On the
marches of Wales and of Scotland the castle might continue to be a
bulwark to the kingdom, and there still grew and flourished; but
in all other places they were rather a menace to the King's
majesty, and as such were discouraged and destroyed. By the reign
of the third Edward the greater part of the old fighting castles
had been converted into dwelling-houses or had been ruined in the
civil wars, and left where their grim gray bones are still
littered upon the brows of our hills. The new buildings were
either great country-houses, capable of defense, but mainly
residential, or they were manor-houses with no military
significance at all.
Such was the Tilford Manor-house where the last survivors of the
old and magnificent house of Loring still struggled hard to keep a
footing and to hold off the monks and the lawyers from the few
acres which were left to them. The mansion was a two-storied one,
framed in heavy beams of wood, the interstices filled with rude
blocks of stone. An outside staircase led up to several
sleeping-rooms above. Below there were only two apartments, the
smaller of which was the bower of the aged Lady Ermyntrude. The
other was the hall, a very large room, which served as the living
room of the family and as the common dining-room of themselves and
of their little group of servants and retainers. The dwellings of
these servants, the kitchens, the offices and the stables were all
represented by a row of penthouses and sheds behind the main
building.
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