were erected by men of great estates, during the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward iv.; but very few can be traced higher; and such has been the effect of time, still more through the advance or decline of families, and the progress of architectural improvement, than the natural decay of these buildings, that I should conceive it difficult to name a house in England, still inhabited by a gentleman, and not belonging to the order of castles, the principal apartments of which are older than the reign of Henry VII.  The instances at least must be extremely few.  Single rooms, windows, doorways, &c. of an earlier date, may perhaps not unfrequently be found; but such instances are always to be verified by their intrinsic evidence, not by the tradition of the place.[6]

    [5] Hist. of Whalley.  In Strutt’s view of Manners, we have an
        inventory of furniture in the house of Mr. Richard Fermor,
        ancestor of the Earl of Pomfret, at Easton in
        Northamptonshire, and another in that of Sir Adrian
        Foskewe.  Both these houses appear to have been of the
        dimensions and arrangement mentioned.  And even in houses
        of a more ample extent, the bi-section of the ground-plot
        by an entrance-passage, was, I believe, universal, and is
        a proof of antiquity.  Haddon Hall and Penshurst still
        display this ancient arrangement, which has been altered
        in some old houses.  About the reign of James I., or,
        perhaps, a little sooner, architects began to perceive the
        additional grandeur of entering the great hall at once. 
        This apartment subsequently gave its name to the whole
        house.—­See an interesting paper on Old English Halls,
        Mirror, vol. xviii. p. 92-108.

    [6] Hist.  Middle Ages, vol. iii., p. 423.—­The most remarkable
        fragment of early building which I have any where found
        mentioned is at a house in Berkshire, called Appleton,
        where there exists a sort of prodigy, an entrance-passage
        with circular arches in the Saxon style, which must
        probably be as old as the reign of Henry ii.  No other
        private house in England can, I presume, boast of such a
        monument of antiquity.

It need scarcely be remarked, in conclusion, that the Hall at Norton Lees, as it appears to the reader, conveys but an imperfect idea of the ancient structure.  The walls of the lower story entirely of stone, and the upper, stone and plaster intersected by wood, are original, as is probably the enriched gable, with the pinnacled ornament at its apex; beneath was originally a small bay window, which has been stopped up:  the other gable, it is reasonable to conclude, once possessed similar enrichments.  The chimneys are modern, since they are neither pyramidal in their terminations, as was the fashion of the 14th and 15th centuries, nor have they the long polygonal shafts of the Elizabethan and subsequent periods, which has caused chimneys to be characteristically termed “the wind-pipes of hospitality.”  The “Hall” would likewise appear to be divided into two tenements, which but ill assorts with its original appropriation; though we are not to consider these deviations as affecting the architectural character or identity.