A Merchants House in Tashal, Kaldor

Magnus LyckÂ, May 1995

This house belongs to a merchant in Tashal. It's the third house on the right hand side of Kald Street, if you walk up from Medrik Street. It's opposite the inn called "The Garb and Flail". The aerial view tells you something of how it looks. Although you could never see it like this, since there is another house in the way... It's a stone house, with most of the interior made in wood.

The ground floor...

...contains a storage/shop area and an office in the front. There is also a kitchen and a stable with room for 6-7 horses. A funny thing with the stable is that there is a small hole in the floor that leads down to the ancient sewers. Under the kitchen there is a fairly small food cellar. It is a bit to damp too be really useful. The outer wooden building on the yard provides room for a wagon, and the inner building is used for brewing beer, doing laundry etc. (It's not a breach of guild privilege to brew beer for personal consumption, is it?)

The first floor...

...contains a common room for dinners, parties etc, and a storage area which can be filled with cargo through the big doors and the cargo hoist. The cargo hoist can also be used to lift goods into the interior of the room. In the back of the store room hey, straw and fodder for the horses are kept. The hatches in the floor along the wall are used to get the fodder down to the stable in a simple way. The wooden building by the road contain quarters for driver, stable boy etc. The floor in these rooms are elevated 2' to provide space for storage of personal belongings underneath. The inner wooden building houses a housekeeper and a maid on this level.

The second floor...

...consists of four bed rooms and a larger room which is used as a common room or as a store room depending on present needs. There are attics in the wooden houses on the yard on this level.

The third floor...

...is only used for storage of goods. There is an opening in the floor in the north corner that leads down to the second floor. This is used to shove down straw or hay that is stored up here. Also this floor has big cargo doors and a cargo hoist.