I’ve just got back from living as a medieval person, AMA

[TheCountessofFitzdotterel]

First time in my life I’ve ever done anything worthy of an AMA!

My family farm is quite a traditional set up of the old farmhouse with a yard an outbuildings round the outside. It’s all been concrete in my lifetime (thank you 1970’s farmers grants) but my Dad grew up with mud. It really was no better than you’d imagine it to be. There are pictures of it up to the 60’s that you stepped out of the back door into mud. He remembers my granny having a constant battle.

Heavy Northamptonshire clay

Oh that’s a really good point about it varying by precise location and from year to year. Yes.
It’s always interesting reading about different cereal crops in different parts of the UK (more oats and rye in the north, more wheat in the south).

Well done on the cake, that’s impressive.

People weren’t that much smaller in the medieval period, it’s the Industrial Revolution when poor nutrition becomes more common and the height differences really kick in.
People often point to low doorways, but this keeps the heat in and the ground level has sometimes risen over the centuries so the doorway was not always as low as it is now.

Oh and it’s interesting you mention Bruegel. We were commenting to each other that being all bundled up in our multiple wool layers made us look like Bruegel children!

TBH though re Bruegel, I think the 16th century Low Countries was quite a rich place so it’s not surprising if a good number of the peasants managed to get fat. I am sure it was very varied depending on time and place.

Changing land use is fascinating. I live in a part of the country with a lot of terracing and ridge and furrow.
Re drainage, I recently read The History of Myddle which is a 17th century antiquarian’s history of his village. At one point he talks about how they drained a marsh and made it a pasture but previously it had been a great place to hunt wildfowl.

That’s so interesting.

Have you all read Medieval woman by Ann Bauer? Wonderful imagining of rural life

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel thank you. What I find fascinating is that within a mile of our modern farm there is evidence for a Roman villa and a Saxon roundhouse. I adore the fact that farmers have been grumbling about the weather for two thousand years.

we farm the field next to the village church and there’s a bell that’s been sounding since the 1400’s. I’ve Ploughed that field and stopped my tractor to listen to it and think of the hundreds of farmers before who’ve done the same

Yes ❤️

Lovely post.

I have no connections with farming (other than now living in a very rural small town, where they still have cattle markets in the town) and I always think that’s a big gap for me in terms of understanding how people lived in the past, given what a rural economy we were.

My absolute favourite historical novelist, Norah Lofts, was from a farming family and I think her deep understanding of it feeds into her novels, which are very much about ordinary people and how they got by.

Brilliant thread, thank you.

as a glasses wearer then… shall I give up all hopes of time travel?

Well I think one of the lessons I learned is that you manage better than you think you will with limited eyesight. It’s not like you’ll be driving. If you’re spending most of your time at home and relying on other senses to get around anyway because of darkness it’s probably easier than in modern life. I don’t know if I have mentioned, but we discovered how very much more important it is to be tidy and put things away again if you’re going to be trying to find them in the dark.

A lot of people do get their modern glasses prescription made up in period appropriate frames. I prefer not to because although it would look like what you see in pictures, I wouldn’t be using them as medieval spectacles were used, because they didn’t initially make them to correct short sight, so at some level it is less correct than simply wearing contact lenses.

Sorry, what's AMA?

Ask Me Anything

Thanks

Fascinating thread thank you. I'd been trying to remember what this time travel series of books was and you've reminded me it was the Sterkarm trilogy, so now I can re read them thank you!
My son loves reenactment, I wonder if he'll still be into it when he's your age. I've never been involved but your experience sounds really interesting.

1. I'd love to be able to do something like this.
2. I grew up near the Weald & Downland, moved away, but recently took the children back. My 8yo was particularly fascinated.
3. I love all the Farm series, and am so glad Ruth is nice in real life!
4. I grow soapwort, and use it for making shampoo. It was a godsend during the initial Covid lockdown, when anything soapy was in short supply. I often add a chamomile teabag, or a few flowers of lavender to the seeping mix.
5. Is there ever much knitting going on? If so, where do the patterns come from? I've got a drop spindle, and am trying to summon the courage to try with the carded fleece I was gifted.

There’s not a great deal of knitting in the 15th century as it was mainly just hats that were knitted but it takes off in the 16th c as people start wearing knitted stockings as well as sleeves. This is reflected in reenactment.

Patterns - Sally Pointer has some lovely hat patterns and she writes them very clearly. They may be on Ravelry or you might need to get them from her own website.
A lot of work on historic knitting been done by the Tudor Tailor team, Ninya Mikhaila and Jane Malcolm Davies, and their most recent book, Typical Tudor, includes a number of excellent reconstructed patterns but the book is £££ as it has vast numbers of sewing patterns too.
There are free patterns on Ravelry if you search for historic knitting. For example there’s the 17th c Gunnister Pouch which a number of people have done versions of, and several different historical stockings.
But some of the things, such as knitted sleeves, are so simple that a competent knitter could easily make their own up to fit, which is almost certainly what the original knitters would have done.
Bear in mind that the yarn in early modern knitted garments is generally very fine, typically 4 ply weight.
If you want to do historic spinning I strongly recommend you look up distaffs and learn that technique. It’s what was done in Europe historically and I find it much easier and faster than the dangly ‘drop spindle’ technique common in the Americas.

I read a couple of them absolutely years ago — a friend of DH’s was the author’s agent. All I can remember was that the time-travelling anthropologist heroine was sturdily built, and considered unattractively hefty in the 21st c, but a total babe in the 16thc!

Ha yes I also remember that! As a fairly hefty teenager reading the books it made me like them more!

If anyone is interested there are a couple of videos to watch now. The first is a long one filming the event itself, the other is an interview with a few of the participants the day after. Among other things it talks about some of the hygiene issues that have come up on this thread.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=GGMSTGuOotg

m.youtube.com/watch?v=pMa5iBVEG8o

That is wonderful, @TheCountessofFitzdotterel, thank you for posting those!

Can you tell us anything about all the wonderful pottery?

Yes, what would you like to know?
A lot of it is by Trinity Court Potteries known as Jim the Pot. He’s a wonderful craftsman, bases everything very carefully on historical originals (and very good value).
The big animal vessel on the cupboard is an aquamanile used for washing hands.

Brilliant videos! 🙂

I was mid-re-enactment once when I developed conjunctivitis. I wear contact lenses and don't have any Tudor glasses (as they wouldn't be authentic anyway: they couldn't make concave lenses, only convex) and my prescription is around -10, so I can only see about six inches in focus.

But I found it surprisingly easy to manage. There are no signs to read; nothing i moving quickly; and it's very quiet, so you can hear people approach and recognise them by their voices. It helped that I knew my way around, but then you would.