Solar sounds sunny and light, but in fact the name was merely an adaptation of solive, the French word for floor joist or beam. Solars were simply rooms perched on joists, and for a long time they were the only upstairs room that most houses afforded. Often they were barely more than storerooms. So little did people think of rooms in the modern sense that the word room, with the meaning of an enclosed chamber or distinct space, isn’t recorded in English until the time of the Tudors.
