made internal lighting still less effective. The interior walls were of timbering and plaster, often white- or colour-washed. [5] Panelling was used occasionally. The ventilation and hygienic conditions generally were far from good, as may be imagined from a consideration of the smallness of the houses, the compactness of the city, particularly the parts occupied by the people, and especially of the primitive system of sanitation, which was content to use the front street as a main sewer. There were, of course, no drains; at most there was a gutter along the middle of a street, or at each side of the roadway. It was the traditional practice to dump house and workshop refuse into the streets. Some of it was carried along by rainwater, but generally it remained: in any case it was noxious and dangerous. There was legislation on the subject, for the evil was already notorious in the fourteenth century. The first parliamentary attempt to restrain people in towns generally from thus corrupting and infecting the air is dated 1388. The many visits of distinguished people and public processions always conferred an incidental boon on the city, for one of the essentials of preparation was giving the main streets a good cleaning. There is no wonder that plagues perpetually harassed the people of mediæval times and reduced the population miserably. The plague never disappeared till towns were largely rebuilt on a more commodious scale in the next great building era, which began in 1666 in London and in the early years of the eighteenth century elsewhere. No advance was made in sanitation till the Victorian Age, when town sanitation was completely revolutionised and, for the first time, efficiently organised.

The house fire was of wood and peat, though coal was also used. For artificial lighting oil-lamps (wicks in oil) and candles were used. A light was obtained from flint and tinder, the latter being ignited by a spark got from striking the flint with a piece of metal.

Rooms were furnished with chairs, tables, benches, chests, bedsteads, and, in some cases, tub-shaped baths. Carpets were to be found only in the houses of the very wealthy. The floors of ordinary houses, like those of churches, were covered with rushes and straw, among which it was the useful custom to scatter fragrant herbs. This rough carpet was pressed by the clogs of working people and the shoes of the fashionable. The spit was a much used cooking utensil. Table-cloths, knives, and spoons were in general use, but not the fork before the fifteenth century. At one time food was manipulated by the fingers. York was advanced in table manners, for it is known that a fork was used in the house of a citizen family here in 1443. The richer members of the middle class owned a large number of silver tankards, goblets, mazer-bowls, salt-cellars and similar utensils and ornaments of silver, for this was a common form in which they held their wealth.

Beer, which was largely brewed at home, was the general beverage, but French and other wines were plentiful. The water supply came from wells, the water being drawn up by bucket and windlass, or from the river when the wells were low. The drinking water of the twentieth-century city is taken entirely from the River Ouse, but now the water is carefully treated and purified before reaching the consumer.

There were not many inns, as is shown in records by the number of innholders, who formed a trade company. There were also wine-dealers. Typical inn-signs were The Bull in Coney Street, and The Dragon. There is no reason to believe that in this century there was a really large amount of drinking and drunkenness, such as there was in the eighteenth century. An ordinance of the Marshals of 1409—"No man of the craft shall go to inns but if he is sent after, under pain of 4d."—may be quoted.

The houses of the wealthy and the great lords were, of course, the better furnished. They had walls adorned with tapestries and hung with arras or hangings; occasionally their walls were panelled. Their furniture was rich, well constructed, and carved by skilled craftsmen. Their mansions were large, for they had to house, beside the owner's family and personal household, retainers and dependents attached to his service in diverse capacities.

Civic Buildings consisted chiefly of the halls connected with the trade guilds. The rulers of the city and of the guilds were often the same men, in any case usually men of the same set. These secular buildings were really distinguished in appearance, but not monumental. They reflected something of the wealth that accrued from trade. They were of good size and proportions, built to be worthy of the practical use for which they were intended. The lower stages were of stone, the upper for the most part of wood and plaster (half-timbering). The structural framework was composed of stout beams and posts of timber. The timber roofs were covered with tiles. Examples may be seen in the Merchants' Hall, Fossgate, and St. Anthony's Hall in Peaseholm Green. The wooden roof of the Guild Hall, which was the Common Hall, erected in the fifteenth century, is supported by wooden columns. The walls of this hall and the entire basement are of stone.

Of Davy Hall, the King's administrative offices and prison for the Royal Forest of Galtres, not a trace remains to show the kind of buildings they were.

The Fortifications consisted of the Castle and the city Walls with their gateways. The massive stone Keep of the Castle was on a high artificial mound at the city end of the enclosed area occupied by the Castle. Around this mound there was a moat, or deep, broad ditch filled with water. The Keep, which is in plan like a quatrefoil, consisted of two storeys. Within, near the entrance, there is a well, the memory of which is for ever stained by the unhappy part it played in one of the most bitter persecutions of the Jews. Beyond the Keep there were inner and outer wards, official buildings including the King's great hall, the Royal Mint, and barracks for the King's soldiers. The entire Castle, which was the residence of the royal governor, and a military depôt, was surrounded by walls, outside which were moats, or the river, or swamps, according to the position of each side. These moats, or defensive ditches, were crossed by drawbridges. To enter a fortified place in the Middle Ages one had to pass a barbican (i.e. an outwork consisting of a fortified wall along each side of the one way); a drawbridge across the moat; a portcullis or gate of stoutly inter-crossing timbers (set horizontally and vertically with only a small space between any two beams, giving the whole gate the appearance of a large number of small square holes, each surrounded by solid wood) that could be lowered or raised at will in grooves at the sides of the entrance opening. The ends of the vertical posts at the bottom formed a row of spikes which were shod with iron. The points of these spikes entered the ground when the portcullis was lowered. Beyond, there were the wooden gates of the inner opening.

The city Walls, of which the present remains date from the reign of Edward III., were broad, crenellated walls of limestone, on a high mound which was protected without by a parallel deep moat. At the north, east, south, and west corners there were massive bastions, and between these, at short intervals, smaller towers. Besides being crenellated the raised front of the wall itself was often pierced with slits shaped for the use of long or cross-bows. The bowmen were very well protected by these skilful arrangements. Some of these slits, shaped like crosses, were of exquisite design architecturally.

The continuity of these mural fortifications was broken only where swamps and the rivers made them unnecessary and where roads passed through them. The four principal entrances along the main high-roads were