Land was very important to people, so most people lived in two or three story houses which were called hovels. If someone wanted to add to their hovel they would have to take off the roof and build another story. Most hovels only had a few windows on each story.

There weren't very many fireplaces in the hovels. If you were rich enough to have servants, in cold weather you could have them bring charcoal braises (pieces of charcoal which were heated in metal boxes) into the rooms in which your family is living.

In most hovels, the bathrooms were located on the bottom floor near the back of the hovel.

Poor people didn't live in hovels. They lived in tall buildings that were very crowded. The poor families didn't possess much. They mostly had only a cooking pot and maybe a stool if they were lucky. They slept with logs for pillows and maybe had a blanket.

Some houses were made up of forty or fifty people. Most people lived together for protection, while others lived together because there was no point in wasting their land.

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