In most seventeenth century households of the middling sort, the husband and father would have run his business from home, perhaps on the ground floor, while the family lived upstairs. The household would have included a number of servants as well as apprentices and others employed as part of the family business. The hall was the main living space where all of the household gathered for meals. From the middle of the century, family life and that of the servants and apprentices were becoming increasingly separate.