Having a separate building in which to prepare and cook food seems then, to have been a luxury only available to the social elite in the 10th century.  A ceorl or working man could better himself to becoming a thane.  A thane being defined in this time as 'a free retainer of a lord especially one resembling a feudal baron by holding lands of and performing military service for the king'.

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In the vocabulary Thomas Wright compiled, of various Old English glosses, ''cycene' is glossed by the Latin coquina 4 times, in 10th and 11th century sources. Our Old English word may be directly related to the Vulgar Latin cocina, which can mean 'kitchen', 'cooking' and 'cookery'.

and only found on manorial estates, (such as at Faccombe Netherton, Berks) where one building had three separate hearth areas.  Most family groups would probably have prepared and cooked their own meals in their own homes on their own hearth.  Indeed, the word 'hearth' (heorþ) occurs much more often in texts with the usual meaning of 'a fire place', and also in compounds such as hearth-baked, hearth-comrade or hearth-family - suggesting that the hearth was a special place.  Hearths are also common in archaeology occurring in buildings with a lot of domestic finds suggesting they were houses for living in.