Cottage

A 12th-century peasant cottage was usually a small building with earthfast timber posts, wattle-and-daub walls and a thatched roof, with an open hearth and one to three rooms, often alongside a byre and a barn. In some areas walls were of stone, flint or cob. Such houses rarely survive above ground: surviving cruck-framed peasant houses in the Midlands mostly date from the 1260s to the 1550s.

Sources: wealddown.co.uk · archaeology.co.uk