Knight's Fee
“D’Aguillon had made little change in the place, save that for comfort he had built on a small solar at the far end, raised up a few steps over an undercroft where they stored farm implements and spare bee skeps at one end and the Manor’s quota of war bows, and leather jacks in great iron-bound kists at the other.
The byres and barns huddled about the Hall, all within the tangled hedge of hawthorn and the little half-wild fruit trees. Below the Hall garth, the reed and turf and bracken-thatched bothies of the villeins straggled downhill, each with its kale and herb blot, its tethered cock among his clucking hens, its woodpile beside the door, its bee skep at the back; and beyond the village stretched the three great arable fields, each divided into long narrow strips, lord’s land and villeins’ land all mixed up together, with the long, communal pasture lying between it and the high, wind-haunted stride of the downs above, where Lewin Longshanks kept the Manor sheep. It was all Dean lan...d, from the river in the east where the trading ships passed up to Bramber or down to the open sea, away up to the whale-backed ridge of Long Down, a mile and more to the westward; from the ford by the mill where the manor corn was ground, down-river until the Bramble Hill thrust half across the valley, and, so they said, the King of a forgotten people slept with his golden treasure about him, in the heart of the green grave-mound against the sky.MoreLess
The byres and barns huddled about the Hall, all within the tangled hedge of hawthorn and the little half-wild fruit trees. Below the Hall garth, the reed and turf and bracken-thatched bothies of the villeins straggled downhill, each with its kale and herb blot, its tethered cock among his clucking hens, its woodpile beside the door, its bee skep at the back; and beyond the village stretched the three great arable fields, each divided into long narrow strips, lord’s land and villeins’ land all mixed up together, with the long, communal pasture lying between it and the high, wind-haunted stride of the downs above, where Lewin Longshanks kept the Manor sheep. It was all Dean lan...d, from the river in the east where the trading ships passed up to Bramber or down to the open sea, away up to the whale-backed ridge of Long Down, a mile and more to the westward; from the ford by the mill where the manor corn was ground, down-river until the Bramble Hill thrust half across the valley, and, so they said, the King of a forgotten people slept with his golden treasure about him, in the heart of the green grave-mound against the sky.MoreLess
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