods had made this possible to begin with, but the rest of the money might have to be borrowed. The time was right for rebuilding all along the limestone ridge. William Harrison had noticed by 1587 that in the Jurassic region timber buildings were not being replaced. Instead they used the locally quarried stone, which was an oolitic limestone of the middle lias. This ferruginous material produced a brown, almost honey coloured stone. The salt in the stone dissolves and then crystallizes giving a hard enough surface to reject the rain helping the buildings to last through the next four hundred years. As the stone matures it gives out a sunny quality which pleases the eye and few people are immune to their beauty. Each house has its own attraction due to the unique combination of the mason's skill and the demands made on him by the tenants business requirements. The craftsmen did not read instruction manuals which later spread throughout Britain, but relied on the tuition given by a master craftsman. In this way traditional techniques for dealing with local customs, needs and materials brought about the vernacular buildings for each area.

The stone was quarried near by and brought most probably in special box carts hired for the purpose rather than the harvest carts. The stone was cut when damp into regular blocks. Each row having it's own height giving coursed rows of stone all with continuous horizontal joints. The quoin stones, often of a better finish, were used to give the height of two or three rows which butted up to them at the corners. Joints were pointed with a lime mortar.

The sites chosen to rebuild on were governed by the past history of the town. The arable land came right to the edge of the town boundaries. The only place to rebuild had to be on the original closes, sometimes called crofts or tofts. The few new sites being taken from the meadow edges, the Green and the A manor's Berry Close. Land in every part of the two manors had been allocated for centuries preventing a massive rebuilding at a different location. Water had been found in most closes. The position of their wells must surely have influenced the site of the stone building in every croft.

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What did each of the occupiers choose to do? Pull down their timber dwelling, build behind it, or encase the timber house with a stone outer shell? There was seldom room in the grass cattle yard, or close, at the rear to take the husbandman's new building, though Howse [28] managed it. The close would already have a barn, open cattle hovels, an oxen or horse stable and other buildings in timber, which could not be disturbed all at once and still continue to run the farm. Only one building could be upset at a time. Would they decide to remove one or two timber bays to start with? Where would they live while recycling the roof timbers and beams into the new stone building?

Discussion would reveal the common need of a hall bay with a chimney, enabling them to have an extra chamber above. The builder must therefore provide a space for the stairs, or a cottage ladder. A second bay would be planned for a sleeping chamber with the buttery behind on the ground floor and one or two chambers above. If more space was required an extra floor gave one or two cocklofts. The entrance was all important. Either into a cottage hall or in a larger building into an entry passage. This would be between the hall and the barn in the old buildings. The husbandmen would wish perhaps to remove the barn to a separate site and make another nether bay below the entry, adding a second chimney. The smallholder would hang onto the barn, at the landlord's insistence for this used less stone and the passage doubled up as entrance to the upper hall end and the business side for cows, carpenter's shop or mercer's with their barn beyond.

Once the decisions had been made about the position of the rooms, then the size and balance of the windows on the front elevation were decided. As the house was rectangular and seldom deeper than 16 feet inside, the windows to light each room would be at the front. There were many houses and cottages whose main entrance was directly onto the highway as they built right on the edge of their plot. Openings needed to take the width of a man and his load, or the width of an animal and in the barn the cart plus the load.

The husbandmen, shepherds, mercers and carpenters were expecting more of their new building than a single storey and loft. They had visions of a two or three bay house with walls supporting a roof over the two, or two and a half storey dwelling. At the very least there was to be for the cottager a one cell building with ample room for an upper chamber.

The front elevations were not generally treated to carved drip moulds, though an early property like Howse [28] had them as well as the later Williamscote school built in 1574. Instead they had plain oak lintels carefully chamfered over the three light casement windows. Not until the 1690's did some decide to alter the size of the windows. The upper chambers might have only two light casements. Cockloft windows on the gable end had one or two lights. There are a few stone mullions left at [8 & 28].

Five properties which did not make the main entrance in the front elevation were Sutton the tailors [42], Toms [15], Allens [44], Hudsons [19] and Hills [20]. In Toms, Allens and Hills the front door opened beside the fireplace and in Suttons and Hudsons opposite the chimney. Three had doors in the south gable, Hills entered through the west gable and Hudsons the east gable.

The husbandmen and craftsmen built as large a building as they were able. Cottagers had to be content with one or two, but rarely three bay accommodation, with the hall acting as an all purpose room, except for sleeping. Just three cottages had yet to build in a partition to form a separate chamber, so that Sutton's [42] and Ladd's [40] still have a bed in the hall.

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All the new stone buildings appear from survey evidence to have had a chimney (p623). The few who had two chimneys, providing a nether chamber, or a kitchen, seldom took the cooking out of the hall until later (p671).

The occupiers were all tenants and only on the A manor did a few build in well cut ashlar stone which required very little mortar. This avoided irregular surfaces and improved the finish by having almost invisible joints. The rest had a rougher cut stone which needed more mortar. Some ashlar on the B manor was used for later alterations and the tenants who came after Nuberry [8] used it to improve the B manor house.

The thickness of the oldest walls could be up to 30" or more at the base, but by the end of the sixteenth century most were only 22" thick. In some a slight internal batter reduced the thickness as the walls rose to the eaves. At the change over from timber to stone did [6], [46], and [50] keep their wide stone bases, once supporting the outer timber walls?

The housewright, or stonemason, built according to ground rules which regulated the design and brought the practical needs of the house into the essential proportions which also gave the aesthetic finish so pleasing to many today. Apprentice masons were verbally taught to use a measuring rod to form the diameter of a circle. A square was made outside the circle and extended, by using the rod as a diagonal, into a rectangle. The circle, square and diagonals were their method of regulating the buildings both on the ground and for the elevations.

The timber frame supported the roof in the older timber buildings. Stone walls added later were not all required to support the roof, but kept out the cold and the rain, while keeping in the heat. If the timber buildings were to be replaced, then the new stone walls must support the roof structure designed for thatch. The heavy stone slates were not often used in Cropredy. Gybb's site [25] had an outbuilding with a slate roof, the vicarage [21] had some slate in 1786 and the tenants at [28] may have replaced the thatch with stone slate. The stone house roof timbers were placed at around 12' intervals thus forming bays of building 12' in width. Obviously as their depth was from 15' to 16' most rooms, if not subdivided, were under 12' by 16' in the first wave of rebuilding, except for the one cell cottages.

The discovery of the existence of labourers' or craftsmen's timber cottages encased within later stone walls was quite a shock. Did they once look like a terrace of cottages still to be seen in Stratford-Upon-Avon just a few miles to the west? The survival of timber buildings inside later stone walls means we can study the plans of a cottage before the rebuilding took place. Each bay was about 7' in width. The hall which took up two bays was open to the roof. In the third bay a small sleeping chamber known as the low chamber was situated at the front and a 5' wide store room, or buttery, was usually behind it. A ladder led up from one of the transverse beams. Two of these beams supported the flat joists for the upper chamber floor. The lower stud partitions were jointed to the undersides of the beam. Above the beams the joists for the upper chamber projected out over the hall of their own cottage and also over the neighbour's hall (ch.25).

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This plan may have been fairly standard in humbler dwellings, either in single cottages or in a row, but the basic design was not abandoned. The whole problem of how best to light the rooms they required, the height of the ceilings, the position of the stairs, may all have been governed by the materials and strength required for the weight of the roof, after the change from transverse to spine beams and inner stone walls to take the strain. Having made in the plan a sufficient number of bays to accomodate all the extended family, then the front elevation could be balanced to achieve a good finish. The main improvement in the new buildings was the chimney which made it possible to have an extra upper chamber. With a fresh start the spine beams were able to support the upper floor all on one level. A short spine beam might have a join in the parlour [36]. It was here on the beams and exposed joists that they allowed the traditional chamfering of the wood, and indulged in carved stops, though some confined themselves to just two by the important inglenook. Where a previous timber building acquired a chimney, but retained the inner structure with the transverse beams, then a chamber over the once open hall was supported by two wall plates and a spine beam, or by just the spine beam raising the hall chamber floor sometimes a good four inches or more above the old upper chamber. Examples were found in the Red Lion Inn and next door [49 & 48].

The smallest stone cottages began as one up and one down with a chimney [42 & 56]. Larger cottages consisted of a hall, lower chamber and two upper chambers with a barn allowing room for stock and crop. Cropredy had at least seven properties built with the house and barn under one roof. This plan is usually found in western pastoral areas and it came as a surprise to find we were living in one [36] in an Open Common Field area, but the emphasis had always been more towards mixed farming rather than mainly arable. In Cropredy not only did a few craftsmen have this type of building, but probably one or two of the now demolished farms as well. Some had a three bay barn and one had space for only two bays. Long houses saved on stone and also reduced the overall spread of the necessary house and barn on a limited site. They were built for Truss [33] and Huxeley [36] shepherds, Elderson the carpenter [38], possibly Tanner the mercer [39], Allen the bailiff for the A Manor farm [44], Devotion [3] and Howse [9] both husbandmen and two larger farms Toms [15] and Hunts [16].

Another type of building was a cottage separated from a barn bay by a covered way open at the rear, but perhaps gated at the front. This entrance could double as a threshing bay or act as an open cow hovel in winter. This may have happened at [19 and 20] in Church Lane. Devotion's [3] gatehouse was part of the long building between the house and barn.

An advancement on the longhouse plan was to keep the house entirely separate from the barn, but still have a bay below the hall. They entered into a cross passage or entry which usually had an exit into the yard behind, with the majority of the passages still situated behind the inner hall chimney wall. It was possible to change the plan and reverse the hall and chamber bays [26 & 30] so that the hall chimney was not backing onto the passage. This made it easier to put in a second chimney below the passage in a nether chamber, sometimes called the chamber below the entry which was not underneath, but referred to a lesser room to the all important master's hall. The entry had a narrow chamber over, which often became a servant's room when the malt garner was stored there. These passages are mentioned in the inventories of Robins [26], Springfield [6], Lumberds [14], Cattells [30] and the upper mill [51]. Pratts [24] which no longer exists may have belonged to this group.

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Two external doors opposite each other at the "foot" of the hall had come from the former screen passage separating the hall from the service rooms and route to the kitchen. It also took some of the traffic out of the hall which must pass through the house to the yard behind. The Brasenose manor farm [8] had no need of such a passage when they had already crossed the farm yard, situated as it was above the old moat once surrounding the house. The main entrance was all they required, for they put the windows facing the river Cherwell. Toms [15] looked over the farmyard and had access through that yard, though strangers and guests entered by the south gable entrance and no passage was made. Coldwells [50] may also have avoided a rear door as their farmyard was away from the house under the direction of their bailiff. Truss [33] had a garden to the rear and plenty of access to the yard from the close and therefore had no rear door, except for the barn. Howse [28] had moved up from their farmyard and provided a courtyard at the front. This released them from having a straight through passage and their former screen may not have been repositioned in the new house taking up space already reduced by the hall chimney. Elderson and Huxeley [38 & 36] in their new longhouse-type dwellings both needed a through passage for stock and man and this was provided. In the small timber cottages [47-49] the screen may have kept the smoke from the open hearth from entering the chamber and buttery doors which opened off the hall, or helped to control the draughts around the central fire, rather than forming a screen passage.

A 1702 inventory for the Brasenose Inn [13] mentions an entry passage, but in 1613 it was still a smithy and two cottages. One stone cottage had been developed by Russell (who died in 1600) leaving lofts to his parlour, kitchen, buttery and shop. Although his cottage may have been only one and a half storeys the internal floors and partitions were the responsibility of the tenant and Russell thought he should include them in his will (p438).

Small dwellings with one or two bays might have a lobby next to the door. Hill's [20] cottage inventory also mentions an entry passage, but this I believe ran across the bay instead of through the house. The entrance might open into a bay partly used as a chamber and buttery, but in Hill's case they entered the hall bay, so that a narrow passage was made to reach his lower chamber. This passage would double up as a partial store or, as many small Welsh cottages do to-day, be used for boots and outer garments. Baffle entry plans may only have occurred when later renovations moved the front door from the cross passage into the hall [36]. Huxeley's old entry passage could then be made entirely into the kitchen by incorporating the small dairy and nether house, in the first bay of the barn (p399). At Elderson's [36] old house they moved the passage into the parlour bay reducing the chamber to a "Little Room." Earlier masons tried to avoid this for the new entrance upset the symmetry of the front elevation. Brasenose manor [8] did not appear to have any cross passage and the older timber cottages in Church Street had theirs added later [46, 47 & 49].

Which sites kept a ladder or built a staircase? The new stone houses from the late 1570's onwards included a staircase in most instances, but just a few old cottages kept the ladder and this may indicate a late alteration from timber to stone. In some areas like Wiston Magna in Leicestershire stairs were rare and most timber houses retained their ladders as Cropredy did in Church Street as well as Allens [44] and Toms [15]. The last two had gable entrances beside a late chimney, with the ladder on the opposite gable to the late chimney at Allen's and in the buttery at Toms' [Hoskins W. G. Provincial England p290/1. 1965 MacMillan & Co Ltd].

The ideal place to put the stairs was in the rectangle beside the inglenook. This wall was further taken up by the door between the entry and the hall when the chimney backed onto the passage. The winder stairs had treads to a central newel post and so took up the minimum amount of space. One inventory that mentioned the chamber at the stairhead was Lumberd's [14]. On the upper floor the chambers led off one another. The use they made of the upper rooms for malt, cheese and wool appears in Part 5. A good dry place was next to the new chimney over the hall. In a few cottages a cupboard was made near the chimney not only upstairs for dry goods, but by the fireplace for the salt [36]. Elderson's [39] and Howse's [28] cocklofts were reached by a ladder, but Huxeleys and others had stairs rising to the dry cockloft used for the men, apples and cheese.

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When designing a chimney gable to include, or ignore, the stairs they found different solutions to the positioning of the oven. Truss's [33] oven in the chimney inglenook was designed to be there from the beginning, but being within the gable wall with the hearth central, they had to leave out the stairs. Surely this made it one of the earliest ovens? The chimney supports the roof and acts as a division between house and byre. It would be difficult to place this and other similiar ovens at a later date than the chimney itself. Huxeley's [36] rear house wall behind the chimney stack shows part of the oven wall (at the slight angle of the barn meeting the house p395). The oven protruded into the wide entry passage. Tanner's [39] projected beyond the front wall to form a rounded extension with a tiny thatched roof. This left room for the newel stairs beyond the chimney.

Cattells [30] had two fireplaces so the one not having to give way to the stairs was placed centrally on the north wall of the hall and away from the passage. The hall chimney had an oven and could have had a brewing furnace as well (p586). Nuberry's [8] definitely had both at the Brasenose manor farm (p517). Before 1663 that house had gained seven fireplaces. Their main chimney was a splendid affair with at least three or four fireplaces. This chimney stack was retained and may have come from an earlier addition to the timber building. The hall had the north side of the chimney breast and on one side was a brewing furnace and on the other the oven. The great chamber over the hall had an early tudor fireplace. To the south on the ground floor was the parlour flue and above it a parlour chamber fireplace. Built into this stack was a stone staircase, or at least the wall was constructed to support stair treads for by 1627 the stairs went on up to a garret, not a cockloft as in other households.

How many carpenters in the late sixteenth century thought like Neve that "Stairs ought to be regulated in proportion to the quality of the Building." They needed light to avoid "casuality of slips and falls," as well as space overhead for "Good ventilation, because a man spends much breath in mounting" [Neve p245 Written in 1703, but using experience from the late seventeenth century]. There was not always an outer wall to provide this light, but a few gable end chimneys did provide this improvement [26 & 44].

Most of the winder stairs had nine steps. It rather depended on the height of the ceiling. Neve wanted the threads not less than three feet wide, which is wider than many newels in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The rise to be not more than 7" or 8" at the most, and the step itself not less than 9" or 10" which is difficult with the twist. His ideals were reached in stairs which later replaced a ladder at [44]. Here there was a perfect twist and rise. Unfortunately it was removed as "unsafe" during alterations.

Robin's house [26] had a stairs 32" wide which predates Neve's ideals, but Whyte's house [46], when modernised with stone had a much wider newel staircase reaching up to the cockloft and lit by a gable window and rear lower window, following the ideas current in Neve's lifetime. Some of the earliest stairs were surely those in stone like the one mentioned at Nuberry's [8], three others were found at Coldwell's [50], Howse [28] and Gorstelows [Prescote manor]. The last had stone stairs rising beside the kitchen chimney and another flight down to their cellars in a 1621 inventory.

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Masters and mistresses who moved upstairs from the parlour would still retain their bedsteads with their testers and curtains until "seelings" were made. On Gower in West Glamorgan they solved the nuisance of dust and droppings from the thatch by plaiting mats to fit under the rafters. Another method was to hang calico up as a false ceiling. Downstairs common ceilings became fashionable between the joists, now set on their narrow edge and not flat as they were in the early timber cottages down Church Street. Later hanging ceilings were made hiding the joists. Some tenants added the ceilings and they then appear in inventories. Before plaster ceilings were made the under surface of the upper chamber floor might be white washed to lighten the room below. Not all floor boards were very wide, though there were some houses with floors of good oak planks [28]. These would have been acquired at great cost when new (due to lack of timber in Cropredy), or less so if many were rescued from former dwellings. Otherwise they had elm floor boards for new buildings like Huxeley's [36].

Would they buy expensive stone for window mullions, or use slightly cheaper oak? This would affect the tenant's purse. Each bay would have just one window on the ground floor and a second for the upper floor. Oxfordshire was the second richest county when the Cotswold wool brought in high prices to the growers, but in the northern tip of the county the sheep commons were not so valuable and none of Cropredy's houses, apart from Calcott's Williamscote-in-Cropredy house, had been built entirely from the profits of wool.

The first windows to replace the sliding or hinged shutters appear to have been made with a stone frame and uprights. These were two, three or four light mullion windows. Stone mullions associated with richer dwellings are to be found only in houses. The rest may have suffered from stone which weathered badly and been replaced in time by casement, transomed or much later with sash windows all in wood. The examples which remain are either of better stone at [8] and Williamscote School, or low down and too insignificant to replace at [28]. Their importance lies in the date of the window improvements from mullions to wooden transoms [8], or wider casements [26] which could increase the width of an original wooden one, but not a stone casement. If the windows were originally in stone why change them so soon to wooden mullions? Was it not more likely that those with stone mullions were the earliest to build their houses in stone and that those who built between 1580 and 1640 in Cropredy never had any stone mullions? Without stone mullions and drip moulds the lintels were made from plain pairs of parallel oak lintels with chamfered edges (double due to the thickness of the walls) and these ran on at least 6 to 9 inches into the wall. All glassless sliding wooden windows have gone, even to farm buildings. These window holes may have had shutters some of which were retained.

Earlier stone houses reused the old transverse beams resting them on the window lintels. By the 1580's all dwellings may have had windows with oak frames and mullions. If the window was part of the original design in these large stone buildings they had to take account of the transfer of the roof load from the frame of the timber house to the outer stone walls. No longer could windows be fitted between wall posts, but were placed centrally to each bay. The transverse beams were replaced by spine beams after 1570 and did not reappear until around 1700. The modern glazier thought some of the present three light frames in Whytes [46] house, refaced in stone at the end of the seventeenth century, had come from the former timber building. Once again the transverse beams "balanced" upon the casement lintels and had been recycled along with the windows, but with the added improvement of the latest stone lintels covering up the older wooden lintels (p359).

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The lesser houses used wooden lintels which were always chamfered and the frames moulded. The two or three lights having iron casements and leaded rectangular panes. The middle lights opened outwards. To prevent entry through the open light a bar was fixed to the frame. Early windows had 18" centres, but later ones were given 24". Old windows such as Wyatt's who tenanted Cattells [30] acquired upright handles. Wrought iron work for window catches were of the common type at [36], but Whytes [46] had good examples and the manor farm [8] acquired a few fine sculptured catches. Glazing was not now as expensive, and having only one window to each room they need to provide glass for only four or five per house if the cockloft window was glazed rather than just shuttered. Glass was an extra which tenants put in at their own expense and usually took away with them. To prevent this a law was passed in 1579 to make such glass the landlord's once it was installed. Bourton people appeared to ignore this and there are two inventories at least which value the glass as the tenant's, or had they purchased their properties and so confused the appraisers? In William Hall's of 1588/9 "Itm all the glas in the windowes 10s," [50p] and Thomas Plant's of 1594/5 "all the glase windoes" [MSS. Wills Pec.41/1/12: 48/1/10]. Many Bourton men owned their houses whereas Cropredy men were all tenants. In Cropredy none was mentioned after the Act was passed, but this cannot mean there was no glass just that it was no longer legally a tenant's moveable object and therefore not obliged to be valued.

Oiled linen, canvas stretched over a frame, or panels of horn had been sufficient in the past to provide some light. Harrison described how they were held in a "wicker or fine rifts of oak chequer wise." Clear glass was difficult to make so that the oldest windows had a mottled glass. The lead reacted with the chemicals in the glass spreading yellow and violet rainbows across the surface, which was never flat. The combined effect is to reflect the light and distort the view through the glass. The panes proved difficult to clean, but Rose like many thought they had a "particular beauty" [The effect of lead on glass from Walter Rose p8 of Good Neighbours. Cambridge Univ. Press]. Walter Calcott at Williamscote House put in some coloured glass to represent his coat of arms (p136).

The husbandmen and craftsmen nearly all rebuilt in stone and so did some of the labourers except for those in Church Street who waited another hundred years before stoning their copyhold cottages. In many areas in Britain labourer's cottages are no longer to be found from the sixteenth century, but in Cropredy there are still some standing. Apart from Church Street there were several inventories of labourers who lived in very adequate houses. Shepherds as they grew older became day labourers and their wills declare them as such. These are not the very poor, though they paid no church rates. All cottagers could end up as labourers through age or illness, but those labourers who had once held a position and managed to hang onto their copyhold had the advantage of the cottage, some stock and a small measure of independance for they were their own masters at home as head of a household. All this was of enormous advantage when compared with the landless worker who had few if any rights. There were at least six farm labourer's cottages (ch.30).

Cropredy cottagers were fortunate in the late sixteenth century to be well housed in stone dwellings with bays at least 15' or 16' deep by 12' wide, similar to the larger houses, but with one exception, the much altered middle cottage in Church Lane [19]. The timber cottage bays were much narrower but not as shallow as Plantation cottage which was built over a hundred years later with an internal depth of 13 feet.

The types of dwellings built by the tenants for three copyhold lives, or the landlord who contributed the stone and roof timber and the tenant the thatch, floors, partitions, windows and glass will all be looked at in turn. Those tenants on a long lease added wings with the landlord's help, though any major alterations just to suit the tenant must be made by him. In Bourton freeholders added a few lean-to's which crop up in inventories as a place to store firewood. William Shirley left in 1602 two such "lean-twos" and Richard Hitchman had "lean toes" by 1635 [MSS. Wills Pec. 50/5/24. 41/3/48]. The two Cropredy manors may have discouraged them for none are mentioned.

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Once a tenant had paid for three lives it behoved him to maintain the property and keep saving to enter fresh lives for their descendants. Copyholders had the security of tenure while their life was on the copy of the lease in the manor court records. Once one of their lives died and the heriot had been paid then a son, a daughter, a new spouse, or grandchild was entered at the next court, to prolong the tenure into another generation. The cost of entry could have prevented wage earners from stoning the outside walls of a timber cottage.

The constant overlapping of generations in houses and cottages might encourage the tenant to increase the number of chambers. Many never had any privacy as the stairs led to the first upper chamber and on to the "hithermost" without a landing, with its protective partitions. Only much later were some stairs transferred to the back wall so as not to interrupt the front elevation of windows lighting the upper chambers and a passage was made along the back wall. Later occupiers of [36] had to make their landing at the front because the stairs were by the front entrance. A new window would then have to be made at the rear of the hall chamber. Separate parlour bay entrances for the elderly were impossible, unless they used the nether chamber below the entry passage which was often set aside for relatives [4]. Widow Robins [26] living at the nether end hung onto the chambers and stores in that bay. Separate chambers for staff were being made amongst those rising up from the husbandmen class.

Tenants had put in floors, partitions and doors, as Russell had at the blacksmiths [13], which were passed down as standards in wills, but in reality they belonged to the landlord once the tenant died. Edward Shepherd had put in "stayres, flowers [floors], transoms and beams" which the appraisers did not know "whether they be the landlords or the tenants" and valued the lot at 30s in 1632. George Hopkins also added his own interior woodwork. By 1634 he had the use of the Bourton chapel and in there he stored corn as well as his wood. Had he added his floors, partitions and doors to the dwelling half of the church [MS. Will Pec. 41/3/18]? Howse [28] had either recycled the beams, floors, partitions as well as an old door jam, which had chamfers ending in tudor stops, or else it was made especially for this new house and helps to establish the house as being one of the first to be rebuilt?

Trying to pinpoint the actual date of the rebuilding cannot unfortunately come from documents. The manorial records which could have given permission for such upheavals are missing. Instead the family history must be looked into; their work, dates of marriage and size of families needing legacies must all be checked. One piece of information often missing is ownership of freehold land elsewhere providing legacies for the family. In the end nothing can replace a good vernacular architect armed with the available history of the family who will eventually achieve an approximate date.

Date stones are found only on a few buildings and each one, with the exception of Walter Calcott's at Williamscote (pp 136 & 138), indicates a later updating of an earlier stone dwelling. Prescote manor in 1691 set the fashion, followed by Wyatt [8] and Blagrave [26] a descendant of Robins. They are of no use in Cropredy for most houses are older than the date stone. At the time of rebuilding there was no need to add one except for a public building like the school. Only later generations who wished to add their names to alterations had a date stone made for the family who may have risen in status since the house was first built.

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In north Oxfordshire during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century when the town of Cropredy was largely rebuilt the majority of the leaseholders and their families spent a great deal of their time out in the fields cultivating their own wheat, rye, peas and barley as well as cutting hay for their beasts. Their houses were functional places with no money wasted on extras. The care of their stock might govern the final choice of plan. The cow was such an important part of the household's economy that she had an honoured place under the roof in many parts of the country, so that the Cropredy A manor landlord might have built the new type of long-houses with the welfare of the cow in mind.

Living outside so much means the cottage and barn, or farm house and buildings were viewed in a different light from how they are to-day. It was much more a welcoming shelter after rain, wind, cold, heat, or exhaustion from the daily toil. It must be solid, windproof and have a hearth to cook some of their food on. Inside the house space had to be made to keep the corn dry, room to make butter, cheese and to brew their ale. Space to sort wool for spinning, washing and dyeing to make their apparel, not forgetting the flax and the hemp for their linen and ropes. Most of their possessions were necessary ones. The main item of furniture and the most used, for they needed it during the long dark night, was of course the bedstead, the most valuable part of a dowry after the cow and next to the brass kettles and cooking pot to cook the daily food in.

Houses and cottages were not for day long living in, shutting out the world by closing and locking the front door. Most living in the timber buildings in Church Street in the 1570's would have the door standing open, unless the weather was driving in, besides being neighbourly this helped the smoke from their open fire to escape through the vent in the thatch . If they shut that door then the rear door was open instead. Only those with a chimney could afford to shut the door "churlishly" against their neighbours as they say in Scotland, and move the entrance door from the hall to an entry passage [Sinclair Colin Thatched Houses of the Old Highland 1953 pp34/35].

Could we tell if we walked around the streets and lanes of Cropredy in that period just what was hidden behind their doors? Would their apparel give us a clue? Could we suggest their households wealth by taking a look at the way their farms were run, or by counting their cows coming home? We may still take a look into the homes which left inventories as these allow us to enter and follow the appraisers around as they made a list of the moveable possessions. Failing that we could stand back and count their chimneys. We have seen above that in 1614 a third of the town were husbandmen, another third cottagers with a little arable land and that the rest may only have a cow common and leyland yet look at the fine rebuilt stone and thatch dwellings and it becomes apparent that the craftsman and labourer were equally well housed, though with less chambers. Even without dripmoulds, kneelers and fine ashlar walls, the whole town had reason to be pleased with the new buildings for they were dry and healthy. There was less crowding, more space for the various eternal chores. Everyone had taken a step upwards so it could have given them a feeling of pride. Cropredy was the central town in north Oxfordshire after Banbury. No longer a rural backwater for their sons could go to school. At the same time agricultural customs and traditions formed the backbone to their very existence needing a peasant's alertness with skills necessary for their very survival. They taught their children the art of such survival, especially those who must leave the town.

The townsmen would know who was who in Cropredy families, sometimes going back generations. The newcomers might already be known when they came from nearby parishes. How long did they remain for example "the Wardington shoemakers" at Swetman's [49]? Without the extensive knowledge of kith and kin that the Cropredians possessed we are missing out on a great deal of their everyday knowledge and conversation. The following pages therefore bring in the families as well as their houses.