Clean Great Hall Floor In Middle Ages

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.

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. 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. There has been much conflicting information about whether or not people in the middle ages were as clean as we were within out homes.

Originally the great hall used to be in the keep but as castles got bigger it moved to the inner bailey. 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. With everyone dining and sleeping in the hall in its early days the room evolved to become the imposing host of banquets and courts. During the crusades knights brought soap from the east.

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. 1466 1536 wrote to friend describing the state of the medieval floors during the middle ages. Prior to that people used water only and the oils from flowers. 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.

Fresh sweet flag plants incorrectly termed rushes were periodically spread on medieval castle floors as a floor covering. 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. However despite the general lack of running water and other modern amenities there were common expectations of personal hygiene such as regularly washing from a basin especially the hands before and after eating which was regarded as good etiquette in a period when. 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. In chambers people had basins of water for washing the face and hands and maybe a more intimate part of themselves. At that time the word great simply meant big and had not acquired its modern connotations of excellence. Before people entered the great hall for meals they washed their hands.

The history of the king s works. The housekeeper would be in charge of the kitchen staff the chambermaids and cleaning of. From the fifth century to the early middle ages such a building was the residence of a lord and his retainers these structures were also where lords could formally receive visitors and where the community.