Animals in the Medieval House

Some time ago I read something that changed the way I think about life in medieval homes. It also changed the way I write about them in my novels. Like you, probably, I think about the human inhabitants of buildings, but we should also be considering the animals that shared domestic spaces with their owners. Be warned, though. People didn’t really keep pets in the Middle Ages. The animals they accommodated earned their keep, one way or the other. One of my chickens hasn’t laid an egg in eighteen months. In the fourteenth century, I’m afraid she would have found her way to the stew pot.

I mentioned in a previous post that people in towns kept pigs. If you had a garden, you kept a pig, usually more than one, because you killed an adult pig in November to eat during the winter. There are many reports of pigs being a nuisance in towns, because they escaped from their gardens, damaged the neighbours’ gardens and added to the general chaos and filth that was a street in a medieval town.

Dogs were also kept by many people, mostly for hunting/poaching. They needed to be exercised, so they would also be in the streets, again, adding to the chaos and mess.

Fewer people owned horses, because they were expensive and most people didn’t need one. I don’t suppose that I need to add that they also contributed to the filth of medieval streets. It’s no wonder that the rushes that covered most ground-level floors had to be changed so often. People must constantly have been treading things in from outside, although they probably slipped off their pattens before they got too far inside the house.

Wealthy people kept hawks of various kinds. These were generally kept in a mews, but wealthy people, then as now, liked to show off their wealth, and their favourite birds went everywhere with them. There would be perches in the solar, where the birds would sit for visitors to admire.

It’s difficult enough these days to imagine what the inside of a medieval house or castle would look like when it was full of people, but it’s even more difficult to remember to think about the animals that lived with them.

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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Medieval Merchant’s House – The Shop

The final room in the Medieval Merchant’s House is the most important – the shop.  The wine merchant didn’t just live in the house, he also worked there.  The shop was the centre of his business. Today this room is the visitors’ shop run by English Heritage who manage the building. The goods on display above are theirs.

There was almost nothing left of the original building in this room, so this is a complete reconstruction. The window looks out onto French Steet, which was the second most important street in the town for centuries.  English Street (today’s High Street) was the most important. Even today it’s the main shopping street.

Not only did customers come into the shop, but the shop could be extended into the street. The windows of the shop were unglazed and were shuttered by boards which could be let down to make a serving counter. The shutter can be seen in the photograph below, as can the entrance to the undercroft beneath the house.

The undercroft is not sound enough strucuturally to allow visitors to enter it, but some barrels are visible from the top of the steps, giving an impression of what it used to contain. It runs the length and width of the house, demonstrating the scale of the merchant’s business.

The shop takes up the front room of the ground floor. Its floor is just beaten earth. There would have been no other floor covering.

At the moment there is an exhibition in the shop of fourteenth-century pottery fragments which were dug up locally.

The Medieval Merchant’s House is at 58 French Street, Southampton, SO1 0AT. Details of opening times are on the English Heritage Website.

 

The Medieval Merchant’s House – The Bedroom

 

The front bedchamber of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

The tour of the Medieval Merchant’s House in Southampton moves upstairs.

Above the ground floor passage is a gallery. It runs between the two bedchambers on the first floor. Only one, at the front of the house, is furnished.  In The Winter Love this is the room I gave to Eleanor and her friend, Isabelle, while Isabelle’s brother, the merchant, sleeps at the back.

The bedchamber is furnished with two beds, complete with bed hangings, a cradle, a stool and three chests.

 

The gallery of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

The beds each have a canopy, bed hangings and a counterpane.

 

Bed hangings in the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

The bed hangings provided privacy, both from other occupants of the room and from neighbours. There were no curtains at the unglazed window, although there might have been shutters.

One of the useful things I learned in the bedchamber is that the canopy of a medieval bed did not rest on four posts, as I had imagined (influenced by too many beds from later centuries), but it hung suspended from the ceiling by ropes. I already have some ideas about how such an interesting fact could be used in a future novel.

 

Bed canopy in the bedchamber of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

The bedchamber was open to the ceiling and did not originally have a fireplace. As well as being decorative and providing some privacy, the bed hangings also helped to keep the occupants of the beds warm.  These have been made using medieval techniques.

The bedroom contains two more garishly decorated chests:

 

Chest in the bedchamber of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

 

Chest in the bedchamber of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

This pretty little stool is also in the bedchamber.

 

Stool in the bedchamber of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

 

 

Medieval Merchant’s House – The Back Room

 

Back room, the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

Continuing the exploration of the Medieval Merchant’s House in Southampton, we leave the hall and go into the private room which is behind the hall. In The Winter Love ,  which used this house as a model for Edward’s shop and home, this was the room in which Edward kept his money and his books.

As in the other rooms on the ground floor, the floor is made of beaten earth.

The passage runs the length of the house from the front door.  The whitewashed wall in the photograph below is the back of the house. The open door leads out to a small garden. When the house was first built the kitchen and the latrine were out there, physically separated from the house.

 

Ground floor passage, the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

The back room was an important room and was probably where the merchant kept his strongbox and carried out his business. Its importance is shown by the moulded joists, the fireplace and the glazing. Although there was a fireplace in the room originally, the fireplace in the first photograph above dates from the sixteenth century.

 

Ceiling of back room of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

As has been done in the other rooms of the house, the back room has been filled with copies of medieval furniture and pottery.

An impressive chest has been placed in the room and it’s easy to imagine the merchant locking up his money and precious objects in it at the end of each day.

 

Chest in the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

Next to it is this rather jaunty looking cupboard.

 

Cupboard in the back room of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

Below is a photograph of a detail of the cupboard decoration, showing a ship at sea confronted by a large fish.

 

Detail of cupboard in back room of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

On the whole, I think this was probably the most pleasant room in the house when it was first built. It was smaller and, therefore, probably warmer than the hall. The glazed windows would have helped to keep the heat in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Medieval Merchant’s House – The Hall

 

The hall of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

Last week I gave an overview of the Medieval Merchant’s House in Southampton. This week we’ll spend some time in the most important space in the house – the hall.

Even though the house was owned by a wealthy merchant,  the hall is quite small.  The table takes up almost the entire width of the room. As indicated by the objects on the table, this was where the merchant, his family and their visitors would have eaten. They would have sat on one side of the table only and another table would have been put along the wall at right angles to the high table to accommodate any else who was eating with them.

The house has been furnished in fourteenth-century style based on furniture that has survived from that period as well as illustrations from the fourteenth century.  The pottery jugs and pots are copies of vessels found during excavations in a nearby street.

The hall would have displayed the merchant’s wealth, which you can see represented above by the ‘tapestry’ and below by the jugs and pots standing on the cupboard and the chest at the foot of the stairs leading up to the first floor.

 

Ceramic displays in the hall of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

The window you can see above, like the rest of the windows in the house, did not originally contain glass. They were closed with shutters.

The man who lived in such a house would have been wealthy enough to have silver vessels. silk, lengths of fine cloth, carpets, feather-beds, chests and expensive, fashionable clothes. All of these were mentioned in a merchant’s will in the middle of the fourteenth century. As much as possible of the merchant’s wealth would have been displayed in the hall.

Another chest stands against the wooden partition separating the hall from the passage.

 

Chest in the hall of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

The hall was open to the ceiling.  There would have been a kind of chimney in the roof, since there would have been an open fire on the floor. In the photograph below you can see the gallery which runs between the two first floor bedrooms.

Wall and ceiling of the hall, the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton.

This fire was the only form of heating in the house when it was first built. The windows were unglazed and the house would have been cold most of the time. In the winter it would have been very cold.

 

The floor is made of earth. It would have been covered in rushes. This is not a sign of poverty. The floor of most dwellings would have been made of earth, then covered with rushes. Tiles and stone were only for the very wealthy and cathedrals.

 

Earthen floor, Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

I have included the picture below, despite its quality,  to show how small the hall is. I took it from the bottom of the stairs, with my back against the far wall.

 

Length of the hall, Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

 

The Medieval Merchant’s House

Recently I visited the Medieval Merchant’s House in Southampton again. It’s owned by English Heritage and was built in about 1290 by a wine merchant. Major renovations were carried out in the middle of the fourteenth century.  It’s easy to speculate that this was due to damage received when the French raided Southampton in 1338. Over the centuries the origins of the house had been forgotten, until it was damaged by a bomb in the Second World War. Although there wasn’t much of the original house left inside, the walls and floors left plenty of indications of where things were when the house was built and this was used to guide the reconstruction.

The house is in French Street, within the walls of the medieval town. It is not far from two of the gates in the walls through which goods were brought into the town from ships moored at the quays at the foot of the walls.

After the house was restored as closely as possible to how it was in the fourteenth century, it was furnished in a style which would have been familiar to its original owners. You’ll notice that not only that the colours of the furnishing are bright, but that there are many of them.

 

Facsimile chest in the hall of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

I’ll have something to say about individual rooms in the future, but today I thought we would look at the geography of the house.  The front of the house was entirely reconstructed based on what was known about similar houses in the area. The planking across the bottom of the front window would be lowered to make a counter to serve customers.

The house sits on top of a vaulted cellar. This is where the wine merchant stored his wine. Sadly visitors are not permitted to go down there, but you can see the steps going down to it from the street.

 

Steps to the cellar of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

The first thing you see when you enter the front door of is a passage running the length of the house. The first door on the right leads to the shop, where customers would have been served. Today it houses the English Heritage shop.

 

Ground floor passage, the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

The next room is the hall. Here the merchant would have eaten his meals and received his visitors. The fireplace with its brick chimney is a later addition. When the house was first built there would have been a fire in the middle of the room.

The house belonged to a wealthy merchant. As indicated by the woven cloth behind the table, he might have been able to afford tapestries to keep him warm. Apologies for the quality of the photograph. It was very dark in the hall, as there is only one, small, window.

 

Table in the hall, the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

The final room on the ground floor is probably where the merchant managed his affairs. It’s the most private room in the house. The walls and floors are thin, however, and a conversation being held at anything much above a whisper can be heard almost anywhere else in the house.

 

Room at the rear of the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

Stairs lead up from the hall to a gallery which joins two bedrooms on the first floor, one at the front of the house and one at the back.  Only the one at the front of the house has been set up as a bedroom, with two beds and a cradle.

 

Gallery at the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton – looking towards the front of the house

 

 

Front bedroom at the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

I used the house as the model for Edward’s house in The Winter Love, although I changed a few things for the sake of the story.

The Medieval Floor

 

Fourteenth century tiles

You might not have given much thought to medieval floors, but they were quite varied and these days they offer good opportunities to a novelist for scene-setting or showing a character’s state of mind.

In Beloved Besieged Elaine covers the floor of her father’s hall with rushes strewn with sweet-smelling herbs and flowers for her betrothal celebration. In my current work in progress, the heroine drops to the floor of the main room of the inn in which she’s staying, even though she suspects it will result in an unpleasant stain on her clothes.

Not all medieval floors were equal. In most houses, the floors of the rooms on the ground floor were simply beaten earth. This always sounded unpleasant, especially when I saw the state of the floors in castles that I visited. Thanks to them I had visions of lumpy, uneven floors being swept away when they were brushed, or of bits of a floor sticking to shoes if someone entered the house from the rain, or of it being scratched up by dogs or cats. Then I saw one in the Medieval Merchant’s House in Southampton. That floor is very solid and secure and would last for a long time with only a little maintenance.

 

Earthen floor in the Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton

 

It took a fair amount of effort to make such a floor and sometimes the neighbours were called on for help. As many people as the householder could get would walk on the floor for an afternoon (or longer) until it was flat and smooth. They literally walked round in circles until it was done. They would have a chat or a sing as they walked. This seems to me to be a very satisfactory way of providing a floor surface and is probably quicker and more enjoyable than laying a laminate floor.

The earthen floor would be covered with rushes. Rushes provided good insulation and could help to keep the floor clean. I know that I often point to The Secrets of the Castle for examples, but the archaeologists demonstrate the practicalities of medieval life so well. When she moved into a labourer’s hovel near the building site, Ruth Goodman pondered how the rushes might have been laid, since loose rushes would not stay where they were put for long. She concluded that they would probably have been tied together in bunches and then laid on the floor. Other historians and archaeologists have considered whether the rushes might have been woven into mats before being placed on the floor, but everyone seems to be agreed that loose rushes were not strewn on the floor. Rushes weren’t just used in houses. Almost every domestic beaten earth floor would have been covered in them.

In a public building, an inn, for example, the rushes would have contained dreadful things trodden in from outside by people and dogs, but in a hovel, where the rushes would have doubled up as the bedding for the occupants, they would have been kept much cleaner. In the spring and summer herbs and flowers could be added to make the rushes (and the room) smell sweeter and to disguise less welcome odours.

Fourteenth Century Tiles

Tiles provided a far more upmarket floor surface. Like everything else in medieval times, their production was very labour intensive. They required someone to dig the clay, which had to be cleaned and homogenised until it could be worked. Then it would be pressed into square, wooden moulds. After the tiles had been pushed out of the moulds, they would be dried and stacked in a kiln to be fired. A medieval kiln was more like an earthwork than an oven and firing could take twenty-four hours or more. Disaster was always close at hand. Bad weather could mean that the firing was delayed, or the tiles could be too wet and would explode when the water became hot enough to turn into steam.

Tiles could be plain or patterned with different coloured clay. Decorated tiles were for the very rich or churches. The photographs in this post are of encaustic tiles recovered from the site of Hyde Abbey in Winchester. The patterns are made by using different colours of clay. Like the ones in the photographs, they were usually of two colours, but they could contain up to six different colours. Because the pattern is not just on the surface, it remains as the tile is worn down.

 

The Medieval Solar

I wrote a while ago about the hall in a medieval house or castle. Because the hall was a very public place with many busy people doing something there or walking through, lords in large houses and castles needed somewhere else to conduct their private business and to spend their days.

The hall was not necessarily the most pleasant place to sit in all day. Meals were served there, which usually meant that it was not far from the kitchen and cooking smells infiltrated the hall. Most of the household spent their days there, unless they had reason to be elsewhere, which meant it could be noisy and crowded.

If he was wealthy enough, the lord had a solar to which he could withdraw. Here he would have privacy and quiet. Although there was not a great sense of privacy earlier in the Middle Ages, it was becoming important by the end of the fourteenth century. In addition there would always be business that the lord would not want to be known by others.

The solar was the room in which the lord spent most of his time when he was indoors. Most importantly, it contained his bed. He was the only one, except possibly his wife, to have his own bedchamber, let alone his own bed. It would be a large bed and, when he travelled, it would be taken down and travel with him.

Where there was a solar it was upstairs on the first floor. Usually it would have a fireplace, demonstrating the status of the man whose room it was.

Some solars had windows looking down into the hall so that the lord could see what was happening in his absence. His clothes would be stored there in a large chest. He would also have a chair, with cushions and expensive fabric. He was probably the only one in the house to have a chair. Everyone else who was permitted to sit had to make to with a stool. Members of his own family, however, might also have chairs.

The name ‘solar’ doesn’t, surprisingly, relate to the sun, although many solars were built so that they got as much sunlight as possible. Rather it comes from ‘seul’ the French word meaning ‘alone’. It was the place where the lord could be alone.

Along with the hall, it was the most impressive room in the house. Guests and visitors were often received there. The room would be furnished luxuriously in accordance with the lord’s status and wealth. The floor might be tiled, rather than wooden. Elaborate windows might be glazed. There might be tapestries on the walls. All of these were very expensive. It was, ultimately, the place where the lord would know that he was lord.

The Medieval Hall

 

Save for the lowliest, all fourteenth century houses and castles had a hall. This was the largest space in the house and, in larger houses and castles, was built to impress. They were high and long. The walls would often be painted with secular or religious images. In richer buildings they would be covered in tapestries, which served to decorate the room, to keep it warm and to demonstrate the owner’s wealth. Although built much later, Henry VIII’s Great Hall at Hampton Court is a wonderful example of this. Amazingly, Henry’s hall was for his household, not for him.

The hall was the heart of the house and served many purposes. Meals were eaten there. In great houses the lord, his family and the most important members of his household would sit at table on a raised platform with everyone else arranged on lower tables in order of precedence.

Meals were taken at what were essentially trestle tables and the household sat on benches. These were easily put away after meals and the servants slept on the floor of the hall. Most fourteenth century furniture was capable of being taken apart and moved.

In many houses the floors were made of beaten earth covered in rushes. Much thought has been given by historians and archaeologists to how the rushes were arranged, since they were probably not just strewn about on the floor. There is an interesting discussion about it in the Secrets of the Castle DVD which I reviewed here. I’m not sure how the solution posited by Ruth Goodman would work in a large hall, though. She tied the rushes together in bundles, which seemed to work well in a tiny, single-roomed dwelling. It’s difficult to see how effective it would have been when people were walking over them every day. Another theory is that the rushes were woven into mats and placed on the floor. In the homes of the wealthy, the floors would be made of stone or tiles, depending on which materials were available locally. The Secrets of the Castle DVD also has an informative section about making tiles.

The hall was also the place where the evening’s entertainment took place. Once it was dark, very little work could take place outside, so everyone was more or less confined to the house. Tales would be told, usually well-remembered stories or tales of people’s own experiences from wars, travels and pilgrimages. In wealthier houses the stories would be read aloud from books. Other forms of entertainment were singing, music, dancing, table-top games and gambling, depending on the season of the year.

In houses where there was no solar, the family would use the hall for their daytime occupations. For women this would mean sewing, spinning or weaving. The men were more likely to be outside during the day, training to fight, hunting or attending to their business.

The photograph at the top of the post is the Medieval Merchant’s House in Southampton. It’s a fairly modest house and includes a shop, but at its centre it has a hall. The hall takes up both stories of the house and a gallery runs between the front and back bedrooms on the first floor. Halls were high because, in the days before fireplaces became common, there would be an open fire in the middle of the room, and the height allowed the smoke to rise away from the occupants.

The owner’s wealth would be on display in the hall. This could take the form of expensive furniture or furnishings, but was usually made up of plate.

How Many to a Bed!

Following on from last week’s post about sleep, I thought I’d look at sleeping arrangements. You only have to go into a fourteenth century house or a thirteenth century castle to see that space was at a premium. These buildings took a lot of people to maintain them and, where their purpose was military, to defend them. There just wasn’t enough room for everyone to have their own bed, let alone their own bedchamber, although honoured guests in a great castle might be lucky enough to a have both.

For everyone who wasn’t a king or one of his barons, sharing a bedchamber or a bed was the norm. Even in reasonably well-off houses an entire family might sleep in one room, with the parents in one bed and the children in another, or on a mattress on the floor.

In one of my novels, The Winter Love, I give one of the characters a bed to himself, but he is unmarried and it is his house where he lives alone. Towards the end of the novel Eleanor is given a bedchamber of her own, but it’s clear that this is a particular honour and it is in the house of another bachelor. In The Traitor’s Daughter and His Ransom, however, Alais and Richard respectively share beds with other members of the household.

There was very little living space in houses and castles, and most of what there was was dual purpose. The hall, for example, was the place where meals were eaten, celebrations, including dancing, were held, guests received and the servants slept. It was the largest room, often of impressive, or even imposing, dimensions. Food was eaten off trestle tables and the household sat on benches to eat. All of these were easily cleared away. If there was entertainment, stools could be brought out for those who needed to sit, while everyone else stood. When everyone else had gone to bed, the servants slept on the floor, separated from the beaten earth by rushes, or possibly rush mats, and blankets.

The solar was a first storey room, usually at the end of the hall, in a great house or castle. It was here that the lord slept. During the day it was more like a drawing-room for his family and a place where they could be private. In this room the women embroidered and span and members of the family read or wrote. It would be a very comfortable room, often with a fireplace.

Apart from the lord, and, sometimes, his wife, no one had their own bedchamber. Since there was no concept of privacy, this was not a problem. The sexes were segregated, but that was the only concession.  Beds were expensive and not everyone could afford one. Really good ones were dismantled when the owner travelled and put together again when he arrived at his destination.

When travellers stayed in an inn they could find themselves sleeping in a room containing up to a dozen beds, each holding three or four people. They might share a bed with one or more strangers. There were occasionally separate rooms for women, but they rarely travelled alone and were usually accommodated in a bed with their husband even if it meant throwing a single man out.