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Up to the end of the 16th century, towns in northern Europe were composed almost exclusively of half-timbered houses. At the time Britain, like many other countries, was covered with woods, and oak was the most common building material. Anyway, people could not afford to build their whole house out of it, therefore they made just a wooden load-bearing frame, with vertical posts and horizontal beams. The spaces between the timbers were filled with wattle (sticks) and plastered with daub. The coating of daub had many recipes but generally, was a mixture of clay and chalk with a binder such as grass or straw, and water or urine. When the manufacturing of bricks increased, bricks replaced the less durable infills. At first, people just did half-timbering to save money on wood, but soon they realised that they could make attractive patterns. Therefore, timbers which had minimal structural importance were added to the frame, to enhance the decorative effect of dark wood set into whitewashed walls. In Tudor houses, the walls were set on a stone sill to prevent the beams from rotting. The floors were of beaten earth in poor houses, of tiles or wood in wealthy ones. Heating was provided by a fireplace, and lighting, by oil lamp and candles. The roofs were steeply pitched and covered with thatch or stone tiles. The upper floors were usually larger than the ground floor, probably because homeowners were taxed on the surface area of their ground floor.