North-Bell had forty hundred thousand inhabitants. Some think than more.
At the border of the city of North-Bell, there was a very small village where peasants resided. It was there where Libby Fletcher lived.
The streets over there were very narrow, and slopped. The roads surface were paved with cobblestone.
People lived in two story houses made of wood and low quality stones. The doors were made of an oak set on iron hinges. Each house had two to four small unglazed windows.
Still the houses were dark, damp and cold. And sometimes depending on the weather it could actually be warmer and lighter on the outside than on the inside of the house.
The house which Libby's family lived in was old, small and deteriorated. Comfort was not found there. With a very little ventilation. Not much light came in from small windows, and oil- and fat-based candles often produced a pungent aroma inside the house.
There were two little bedrooms. The mother and father slept in one room, while Libby, her sisters, grandmother, and aunt occupied the second one, with only one bed in it.
The grandmother kept the small bed for herself, while Libby, and the rest of the family slept on the floor.
Furniture consisted of wooden benches, table, cupboard, and pantry. They did not have a carpet to cover the dirty floor.
The kitchen was very small, even so, there were some utensils, such as wooden bowls, ceramic jugs and drinking vessels,a spit and a gridiron. There too was a brass cauldron in which much of the food was boiled. A pan of riveted copper plate, a mortar and pestle and bakestone (for oatcakes, made once a year) were hanged on the wall or kept in a chest.
Libby's grandmother was not happy with their home and could only look with envy at the well-built houses of the nobility and the manors and Palaces of the Royals.