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English peasant houses tended to be in clumps. They didn't like living alone, so you get hamlets of four or five families instead of lone dwellings, and larger villages. Each house had a ditch around it and a high hedge designed to keep animals in and neighbors out. Everybody had a garden, and if they could afford it chickens. They tended to build flimsy wood dwellings with chinking and thatch. The typical peasant house was divided in half with a partition. One room for cooking/work/animal storage, and one for the parents. They often bedded any surviving grandparent (probably a grandmother) in the loft. The construction was so flimsy that partitions periodically fell and crushed people, and the term "housebreaking" comes from the tendency of medieval thieves to go through the walls since it was less work than going through the door, since doors were sturdier.