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# {2-188.} The Peasant Dwelling

In the same period, peasant dwellings acquired the features that mark them to this day. Significantly, the peasants' homes lost their temporary character; with the consolidation of the villages' structure, houses were built to last. The domains' registers testify to the solidity of construction in the 17th century, for they reveal that some unoccupied dwellings survived for long periods before being acquired as 'empty houses'.

The dwellings no longer resembled hovels, for their walls were mostly at right angles. The building materials remained largely as before. Village houses were normally roofed with thatch or reeds; and since the pine shingles for the houses of the higher social strata were produced by villein craftsmen, it is possible that this roofing material also appeared on peasant dwellings in the more forested areas. Walls were of traditional wattle-and-daub, and lime-washed. Some of the new houses with post frames had walls of roughly-hewn logs.

The most radical innovation lay not in new building techniques or materials but in the arrangement of inner space. Previously unpartitioned, houses were now divided into rooms. In the most common type, the main entrance, which was sometimes preceded by a veranda, opened onto a central room; this was generally equipped with a fireplace used for cooking, and led, to the right and the left, to two other rooms. Other types consisted of a central room, one or two bedrooms, and pantry. None of the peasant homes built in the early 1600s had more than five rooms.

All of these houses, regardless of their internal layout, seem to have been square-shaped. A Fogaras register, dating from 1637, takes special note of the fact that a poultry-farmer's house (consisting of a central room, three bedrooms, and a pantry) was of elongated shape.

{2-189.} The peasants' houses also had a cellar and an attic for storage. The attic was obviously above the living space, but it is not clear from the records whether the cellar was invariably under that space or sometimes external to the house. However, cellars were clearly distinguished from storage pits, which were used exclusively to preserve certain foodstuffs, whereas the former might hold a variety of items, such as salted cabbage, bacon, building materials, gardening tools, and fruit.

Although no hard evidence survives, such multi-level houses, with subdivided living space, cellar, and attic, must have become common in villein communities by the mid-1600s. It is significant that all the available references to villein dwellings on manorial estates refer to 'houses'. Registers dating from the 17th century contain only two references to a single-room dwelling; all the others consisted of a central room and one or several additional rooms. The homes of guardsmen, dog-catchers, gardeners, poultry-farmers, shepherds, and tenants are never referred to as dugout hovels or huts; and it is most unlikely that peasant villagers had a lower standard of housing than these menials.

Virtually nothing is known about the housing conditions of the landed villeins' labourers. To project back the findings of latter-day ethnographers and sociologists is tempting but potentially misleading, for their investigations have focused on an agrarian proletariat of recent vintage; this social category did not exist in the 17th century. It is significant that Hungarians who visited foreign lands in that era were struck by evidence of utter penury. For instance, Márton Szepsi Csombor, who travelled around Europe in the early 1600s, found it noteworthy that some French peasant women and children begged in the streets; he was evidently not accustomed to such sights in Hungary.

Archaeological research may one day reveal the precise layout of ancillary farm buildings and elucidate the living conditions of the menials who lived on the farms of villein peasants. What seems {2-190.} clear is that, in the 17th century, these barns, stables, coops, and sties were located close to the main house, and separated from the cultivated section of the lot. But no contemporary sources have survived in which one might find a comprehensive description of these farms.

It may be conjectured that some 17th century peasants had planted flower gardens. The most striking piece of evidence is an illustration found in a book that János Troester, a student from Szeben, wrote and published in Nuremberg. It is the portrait of a Romanian girl whose headdress consists of a rich garland, which, notes the author, included roses and other flowers. Troester observed that these Romanian maidens looked as if they were celebrating the feast of Flora in ancient Rome. Roses have been generally associated with the upper classes, but this account indicates that they were also grown in peasants' private gardens. A manorial gardener planted gillyflowers and pinks in pots, as can also be seen in some Dutch paintings.