Clean Great Hall Floor In Middle Ages

People in the middle ages have acquired something of a bad reputation when it comes to cleanliness especially the peasantry.

Clean great hall floor in middle ages.

Beautifully decorated well lit and the largest indoor space most people would ever witness the. Early castles had a hearth in the middle of this room to keep it warm. The middle ages volume 1 by r a brown h m colvin and a j taylor edited by h m colvin london 1963 the great hall by m w thompson cambridge 1991 the english. Before people entered the great hall for meals they washed their hands.

Fresh sweet flag plants incorrectly termed rushes were periodically spread on medieval castle floors as a floor covering. Originally the great hall used to be in the keep but as castles got bigger it moved to the inner bailey. At that time the word great simply meant big and had not acquired its modern connotations of excellence. These reed like plants were inexpensive and plentiful and when mixed with fresh herbs were a good way to cover dirt while sweetening the air.

A great hall is the main room of a royal palace nobleman s castle or a large manor house or hall house in the middle ages and continued to be built in the country houses of the 16th and early 17th centuries although by then the family used the great chamber for eating and relaxing. The history of the king s works. The doors are in general laid with white clay and are covered with rushes occasionally renewed but so imperfectly that the bottom layer is left undisturbed sometimes. The housekeeper would be in charge of the kitchen staff the chambermaids and cleaning of.

Prior to that people used water only and the oils from flowers. The great hall was the architectural centrepiece of a medieval castle s interior and functioned as the social and administrative hub of the castle and its estates. During the crusades knights brought soap from the east. With everyone dining and sleeping in the hall in its early days the room evolved to become the imposing host of banquets and courts.

His job was to take care of the estate and supervise the staff as well as take care of the events in the great hall. Hand washing before entering the great hall for a meal was standard. The great hall was the castle living room where everybody used to eat and some people used to sleep either on benches or on the floor. In chambers people had basins of water for washing the face and hands and maybe a more intimate part of themselves.

There has been much conflicting information about whether or not people in the middle ages were as clean as we were within out homes. A reconstructed viking age longhouse 28 5 metres long in denmark. Among the early germanic peoples a mead hall or feasting hall was initially simply a large building with a single room.