©Bryan Phillips Dec 2023

We have seen the size and materials of construction of a peasant home in the fourteenth century, but what was it like to live in such a place?

With the windows and doors used in the early fourteenth it certainly would have been draughty.

The daily activities in late medieval England around the home are well recognised and include cooking on the open hearth using a cauldron, cheese and butter making, spinning and weaving, .

Accidents around the home were frequent, with the open hearth, the cauldron containing boiling potage, probably cats and a dog, possibly chickens or geese, and of course young children and infants in their cradles near the hearth as well as inadequate light even during the day. Clearly trip hazards were common and since women and girls spent much more time than men and boys in the home they do indeed show more fractured bones of the lower forearm, that is the radius and ulna, with characteristic distal and oblique fractures.  Since the women and girls also tended the yard or curtilage, carried milk and cheese and fetched water from the well in what must have been very slippery conditions, they were in constant danger of slipping backward which puts strain on the lower leg in addition. There were additional factors in the fractures which have been examined by osteologists from bones excavated from medieval cemeteries  For example, malnutrition and hunger can result in more accidents, and poor bone formation during childhood malnutrition can become fracture prone. In one medieval rural settlement there was no skeletal evidence of violence or of child abuse, and all fractures had healed, albeit not well set, showing care and attention in to the injured.(1) Not only the old and infirm are more liable to injury, but the tired too after a long days’ work especially during the summer months when all peasants worked from dawn to dusk.

There is a question of whether we should consider Milton Abbas a rural or urban settlement at this time. If we assume a population around 500 and the fact that it held two weekly market and two annual fairs it could thought of as a small town, after all Chichester with a population of around 1000 was considered a town. The diseases and accidents of rural settings seem to be distinguishable from those of urban settings, and it is known that crowded towns with poor sanitation led to more transmissible diseases. Unfortunately the medieval graveyard of Milton Abbas was swept away by Lord Milton and Capability Brown some 250 years ago leaving no available archaeology as far as is known..It has been shown that osteological examination of medieval skeletons shows that women were much more likely to suffer fractures in rural communities than urban ones.(1) Perhaps urban trade was focused on retail and service industries rather than production. We do not know what trades were practised in Milton Abbas in the early fourteenth century, although with the Abbey and its environs to maintain and the markets and fairs it seems likely that there were manufacturing trades – certainly stonemasons, plumbers, carpenters, foresters, builders, brewers, bakers, as well as herders, butchers, leather workers  – all trades where injuries were common.

The then common disease of leprosy was more prevalent in the population than realised because it had a long incubation period and may have been present without obvious external symptoms but still causing bone weakness.(2) See the section on farming for accidents to men.

The well was a particularly dangerous place for females who always fetched the water, both children and adults. The wells were open at ground level with no retaining wall and drownings were commonly recorded in the Coroners inquests. Fetching water from the river was just as liable to result in drowning as very few people learned to swim, not even mariners.

References

1. Fracture Trauma in a Medieval British Farming Village, Margaret A. Judd, Charlotte A. Roberts, Am Journal of Biological Anthropology, 109, 1999.
2. Fracture patterns at the Medieval Leper Hospital in Chichester, Margaret A. Judd, Charlotte A. Roberts, Am Journal of Biological Anthropology, 105, 1998