Note b — NOTES TO CHAPTER IX.

This is rather equivocal, but it is certainly not meant that there were ever two floors above that on the ground. In the review of the "Chronicles of the Mayors and Sheriffs," published in the Archæological Journal (vol. iv. p. 273), we read—"The houses in London, of whatever material, seem never to have exceeded one story in height." (p. 282.) But, soon afterwards—"The ground floor of the London houses at this period was aptly enough called a cellar, the upper story a solar." It thus appears that the reviewer does not mean the same thing as Mr. Twopeny by the word story, which the former confines to the floor above that on the ground, while the latter includes both. The use of language, as we know, supports, in some measure, either meaning; but perhaps it is more correct, and more common, to call the first story that which is reached by a staircase from the ground-floor. The solar, or sleeping-room, raised above the cellar, was often of wood.