Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

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Leprosy cases declined after the Black Death of 1347–1350. The plague

may have killed off enough lepers that the infection became less common.

The bacteria may have mutated into another illness; many cases of leprosy

were really some other skin ailment to begin with. Leper hospitals had va-

cancies and began closing in the 16th century.

See also: Beggars, Gardens, Hygiene, Medicine, Monasteries.

Further Reading

Dean, Trevor. The Towns of Italy in the Later Middle Ages. Manchester, UK: Man-

chester University Press, 2000.

Horden, Peregrine. Hospitals and Healing from Antiquity to the Later Middle Ages.

London: Ashgate, 2008.

Orme, Nicholas, and Margaret Webster. The Medieval Hospital, 1070–1570. New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.

Richards, Peter. The Medieval Leper. Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1977.

Sweetinburgh, Sheila. The Role of the Hospital in Medieval England: Gift-Giving

and the Spiritual Economy. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008.

Houses

Medieval houses were small, crowded, dark, and cold compared to mod-

ern houses. Houses were limited in size by the basic building unit, the tree

trunk. When ceilings and walls had to be based on a length of wood, they

could not exceed 15 or 16 feet at a stretch. The simplest house’s dimensions

were the same as the available tree trunks and formed one room. Larger

peasant houses could add a second room with another tree length, but the

outer walls were always limited by the materials in this way.

Building materials were not always wood; some regions were rich in

stone, and others depended on brick. Houses varied also by their loca-

tion in the country or in a town and whether they were the poorest kind or

had more luxury of space and privacy. Most medieval houses seem to have

housed single families, not extended families. Large houses included space

for servants.

Privacy was unknown in early medieval housing arrangements. People

assumed that they would sleep in groups. Children slept together or with

their parents. In wealthier houses, servants slept in a communal room or

bed or in their masters’ rooms or beds. Knights slept on benches or on the

ﬂ oor in a communal room of a castle.

A typical peasant hut in England, France, or Germany around 1100 was

made of a timber frame ﬁ lled in with wattle and daub construction. Wattle

was a woven wall of pliable branches, usually hazel or willow, woven tightly

around upright posts. Daub was the mixture of heavy clay, dung, and ﬁ nely

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chopped straw that was plastered over the wattle. Daub was thick, and it

ﬁ lled in the cracks in the wattle. It remained breathable, able to expand and

shrink with the moisture, heat, and cold of the house. Wattle and daub con-

struction did not last a long time, but it could hold up for 10 years, and it

was reasonably well insulated. A wattle and daub wall could be painted with

lime to whitewash it.

A large peasant hut was one tree length wide but several tree lengths

long. The rafters and trusses for the roof were made of timber and could be

somewhat arched. These timbers had been squared off by carpenters, and

the spaces between the weight-bearing timbers were ﬁ lled in with smaller

ones. A large timber-framed house that was to be ﬁ lled with wattle and daub

had to create either long slots between upright timbers or large squares

between uprights and crossbeams. These spaces were ﬁ lled with posts by

carving slots or holes into the inside edges of the timbers and ﬁ tting in

strong but ﬂ exible posts. Alder, willow, or thin green oak strips were woven

tightly to ﬁ ll the spaces. Daub could then be put over the whole. Houses

in towns sometimes whitewashed over both daub and timber for an all-

white look.

The roof itself was nearly always thatched across most of Northern Eu-

rope. Thatch was a thick, tightly bundled mat of marsh grasses or wheat

straw. If it was properly made, it was weatherproof and could last many

years before it needed to be replaced. Thatching was a traditional craft with

its own set of skills and tools. Thatchers used very long iron needles and

hooks to pack bundles of reeds or straw as tightly as possible and stitch

them to the rafters underneath. Strips of green wood were turned into large

staples called spars. As the thatchers used rakes to comb the thatch smooth,

they pounded spars in to secure it. The ends of the thatch were trimmed

and sometimes even sculpted into decorative shapes. A new thatch roof was

more than a foot thick, and, when rain fell on it, not more than the top

few inches got wet. A thatch roof was steep and shed water and snow well,

and it kept the house well insulated. Thatch did not last forever, but some

thatched roofs have lasted as long as 100 years, and even the cheapest kind

of straw was good for a decade.

Doors were wooden, hung with leather or iron hinges. Peasant houses

did not have many windows, since windows were a liability in the winter.

Windows were open to the weather but had heavy wooden shutters to lock

closed. Some peasant windows could be covered with greased linen or paper

so that they kept out wind but let in light. A more expensive window treat-

ment was a thin slice of horn, which was as translucent as early glass and

much less costly. The only source of heat was an open hearth in the center

of the room. An opening in the thatched roof allowed the smoke to go out,

but the ceiling was always smoky. Peasants commonly suffered eye and lung

disorders from the chronic smoke. Floors were dirt or wood and were often

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covered with grasses or rushes. These rushes would help absorb the scraps

and crumbs and could be swept out periodically and replaced.

The house was divided into a general room for cooking and working, an

area for sleeping, and an area for animals. In cold climates, animals were

likely to be under the same roof, but partitioned off. The heat from the ani-

mals helped keep the people warm, and it was easy to feed or milk the cows

or goats in winter. The house interior was generally dark, especially when it

was too cold to keep doors or windows open.

A simple house in a town was similar, except that it was usually two sto-

ries. A timber frame carried the living quarters above the shop area, with a

narrow stair connecting them. Wattle and daub was still the most common

building material, and, in many towns, thatched roofs were the most com-

mon. Massive, tragic urban ﬁ res made late medieval city governments pass

ordinances against thatch. Builders had to look for rooﬁ ng materials that

were less ﬂ ammable. Slate was ﬁ reproof but usually very expensive, while oak

shingles were only somewhat safer than thatch. Ceramic tile-making tech-

nology in Italy had continued since Roman times, and the use of tiles slowly

spread as northern cities searched for alternatives to thatch. Tiles could be

ﬂ at, or they could be ﬂ anged and curved to ﬁ t together. Most tiles had a

hole molded into the top, which was hung on a wooden peg along the rafter.

Flat tiles overlapped each other to cover these holes, but ﬂ anged tiles, which

shed water better, needed curved tiles to ﬁ t over the joins. Ridge tiles cov-

ered the peak of the roof. Tiles gradually became the favored urban roof ma-

terial by the end of the Middle Ages.

In the Mediterranean region, houses were more often made of stone. A

village house in the Pyrenees region of southern France or northern Spain

hugged a hill and was built of stone. It had a main room with a central hearth

and a side room for sleeping. Wattle and daub might form a side room or

shed. As in the northern regions, animals were often under the same roof.

In the Netherlands region, neither stone nor wood was plentiful. Especially

in towns, builders gravitated to brick. Brick was also extensively used for

building in Italy.

In the country or in a town, the house generally had a poultry yard around

it. Even in towns, people kept small animals like chickens and pigs. In the

country, small animals were hemmed in by a fence or roamed nearby for-

ests; in towns, they often roamed the streets. Country houses had a barn,

if the barn wasn’t part of the house itself. Fine houses in a city, like manor

houses, also included outdoor space for gardens. These gardens were both

functional and beautiful. They were prized as much for the space and pri-

vacy they gave the house’s residents as for the plants they grew.

Manor houses, where the landowner lived, were larger versions of a peas-

ant’s house. Early medieval manor houses were timber framed and built

with wattle and daub but were larger and had a second story. The ground

In this late medieval house, the animals still share the same roof with the people.

There is more furniture than in earlier times; the woman holds her baby while sitting

in a real chair, not just on a stool. But the house’s structure had not changed since

Europe’s earlier days: it is framed with heavy timber and ﬁ lled in with wattle and

daub. The background’s brick church and post mill suggest a setting in Flanders.

(The British Library/StockphotoPro)

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ﬂ oor had a hall where the master carried out farm business; it could also

be used for feasts. The hall was often as tall as the house and open to the

rafters. This permitted the hall to remain airy even when a large number of

people, and several ﬁ res, were in the room. By the 15th century, some halls

and reception rooms that formerly had been open to the rafters were sub-

divided. Beam and panel ceilings were installed in these rooms.

The kitchen was usually in a separate wing in order to guard the main

house against ﬁ re. Sometimes it was in a separate building, but connected

with a covered corridor. The kitchen was surrounded by smaller rooms or

outbuildings that supported its work: a scullery for washing dishes, storage

rooms, a brewery, a bake house, a dairy where butter and cheese were made,

and livestock outbuildings such as a poultry house.

In manor houses and monasteries, where the kitchen prepared food for

a large number of people, it was one of the ﬁ rst rooms to receive thought-

ful design attention. A well-built late medieval kitchen in an abbey or castle

had many windows for light, placed high in the walls. Its ﬂ oor was tiled,

although most kitchens still had beaten dirt ﬂ oors. The ﬂ oor had a drain

with an iron grate over it, so slops could run off while discarded bones and

vegetable matter were trapped by the grate and didn’t clog the drain. An-

other convenience was a louver, a roof vent that could be closed or opened

Although stone medieval buildings have

always been more famous, wood was

the dominant building material for the

average person. Most houses were

small, built of timber framing with

wattle and daub, but barns had to be

large, open, and unusually strong. This

medieval tithe barn in Wiltshire,

England, is a good example of the way

medieval carpenters framed large

buildings. Many large beams made

from whole trees have been used to

support the roof. Medieval carpenters

used few nails; they depended on

accurate carving to ﬁ t pieces together

when they were hoisted into place by

foot-powered cranes. (Dreamstime.com)

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to let out smoke. The best louvers were shaped like lanterns; wooden slats

on each of the four sides could be closed or opened by pulling strings that

hung into the kitchen. A good kitchen had a ﬁ replace with a chimney made

of stone, tile, or plaster, but, until the invention of chimneys, ﬁ res had to

be placed in the center of the room to keep the wooden walls of the kitchen

from catching ﬁ re.

Second-story rooms were bedrooms. By the 13th century, ideas of pri-

vacy were more important, and those who could afford separate sleeping

rooms had them. Even so, children might sleep with their parents, leaving

the other room for servants. Manor houses had separate barns, usually sev-

eral barns for different kinds of animals. The poultry yard was kept apart

from the main house. The grander the manor house, the more developed

its outdoor space. Flower and herb gardens were as important as functional

barns and meadows.

A manor house often had painted walls. Castles could afford expensive

murals on their walls, so humbler houses of the wealthy imitated this style.

Walls were generally whitewashed, and then an all-over pattern, perhaps imi-

tating the lines of a stone wall, covered the white. Painters used stencils to

put ﬂ owers or diamonds in the blocks. After the 13th century, wall tapes-

tries were the fashion. Most manor homes could not afford a real tapestry,

but they could hang a cloth with a painted scene in imitation of a tapestry.

Floors were never carpeted until after the Middle Ages; carpets were only

insulation and decoration for walls.

The greatest innovation in medieval house construction was the chimney,

which was ﬁ rst developed in the only houses where the construction was

always of stone: castles. Early castles were just as simple as most houses;

the keep was a block tower with only a few large rooms. But castles of the

12th century began to plan halls with upper stories, and they built ﬁ replaces

and chimneys into the walls. The second story beneﬁ ted from the chim-

ney’s heat as it passed to the roof. A wall ﬁ replace with a chimney moved

the smoke quickly out of the hall, and the ﬁ replace design radiated heat

better than a central hearth. Early chimney design began with a ﬂ ue going

back at a 45-degree angle into a channel cut or built into the stone wall.

Castles in the 13th century used a vertical chimney ﬂ ue that was one or two

stories high. The ﬁ replace had a stone hood or canopy to help collect the

smoke as it drifted out of the ﬁ replace and channel it back into the chim-

ney ﬂ ue.

To keep rain and snow out of the chimney, either a lantern or a chimney

pot could be used. A lantern was a raised roof over the chimney. At its best,

it was shaped like an octagon and could be ornamental, like a small tower.

The chimney pot was made of unglazed pottery. It was an upside-down

pot with holes cut out of the sides. It protected the chimney from rain and

snow, and, as wind blew through the side vents, it created a cross draft that

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drew smoke out of the chimney more efﬁ ciently. Chimney pots were in use

by the 13th century.

Halls that were already built had to be redesigned to incorporate a ﬁ re-

place and chimney. There had been a gradual movement toward isolating

the smoky ﬁ re pit with wooden screens, creating a “smoke bay.” The screens

channeled the smoke toward the hole in the ceiling. Chimneys could be

built into these spaces; a chimney was smaller than a ﬁ re pit, but it had to

be made of ﬁ reproof material like brick or stone. As bricks became more

readily available in the 14th and 15th centuries, they provided a way to ret-

roﬁ t an older house with a chimney. Chimneys brought their own mainte-

nance problems; with the soot now out of the room air, it cooled and stuck

inside the chimney. This cooled layer of soot was itself ﬂ ammable and had

to be cleaned regularly. Early chimney sweeping used brooms, bunches of

twigs on rope, and even geese. A live goose, raised and lowered by a string

around its neck, ﬂ apped its wings in panic and cleaned the soot efﬁ ciently.

By the late Middle Ages, both city and manor houses began to incorpo-

rate chimneys. The ﬁ replace and chimney had to be built of stone, and, in a

town, the chimney had to rise well above the roof. By removing the ﬁ re to

the side of the room, medieval builders allowed freer movement around the

room, and the style of living changed. More rooms could be kept warm, and

family members began spending time in separate apartments. Tall rooms

that used to reach to the rafters were more often subdivided with a second-

story room above and ceiling below. The brick chimney in the upper room

kept it warm, and some upper rooms had a ﬁ replace of their own, with a

separate ﬂ ue built into the chimney.

Fine houses in town had the latest kinds of furnishings. Floors were usu-

ally tiled, while in humbler houses they were still made of beaten dirt. The

houses were three and four stories high, and some of the most palatial city

houses had pulleys to carry supplies to the top ﬂ oors. Top ﬂ oors had gal-

leries and windows with clear or colored glass. The room layout permitted

rooms for business, family life, feasts, study, and sleeping privacy. Private-

use rooms on upper ﬂ oors were usually called solars.

The cities of Italy developed distinctive town house styles. In Genoa, for

example, each neighborhood housed an extended family enclave. The fam-

ily’s main house had a defensive tower and a small fortress, since there had

been civil wars within the city. This main house had a narrow front but ex-

tended about 50 feet back from the street. On its ground ﬂ oor, it had an

arsenal, a large kitchen, and a central living room. Upper ﬂ oors had family

bedrooms, and top ﬂ oors housed servants. The defensive tower connected

to all these ﬂ oors with a winding stair. The surrounding enclave had a bath

and a loggia where people gathered. The loggia was a pillared walkway on

either the ground ﬂ oor or upper ﬂ oors. In a hot climate, it provided a cool

place to sit or walk. In the enclave, the family operated shops and markets

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around the nearby square, and smaller houses held more generations of the

family. These houses were more often built of stone or brick and were usu-

ally smoothly plastered.

By the late Middle Ages, a genteel house in town had tiled ﬂ oors, hand-

some doors with good brass hinges, glass windows with hinged shutters,

and plastered walls. There was a large ﬁ replace with wrought iron ﬁ re imple-

ments and a shelf for a saint ’s image or pewter ﬂ agons. Upper rooms had

windows, balconies, and even private latrine closets. Benches had cushions,

and beds had feather mattresses. The late medieval ideas of a good house

blended into early modern ideas of safety, warmth, and comfort.

See also: Bricks and Tiles, Castles, Furniture, Gardens, Latrines and Gar-

bage, Water.

Further Reading

Cullingford, Benita. Chimneys and Chimney Sweeps. Princes Risborough, UK: Shire

Publications, 2003.

Egan, Geoff. The Medieval Household: Daily Living c. 1150–c. 1450. Woodbridge,

UK: Boydell Press, 2010.

Emery, Anthony. Discovering Medieval Houses. Princes Risborough, UK: Shire

Publications, 2007.

Fearn, Jacqueline. Thatch and Thatching. Princes Risborough, UK: Shire Publica-

tions, 1976.

Roux, Simone. Paris in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press, 2009.

Singman, Jeffrey. Daily Life in Medieval Europe. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,

1999.

Sunshine, Paula. Wattle and Daub. Botley, UK: Shire Publications, 2008.

Wood, Margaret E. The English Medieval House. New York: Harper Collins, 1981.

Hunting

Hunting was the most common theme for tapestries and wall paintings. It

was the sport of aristocrats, and at times ladies participated. Although they

ate what they killed if the animal was edible, food was not the point for aris-

tocratic hunters. Hunting was a show of conspicuous wealth and power: it

required horses, dogs, hawks, servants, and land, as well as the time to en-

gage in it. It was the excitement of ﬁ ghting and killing, but it did not require

the danger and devastation of war. Commoners might trap rabbits, but they

were not permitted to hunt, which was a privilege of the aristocracy.

Venery was the sport of hunting with dogs. Aristocrats who hunted with

dogs needed kennels and a professional staff, although minor aristocrats

and knights could keep a few dogs and hunt by cooperating with friends

and their dogs. Falconry was even more the sport of kings, since training a

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falcon required special knowledge and large amounts of time. Falcon train-

ers were a real luxury, even more than the keepers of dog kennels. Some

kings gave falcons to each other as gifts, and some kept a favorite falcon in

their chambers.

Professional hunters, who were responsible for ﬁ lling castle tables, did

not hunt in large parties the way aristocrats did. The most basic hunting

tools were the bow and the trap. Especially in England, most men were pro-

ﬁ cient with the bow. With just one dog to help track the deer, a few men

with bows could quietly bring back several deer. Archers could also shoot

hares, rabbits, or birds.

Trap hunting was even more common and not at all aristocratic. Peasants

knew how to set spring traps for hare or birds, using bait as a lure. They

could imitate birdcalls to draw birds closer. Large animals could be caught

by being driven into enclosures, and mid-sized animals could be driven into

nets. Nets and bags were used to catch falcons and hawks in their nests or

when as young birds just beginning to ﬂ y.

Medieval Europe was still rich in game animals, although by the 15th

century, some had become so uncommon that they were rarely seen. The

chief game animals were the deer and the boar, and their range remained

wide across the continent. Some game animals were kept in park preserves

enclosed by ditches and hedges. Gamekeepers watched over the herds to

make sure they remained healthy and did not get hunted too extensively.

Red deer and roe deer were native to England, while fallow deer were

native to the European continent. All species of deer lose their antlers each

year and grow a new set; each year the stags grow one more point on their

rack, so their age can be told visually. Medieval huntsmen always wanted to

The dogs have been tied up so that they

can watch while the newly killed stag is

cut up. When the huntsmen have

ﬁ nished the job, they will blow their

horns and allow the dogs to eat a

leftover portion of the animal. This

ceremony, called the curee, kept the

dogs eager for any work or danger that

came with earning their reward. (Paul

Lacroix, Moeurs, Usage et Costumes au

Moyen Age et a l’Epoque de la

Renaissance, 1878)

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chase the oldest stag with the most points, and they called small young deer

“rascals” who wasted the efforts of the hunt. Hunters also respected certain

hunting seasons for the different types of deer, male and female, as modern

hunters do. It was not as important with smaller, less valuable deer, but with

the larger ones, it was imperative to permit the young to grow into maturity

so they would not be overhunted.

Deer may have been most plentiful in England. The Normans imported

the small, fast-breeding fallow deer from the Mediterranean region into their

enclosed parks to keep them at hand for easy hunting. Roe deer were the

native small breed but were not valued as hunting quarry and were not pro-

tected in parks. In English, the fallow and roe stags were called bucks, and

the females were does. Red deer were the largest and cleverest deer. They

were the premier hunting quarry and received the most attention and skill in

venery. The stags were called harts in English, and the females were known

as hinds. Most medieval treatises on hunting deer focused on harts.

The wild boar was hunted in the winter. Boars were killed with long

spears and were very dangerous. Men often died hunting boars, and even

more dogs died. A boar’s tusks were very sharp and could easily gut a dog

or slash open a man’s abdomen. Boars were fast and unpredictable. They

were much valued as food; roast boar was a traditional food for winter

feasts. For the sake of their taste and for the excitement of the hunt, boars

remained a top game animal for the aristocracy.

The hare was native to both England and continental Europe and was

often hunted for food by all who could snare or shoot them. Some aris-

tocratic hunts chased hares for sport, using packs of dogs. The hare was a

swift and clever animal that often ran in wide circles to disguise its tracks.

The rabbit (or coney) was not native to Europe but quickly spread and was

imported to England in the 13th century. It was not valued as a hunting

prey and was more often farmed or trapped.

A limited number of other animals were hunted for sport or food. Bears

were considered good hunting in Spain and Portugal and at times were

hunted in Northern Europe. By the late Middle Ages, they were scarce.

Otters were not eaten, but they were hunted in ways similar to deer. Some

dogs were good at swimming and were known as otter hounds. Lynx and

wildcats still lived in some parts of Europe and were occasionally hunted,

but they were scarce, and they were not considered a noble quarry. Peasants

killed badgers for shoe leather.

Wolves were hunted for extermination, not for food. They were not even

hunted for sport but were so looked down on that they were trapped and

poisoned. Some believed their bite was poisonous. A wolf’s fur was warm

and made an impressive lining. Foxes were valued as a very enjoyable quarry

in a hunt, as they are today. Dogs could follow them easily, and they were

not dangerous. Their fur was valued more than the wolf’s.