Not all probate inventories list rooms and in others it is evident rooms have been omitted. Counting the number of rooms within an inventory or as an average across a sample of inventories is therefore an inaccurate way of gauging house size. In general, however, 17th century houses had more rooms than their 16th century predecessors, usually including a greater number and variety of service rooms. The extent to which the new domestic plan reflected changes to the use of space within the house is considered below.

There are 35 probate inventories surviving for the parish of Woolavington for the period 1600 to 1700, only 12 of which list rooms. To this sample has been added a further 61 inventories surviving for Stoughton (in which the house from Walderton was situated) of which 32 list rooms. All these inventories are held at the West Sussex Record Office and have been transcribed mostly by John Hurd, assisted by Sue Davis and Anna Jackson. Analysis of inventories listing rooms reveals that in these two parishes in the 17th century all houses had a room identified as a ‘hall’, the primary function of which was eating, sitting and storage. The hall continued to be the main social space, as with earlier houses like Bayleaf. Some inventories suggest that cooking was still taking place in the hall, but in the majority of inventories cooking had moved to the ‘kitchen’.

The word ‘house’ was applied to rooms in which activities involved production for use (‘bake house’, ‘milk house’, ‘brew house’). In theory, ‘milk houses’ were used for dairying; ‘bake houses’ for food preparation and baking, and ‘brew house’, ‘drink house’ and ‘malt house’ were used for brewing and drink storage. However, in practice many of these rooms served more than one function, depending on the needs of the household. A few of the larger houses in the sample had a room called a ‘wash house’. This might be used for brewing and dairying but was distinguished from other service rooms in having a well, providing an in-house water supply.

In other parts of the country at this date historians have noted the increasing number of houses containing parlours. The parlour, which was additional to the hall and the kitchen, was a private sitting room for the householder and his wife and was where they received guests. Parlours usually contained the best furniture and furnishings, allowing the householder to display his wealth and social status. In the inventory sample used here only a handful of the wealthiest yeomen with substantial houses had parlours. For example, Edmund Fairmanner, a yeoman of Stoughton whose movable estate was valued at £725 1s 8d in 1644, had a downstairs parlour in addition to his hall and kitchen. He also had a milk house, cellar, bake house and wash house on the ground floor. His hall contained a table, a form (a bench), a chair, three stools and a pair of andirons. His parlour contained a table, two forms, a chair, three stools, a side cupboard, a carpet, a cupboard cloth, three cushions, a pair of andirons and a curtain rod. The disparity in the level of ‘comfort’ offered in these two rooms is apparent. The presence of a curtain rod suggests that the parlour had glazed windows.

A ‘chamber’ was a general synonym for ‘room’ and could be located downstairs or upstairs. Upstairs chambers, usually identified by their position above the downstairs room (e.g. ‘kitchen chamber’, ‘hall chamber’), were used for sleeping and storage, including the storage of household goods such as linen and agricultural products such as grain and wool.