Abbott Ultimate Bar & X-Back Bistro Barstool Set The rugged, casual look of concrete provides a ... The wooden bistro chair is an iconic presence ... Take it home today! Our Calais Side Chair ...The man who held me down slit my ulna—my tongue didn’t tell—& sucked out me in stones, in howling. this kind of thing happens all the time, doesn’t it, being if your body is still here? A girl taken from a park five miles from our house—her collapsed skull & broken femurs in a dumpster. The man who held me down is also somewhere tonight, perhaps tucking his own girl into bed, the windows, pulling shades. Showing his son a moon so bright it can hide nothing. still laced in his belt. Its last words, O light, O rope. Another kind of snatching— my grandmother’s poodle still stuck on pilled stockings she knotted & threw into the fireplace. keeping her hands behind her back: tied. a child (or dog) goes missing,

you’re left with his afterimage. the dog’s shadow on the wall, his bark lost in rose bushes, his water dish dry. Don’t let me wake thinking he’s gone (thinkingLet hope be a woman unzipping her dress, an un- flowering god—the body has corridors—the empty womb brought to her knees (these children siphoned my breath), trying to right my balance, clavicle heaving, a clothesline the gritty ring (the body can be taken. The body can be found) they left They play (faces red in leaves) happily beyond my shadow, not knowing who watches with me, as if the parting in the delivery room wasn’t I listen as my daughter prays the Hail Mary, blessed are you —in the hollow where I don’t speak, I ask to take their place. Someone must be given.Email Newsletter Sign up for promotions, updates, special offers and what's new Customer Service Any Questions?01202 662170Mon-Fri, 9am-5pmEmail Us Today Lighting Table Lamps Floor Lamps Downlighters Sofas and Chairs Sofas Corner Sofas Chairs Mirrors Wall Mirrors Table Mirrors Floor Mirrors Wall Hangings Metal Wall Art Glass Wall Art Pictures Rugs Dining Furniture Dining Tables Dining Chairs Sideboards Accessories Vases Sculptures Wall Clocks Occasional Furniture Coffee Tables Console Tables Small Tables Ceiling Lighting Ceiling Lights Pendant Lights Chandeliers Wall Lighting

Wall Lights Picture Lights Tiffany Wall Lights Bathroom Lights Bathroom Wall Lights Bathroom Ceiling Lights Bathroom Mirrors Outside Lights Outdoor Wall Lights Outdoor Posts &Pedestals Outside Recessed LightingIn a ground-floor hall the floor was beaten earth, stone or plaster; when the hall was elevated to the upper story the floor was nearly always timber, supported either by a row of wooden pillars in the basement below, as in Chepstow's Great Hall (shown left), or by stone vaulting. chandelier voilier a vendreCarpets, although used on walls, tables, and benches, were not used as floor coverings in Britain and northwest Europe until the 14th century. hilden and diaz forest chandelier buyFloors were strewn with rushes and in the later Middle Ages sometimes with herbs. chandelier rewiring brighton

The rushes were replaced at intervals and the floor swept, but Erasmus, noting a condition that must have been true in earlier times, observed that often under them lay "an ancient collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrement of dogs and cats and everything that is nasty." Entrance to the hall was usually in a side wall near the lower end. When the hall was on an upper story, this entrance was commonly reached by an outside staircase next to the wall of the keep. The castle family sat on a raised dais of stone or wood at the upper end of the hall, opposite to the entrance, away from drafts and intrusion. The lord (and perhaps the lady) occupied a massive chair, sometimes with a canopy by way of emphasizing status. Everyone else sat on benches. Most dining tables were set on temporary trestles that were dismantled between meals; a permanent, or "dormant," table was another sign of prestige, limited to the greatest lords. But all tables were covered with white cloths, clean and ample.

Lighting was by rushlights or candles, of wax or tallow (melted animal fat), impaled on vertical spikes or an iron candlestick with a tripod base, or held in a loop, or supported on wall brackets or iron candelabra. Oil lamps in bowl form on a stand, or suspended in a ring, provided better illumination, and flares sometimes hung from iron rings in the wall. If the later Middle Ages had made only slight improvements in lighting over earlier centuries, a major technical advance had come in heating: the fireplace, an invention of deceptive simplicity. The fireplace provided heat both directly and by radiation from the stones at the back, from the hearth, and finally, from the opposite wall, which was given extra thickness to absorb the heat and warm the room after the fire had burned low. The ancestor of the fireplace was the central open hearth, used in ground-level halls in Saxon times and often into later centuries. Such a hearth may have heated one of the two halls of Chepstow's 13th-century domestic range, where there are no traces of a fireplace.

Square, circular, or octagonal, the central hearth was bordered by stone or tile and sometimes had a backing of tile, brick or stone. Smoke rose through a louver, a lantern-like structure in the roof with side openings that were covered with sloping boards to exclude rain and snow, and that could be closed by pulling strings, like venetian blinds. There were also roof ventilators. A couvre-feu (fire cover) made of tile or china was placed over the hearth at night to reduce the fire hazard. When the hall was raised to the second story, a fireplace in one wall took the place of the central hearth, dangerous on an upper level, especially with a timber floor. The hearth was moved to a location against a wall with a funnel or hood to collect and control the smoke, and finally, funnel and all, was incorporated into the wall. This early type of fireplace was arched, and set into the wall at a point where it was thickened by an external buttress, with the smoke venting through the buttress.

Toward the end of the 12th century, the fireplace began to be protected by a projecting hood of stone or plaster which controlled the smoke more effectively and allowed for a shallower recess. Flues ascended vertically through the walls to a chimney, cylindrical with an open top, or with side vents and a conical cap. In the earliest castles the family slept at the extreme upper end of the hall, beyond the dais, from which the sleeping quarters were typically separated by only a curtain or screen. Fitz Osbern's hall at Chepstow, however, substituted for this temporary division a permanent wooden partition. Sometimes castles with ground-floor halls had their great chamber, where the lord and lady slept, in a separate wing at the dais end of the hall, over a storeroom, matched at the other end, over the buttery and pantry, by a chamber for the eldest son and his family, for guests, or for the castle steward. These second-floor chambers were sometimes equipped with "squints," peepholes concealed in wall decorations by which the owner or steward could keep an eye on what went on below.

The lord and lady's chamber, when situated on an upper floor, was called the solar. By association, any private chamber, whatever its location, came to be called a solar. Its principal item of furniture was a great bed with a heavy wooden frame and springs made of interlaced ropes or strips of leather, overlaid with a feather mattress, sheets, quilts, fur coverlets, and pillows. Such beds could be dismantled and taken along on the frequent trips a great lord made to his castles and other manors. The bed was curtained, with linen hangings that pulled back in the daytime and closed at night to give privacy as well as protection from drafts. Personal servants might sleep in the lord's chamber on a pallet or trundle bed, or on a bench. Chests for garments, a few "perches" or wooden pegs for clothes, and a stool or two made up the remainder of the furnishings. Sometimes a small anteroom called the wardrobe adjoined the chamber - a storeroom where cloth, jewels, spices and plates were stored in chests, and where dressmaking was done.

In the early Middle Ages, when few castles had large permanent garrisons, not only servants but military and administrative personnel slept in towers or in basements, or in the hall, or in lean-to structures; knights performing castle guard slept near their assigned posts. Later, when castles were manned by larger garrisons, often mercenaries, separate barracks, mess halls, and kitchens were built. Except for the screens and kitchen passages, the domestic quarters of medieval castles contained no internal corridors. Rooms opened into each other, or were joined by spiral staircases which required minimal space and could serve pairs of rooms on several floors. Covered external passageways called pentices joined a chamber to a chapel or to a wardrobe and might have windows, paneling, and even fireplaces. (Note: When the author mentions a lack of "corridors," keep in mind he is referring to early medieval castles. By contrast, Edward I's later masterpieces at Beaumaris and Caernarfon are well known for their sets of interior passageways.)

Water for washing and drinking was often available at a central drawing point on each floor. Besides the well, inside or near the keep, there might be a cistern or reservoir on an upper level whose pipes carried water to the floors below. Hand washing was sometimes done at a laver or built-in basin in a recess in the hall entrance, with a projecting trough. Servants filled the tank above, and waste water was carried away by a lead pipe below, inflow and outflow controlled by valves with bronze or copper taps and spouts. Baths were taken in a wooden tub, protected by a tent or canopy and padded with cloth. In warm weather, the tub was often placed in the garden; in cold weather, in the chamber near the fire. When the lord travelled, the tub accompanied him, along with a bathman who prepared the baths. The latrine, or "garderobe," not to be confused with the wardrobe, was situated as close to the bed chamber as possible (and was supplemented by the universally used chamber pot).