HOUSE OF THE FOWLKEEPERS
The House of the Fowlkeepers (fig. 466) lies midway
between the Hen House and the Goose House. It is a
relatively small and simple house, 42½ feet wide and 35
feet long, consisting of a "common hall" (domus communis)
with a fireplace, and two aisles, one serving as "dwelling
for the keeper of the hen house" (
mansio pullorum custodis),
the other as "dwelling for the keeper of the goose house"
(
item custodis aucaru). The house is entered axially through
doors in its eastern and western gable walls, which assure
the shortest and most direct communication with the Hen
House and Goose House.
The House of the Fowlkeepers is the only example
among the Plan's guest and service buildings in which the
principal room of the house has aisles on only two sides
and is connected directly with the exterior by doors located
in the two gable walls. A fine pictorial record of this type
of house may be found in a painting by Meindert Hobbema
(fig. 468) entitled A Farm in the Sunlight. This small,
relatively modest farmhouse is aisled but has no lean-to's
on the gable side. A chimney in the ridge of the roof suggests
that it has a central fireplace. The entrances, as in the House
of the Fowlkeepers, are obviously in the longitudinal axis
of the building. The frame of timber supporting this roof
may have corresponded, beam by beam, to that of the
House of the Fowlkeepers. Our reconstructions (fig. 469)
are an attempt to interpret this system.
