by Thomas Wright

“ The table can hardly be considered as furniture, in the ordinary sense of the word: it was literally, according to its Anglo-Saxon name bord, a board that was brought out for the occasion, and placed upon tressels, and taken away as soon as the meal was ended. Among the inedited Latin ænigmata, or riddles, of the Anglo-Saxon writer Tahtwin, who flourished at the beginning of the eighth century, is one on a table, which is curious enough to be given here, from the manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 12, C. xxiii.) ”

“ Out modern houses derive more of their form and arrangement from those of our Saxon forefathers than from any other source. We have seen that the original Saxon arrangement of a house was preserved by that people to the last ”

“ In an anecdote told in the contemporary life of Dunstan, he is made to hang his harp against the wall of the room. Amrs and armour, more especially, were hung against the wall of the hall. The author of the "Life of Hereward" describes the Saxon insurgents who had taken possession of Ely, as suspending their arms in this manner; and in one of the riddles in the Exeter Book, a war-vest is introduced speaking of itself thus:—
We have no allusion in Anglo-Saxon writers to chimneys, or fireplaces, in our modern acceptation of the term. ”