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The Book of Kells: "a masterpiece of medieval calligraphy and painting"
"The Book of Kells is a masterwork of medieval calligraphy and painting", writes Michael Wood
The Book of Kells, one of the greatest pieces of medieval art, is today displayed in the library of Trinity College Dublin. This illuminated gospel book is named after the monastery in County Meath where it was kept in the Middle Ages. It’s a masterwork of medieval calligraphy and painting, with its Celtic knot patterns, scintillating colour, and the staggering intricacies of the display pages and canon tables – all smoky golden magnificence. An Irish annalist called the book “the great Gospel of Columcille [Columba], the chief relic of the western world”. It may be the work described by the historian Gerald of Wales in the 1180s, in his book on Ireland. “Look more keenly at it and you will penetrate to the very shrine of art,” he wrote. “You will make out intricacies so delicate and so subtle… that you might say that all this were the work of an angel, and not of a man.” The book survived war, plunder and the English – Cromwell’s troops were once billeted in Kells. In the 19th century, it was a huge influence on the Celtic revival movement in the arts, and today is seen as the pinnacle of the western tradition of illuminated manuscripts. Read more | Michael Wood on amazing insights into medieval daily life The book was produced around the end of the eighth century, just at the moment Britain and Ireland were about to be changed forever by the arrival of the Vikings. It was long believed to have been created on Iona. But in The Book of Kells: Unlocking the Enigma, published in October, Victoria Whitworth suggests that it was actually written at the Pictish monastery of Portmahomack on the Moray Firth in north-east Scotland. This is one of the least known areas of the medieval British Isles. The Pictish monasteries were destroyed in the Viking age, and with them virtually all written records. The kingdom of the Picts became part of the Scottish kingdom of Alba in the ninth century, and gradually the memory of the Picts faded, leaving many unsolved mysteries. One key survival is their stone carving, of which there are brilliant examples in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Some, such as the huge memorial slab from Hilton of Cadboll etched with horsemen and hunting dogs, are absolutely stunning. You can still see these wonderful works of art on the ground when you head up the coast of north-east Scotland. At Aberlemno is a magnificent carving perhaps commemorating the battle of Nechtansmere in 685 at which the Pictish king Bridei defeated and killed the Northumbrian invader King Ecgfrith. And by St Vigeans Church on the outskirts of Arbroath there’s a fascinating museum holding more than 30 pieces of Pictish sculpture. This Pictish trail leads to Portmahomack, a beautiful spot on the Tarbat peninsula looking across to the distant hills of Sutherland. The origins of Christianity here are still obscure. Bede mentions a saint whom we know as Ninnian, who evangelised in the fifth century. In the sixth century came St Columba, who reached as far north as Moray. Read more | Medieval miracle worker: how St Columba transformed Christianity in Britain But it was only in the 1990s that the first excavation of a Pictish monastery took place at Portmahomack. Its construction began around 550 – which might fit with a foundation by St Columba – and was probably destroyed in a Viking attack in the early ninth century, though some kind of community hung on after that. It was later dedicated to St Colman of Lindisfarne, who played a famous role in the Synod of Whitby in 664 – the great debate over Celtic and Roman traditions of Easter. Colman then returned to Iona and died in Ireland, but he was still celebrated in later times at Portmahomack. When excavating the levels burned during the Viking raid, the archaeologist found over 200 fragments of Pictish stone carving in a style very similar to the Book of Kells. This led Dr Whitworth to propose that the most famous of all Irish manuscripts was actually made here. Indeed, finds from the dig included workshops and a room where vellum was prepared, interpreted as a scriptorium – perhaps the very place where the Book of Kells was written? All of this only underlines how much we still don’t know about the early Middle Ages in the outer reaches of Britain. We don’t even know the site’s original name. As for the Picts themselves – still known today by the name that the late Romans gave them, meaning the ‘painted people’ – their identity eventually merged with the Scots, and their language (probably pre-Indo-European?) became extinct. But recent DNA studies suggest that their legacy endures in the genetic inheritance of people across Scotland. And of course in Trinity College Dublin you can still glimpse the unique, dazzling, colourful vision that infused the astonishing art of the Picti. This column was first published in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Marvellous medieval medicine: why their curious cures were better than you think
What did medieval physicians prescribe for stomach ache? And could weasels’ testicles really help you conceive? James Freeman delves into the sources to find eight curious cures from the Middle Ages
My urine has turned black! What does your wee say about your health? Well, plenty – but perhaps not in quite the way medieval physicians understood it. Before the in-depth study of anatomy and physiology, establishing the causes of symptoms relied on theories that today seem primitive or foolish. However, they were often based on long-established ideas about the body and its function. Medieval treatises on uroscopy – the study of urine – identified up to 20 colours, each indicating certain diseases. Many texts on this subject were accompanied by drawings of glass flasks filled with liquid coloured with an appropriate pigment. These might be arranged in a circular shape with descriptive labels, helping readers to memorise the key diagnostic details. Perhaps unsurprisingly, black was the worst possible colour, and was generally agreed to indicate imminent death. Why was urine so significant? Because of prohibitions against opening the body (which extended to postmortem dissections), medieval doctors were reliant on external indicators. This included variations in a patient’s pulse but also the colour, texture, layers, smell and even taste of their urine. The doctor’s role was to understand a patient’s nature: specifically, the four fluids or ‘humours’ inside the human body. In the treatise De Natura Hominis (‘On the Nature of Man’), by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (c460–c375 BC) or his pupil Polybus, it was determined that there were four such humours: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. Disease was caused by imbalances in these humours, or when they became ‘corrupted’ or concentrated in a part of the body. Read more | It felt like the end of the world, but this medieval ‘apocalypse’ left a legacy no one saw coming This theory was developed further by Galen of Pergamon (c129–c216), who likened digestion to the cooking process: food was converted into life-giving liquid, the humours were generated by the vital organs, and waste products – including urine – were expelled. Examining urine could therefore inform the physician about the state of a patient’s digestion and of any possible humoural imbalance and the disease that might result from it. I’ve got an excruciating pain in my bottom Medieval knights and noblemen could spend significant amounts of time on horseback. And who can blame them? This was, after all, the quickest way to get around. But it could also be extraordinarily painful. Occupy the saddle for too long and you could start to suffer from an anal fistula – a condition that causes an abscess or an abnormal opening between the anal canal and the surrounding skin. This is as unpleasant as it sounds – which is why some sufferers called on the services of a medic called John Arderne. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-587494702-CMYKWeb-Ready-a626f03.jpg" width="5178" height="3452" alt="A painting showing two men dressed in red and pink riding horses. They are following several brown dogs through the woods and on the ground, three more men walk through the grass, holding spears" title="Nobles hunt a fox in a 14th-century miniature. Spending long periods in the saddle could lead to a painful condition for which surgeon John Arderne devised a novel treatment (Image by Getty Images)" /> Arderne was one of the most famous English surgeons of the 14th century. Among the novel developments he described in his writings, he came up with a procedure for treating anal fistulas that involved a surgical dilator called a tendiculum and a kind of flattened needle called an acus rostrata. Arderne also illustrated the stages involved in the operation, and described medicines that could be injected into the rectum in a bid to promote healing. One of these – made up of rose oil and the single yolk of a raw egg – should be administered with the aid of a hollow wooden instrument called a nastare ligneum. This needed to be lubricated with rose oil and “gently inserted into the anus”. “This,” Arderne promised, “effectively mitigates and mollifies any burning, stinging, itching and pain.” His patients would, no doubt, have prayed that he was good to his word. I’m about to go into labour Childbirth was perhaps the most perilous event in any medieval woman’s life. This was a primary focus of Gynaecia, a treatise perhaps written in the fifth or sixth century and ascribed to an author known as ‘Muscio’ (who was possibly from north Africa). Gynaecia explained how normal and abnormal births should be managed, prioritised the role of midwives, and described different malpresentations of the foetus – and what should be done to ease the birth in such cases. In one manuscript from the Middle Ages, passages from the Gynaecia are accompanied by illustrations showing these various positions of foetuses in wombs. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-566452471-CMYKWeb-Ready-47f4bbc.jpg" width="3763" height="2509" alt="An illustration showing a woman in a long red dress sitting on a chair. Around her, there are four other women, touching various parts of her body" title="A manuscript illumination shows a woman in childbirth. The fifth or sixth-century treatise Gynaecia provided detailed advice for deliveries (Image by Getty Images)" /> Some women who “travaileth of child” might turn to magic for help. Recipe books and medical guides both contained instructions for preparing protective amulets that should be lain on a woman’s belly or thighs. Designed to be viewed, worn and read, these objects were believed to protect their wearers from harm by association with holy bodies and the pains they suffered. One typical text from the late 14th or early 15th century invokes the names of holy mothers and their children: “Saint Mary bore Christ, Saint Anna bore Mary, Saint Elizabeth bore Saint John the Baptist.” Another example contains images of the instruments of Christ’s Passion and of his wounds and blood; a measurement of the length of the Virgin Mary’s body; and prayers to early fourth-century mother-and-son martyrs Saint Julitta and Saint Quiricus. I can't stop farting What did our medieval ancestors do when they were afflicted by stomach pains? And what remedies could they deploy if, worse still, that pain was accompanied by an attack of flatulence? One option was to take an electuary, a type of orally administered remedy sweetened, usually with honey, to make it more palatable. A recipe for one such remedy contained a dizzying number of ingredients – some more familiar to the modern eye than others. These included sugar, chebulic myrobalan (fruits from an Asian tree), nuts, anise, caraway, fennel, cloves, the wood of aloes, mastic, French muscat and syrup. “You will,” so the recipe instructed, “give this in the form of a hazelnut [ie as a hazelnut-sized pill], at morning and night with warm water and wine or with wine alone.” This recipe comes from a compilation of over a thousand remedies known as the Antidotarium Magnum, which was compiled in the 11th century by a monk of north African heritage known as Constantinus Africanus, who lived at the abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy. Innovatively, the text advised how much of each ingredient was required, using a system of symbols to denote measurements such as drams, scruples, pounds, sixths and halves. The Antidotarium Magnum’s ingredients suggest that it was inspired by Islamic, Byzantine and classical sources. Yet that didn’t stop a copy reaching Durham Cathedral Priory, where – judging by the presence of a key to explain the meaning of these symbols – the monks tried to make some of the medicines that it describes. Read more | Victorian medicine: why the 19th century was a time of seismic medical change I’m feeling feverish In the modern world, fevers are understood to be symptoms of the body’s immune response to infection. In the medieval period, however, a fever was thought to be a disease in its own right – an overheating of the body caused by malfunctioning digestive processes. And, in an attempt to turn down the heat, medieval medics often went on a charm offensive. Today, science and magic tend to occupy separate spheres. In the Middle Ages, though, it was widely believed – even among learned medics – that words and rituals possessed healing potential, and many medieval manuscripts from the Middle Ages contain instructions for the recitation of magical charms. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/G2NJEX-CMYKWeb-Ready-aaedadc.jpg" width="3088" height="2058" alt="Doctors treat an ailing king, as depicted in an illumination in a 14th-century French manuscript. Charms were often used to treat conditions such as fevers (Image by Alamy)" title="Doctors treat an ailing king, as depicted in an illumination in a 14th-century French manuscript. Charms were often used to treat conditions such as fevers (Image by Alamy)" /> One example instructed the reader to make three signs of the cross “on the right ear of the feverish, and with each cross, say in succession: ‘Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands.’” The reader was then advised to write a series of charms involving the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – not to mention a lamb, a sheep and a lion (all of which appear in a prophetic passage in Isaiah 11) – on the patient’s palms. But perhaps the most extraordinary feature of this charm was that its healing power was only realised when the patient drank the ink with which it was written. This may not have been particularly pleasing to the palate but the patient could at least console themselves in the promise that, “without doubt, he will be cured”. I’m suffering from menstrual cramps Not everyone could afford to pay for the services of elite medics such as John Arderne. For the vast majority of people in the Middle Ages, finding a cure for illness meant relying on healers, their family or neighbours. These do-it-yourself doctors used everyday ingredients and common wild plants, which were crushed, chopped, boiled and strained with simple equipment found in the home. And, by the 14th and 15th centuries, this local medical knowledge bank was increasingly being collated and disseminated in hundreds of simple medicinal recipes written in vernacular languages. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-148796224-CMYKWeb-Ready-8093d13.jpg" width="3003" height="2002" alt="A medieval handbook shows a woman gathering medicinal plants. They were commonly used by ‘do-it-yourself doctors’ at this time (Image by Getty Images)" title="A medieval handbook shows a woman gathering medicinal plants. They were commonly used by ‘do-it-yourself doctors’ at this time (Image by Getty Images)" /> The medicines contained within these recipes were often administered in draughts – liquid concoctions for patients to drink. Or they could be applied via sticky salves applied to the skin on pieces of fabric or leather. Some cures – such as one for “grinding and aching in the womb”, found in a 15th-century English recipe – employed both. “Take five-leaf and stamp it and temper it with stale ale,” it counselled, “and giveth the sick to drink thereof, five spoonfuls at once, and seethe and bind it to her navel as hot as she may suffer.” I’ve lost my hearing If you opened a medical manuscript in the Middle Ages, then you may have been confronted by the sight of ‘Vein Man’. No, ‘Vein Man’ wasn’t a medieval superhero but a visual aid, designed to help readers locate veins in the human body. He makes for an interesting figure – chiefly for what he tells us about medieval people’s attitudes to their health. In order to cure many diseases, physicians might attempt to restore the correct humoural balance, often through purging the body of an excess or corrupted humour. A common method for this was phlebotomy, or bloodletting: the controlled release of blood from a patient’s veins. That’s where ‘Vein Man’ came into his own. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/USE-THIS-Vein-ManMS-ADD-03303-00003-000-00001Web-Ready-dc0ba1f.jpg" width="2630" height="1754" alt="An illustration of a man laying on a red surface with squares on it. Several organs in his body are labelled and there are notes all around the diagram" title="A c15th-century illustration of ‘Zodiac Man’, showing the influence of constellations on different parts of the body (Image by Cambridge University Library)" /> Accompanying labels described the ways in which bloodletting could alleviate a variety of ailments. For example: “Opening the vein next to the nostrils purges the head and aids and strengthens the hearing.” However, timing such interventions carefully was crucial. It was believed that each part of the body was governed by a sign of the Zodiac: Aries was linked to the head, whereas Pisces was connected to the feet. If the moon was in conjunction with a particular constellation, it was considered perilous to operate on the area governed by that sign of the Zodiac. This principle was summarised in a second kind of diagram, ‘Zodiac Man’. This comprised a human figure appended with the names (and sometimes miniature drawings) of the Zodiac signs. Again, accompanying labels provided advice – for example, when the moon was in Aries, you should “avoid incisions in the head or face and do not open the capital vein”. Read more | This dynasty of medieval kings had a secret weapon – and you probably have it too I can’t conceive Have you ever procured a weasel testicle from your local pharmacy? Or burned half a handful of young mouse-ear in an earthenware pot? No, thought not. But if you’d lived 800 years ago – and been struggling to conceive – the answer may have been different. Weasel testicle and mouse-ear (which, for those who don’t know, is a plant found all over Britain and Ireland) were two of the main ingredients in a medieval treatment for infertility. One remedy instructed users to grind and combine them into a “soft pill” which should be placed “so deeply in the private parts that they touch the uterus”. This was to be left for three days, during which the woman was advised to abstain entirely from sex. After this, the recipe continued, “she should have intercourse with a man and she should conceive without delay”. Medieval people believed that their world was divinely created and organised, with plants, animals and even stones placed there for the benefit of humans. It was thus logical that parts of an animal’s body, or plants shaped like vital organs, might have curative properties for corresponding parts of a human body. Treatments for infertility often employed bits of animals known to be prolific breeders. The remedy above was one of dozens compiled in the notebook of a Carmelite friar, Richard Tenet, in the early 15th century. Unlike monks, who were cloistered within their abbeys and priories, mendicant friars travelled between towns and cities; they relied on charitable alms, which they earned by preaching and hearing confessions. This brought them into contact with ordinary people, including women, from whom they appear to have learned common treatments. James Freeman is a medieval manuscripts specialist at the University of Cambridge. He is curator of Curious Cures: Medicine in the Medieval World, which is running at Cambridge University Library until 6 December This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Michael Wood on lessons on good government from medieval Siena
"When justice is sovereign, the wicked are stripped of all power", writes Michael Wood
Siena is one of the great historic cities – a living vision of the medieval world found now in very few places. Here is the architecture and street plan of a medieval city-state, the oldest bank in the world, and one of the oldest universities. Siena was even the first place to ban the car, in 1966! In its centre, the great square called the Campo hosts the famous Palio horse race twice a year. It’s a place to relish the continuance of the past into the present. In the Middle Ages, Siena was run by the Nine, who rotated every two months as a bulwark against tyranny. They met in the council hall in the Palazzo Pubblico (Public Palace) on the Campo. On the first floor is a room adorned with some of the most extraordinary paintings in western art. Three fresco panels, painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1338, offer a vibrant vision of life in town and country on the eve of the Black Death. This huge work, known as The Allegory of Good and Bad Government, covers three walls. In the dim light, the eyes need a moment to take in the scale and the colour – the deep, luminous ultramarine skies created with a paint made from ground lapis lazuli. It’s the last great creation of the school of painting in Siena that came to an abrupt end when the plague struck Italy in 1348, killing half the city’s population – including Lorenzetti and his elder brother, Pietro. These extraordinary frescoes came to mind while visiting the National Gallery’s fabulous Siena exhibition this summer. The focus there was on four painters: Duccio, Simone Martini and the Lorenzettis. It encapsulated an exquisite, idiosyncratic moment, with none of the advances of Renaissance art: perspective, anatomy, realism. Instead, as the cultural historian Erin Maglaque eloquently remarks, we saw “silk, gold, and suspended emotion – an embrace of mystery that feels archaic and alien”. Read more | Michael Wood on amazing insights into medieval daily life Florence lies close by, but the Sienese were seduced by the solemn power of Byzantine art. (“It was certainly mean-spirited of the Sienese to persist in being purely medieval right through the Renaissance,” wrote one Victorian critic!) The effect is spine-tingling, dominated not by the ideal landscapes of Florentine or Venetian art but by gold – crusted, layered, stamped; gold revealed by scraping away paint so it seems to flicker below the surface. It’s a secret, enclosed world of ornate chapels and churches in towering streets heavy with sun, the burnt red-earth colour of the landscape. Which brings me back to 1338 and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, executing his stupendous frescoes. That year was fraught, the city in a state of emergency. The threat of authoritarian rule by one man was rising, undermining the idea of the common good. The painting, remember, enfolds the room in which the Nine met to run the city: Lorenzetti was reminding them of just how much was at stake. What constitutes good governance? And its opposite? In The Allegory of Good Government – one of six scenes in Lorenzetti’s frescoes – we see the commune of Siena, magistrates and officers linked by the woven cords of community and justice that bind them. Above them is the guiding figure of Wisdom, with the virtues of good government personified: Peace, Fortitude, Prudence, Magnanimity and Temperance. We see the city at peace: tradesmen, shopkeepers, wedding processions, music and dancing – all the good things that civilisation brings. Another section provides a bird’s-eye view of the fecund Tuscan countryside, with an inscription: “When justice is sovereign, the wicked are stripped of all power.” Read more | Michael Wood on the New Angel | "Few works of 20th-century art have such a distinguished list of past owners" There is also The Effects of Bad Government, dominated by a horned demon who embodies Tyranny. Below him, the figure of Justice lies bound with allegorical figures of Cruelty, Deceit, Fraud, Fury, Division and War. Above Tyranny float Avarice and Pride, enemies of humanity. Once humming with life, in this scene the town lies in ruins, houses demolished, shops and workshops closed except for armourers, the arms dealers of their day. Armies advance on each other: we see looting, murder, rape, abuse of women – a Guernica of the 14th century. Thinking of these images, I was reminded of our own era of disasters and injustice, and of the challenges to the rule of law in the US. In Siena, Lorenzetti asked the council to “Turn your eyes to behold her, you who are governing, who is portrayed here: Justice, crowned on account of her excellence, who always renders to everyone his due. Look how many goods derive from her, and how sweet and peaceful is that life of the city where is preserved this virtue who outshines any other.” This article was first published in the August 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Medieval warhorses: 5 moments horsepower changed the course of history
From William the Conqueror’s battle-winning cavalry to Richard III’s fatal final charge, Oliver H Creighton and Robert Liddiard explore five moments when horsepower changed the course of medieval history
1. 1066 and all that Horses were involved in King Harold’s defeat at Hastings – but also in the demise of his Norman conqueror It’s one of the most famous of all medieval images. Harold II stands upon the battlefield at Hastings, desperately grasping at an arrow lodged in his eye. This incident – depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry – is credited with ending the English king’s life and extinguishing centuries of Anglo-Saxon rule. Yet look to the right of Harold and you’ll find an image that arguably goes even further in explaining his defeat: it depicts a sword-wielding warrior mounted upon a horse. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 was an era-defining event – and its centrepiece was the battle of Hastings. That clash is graphically represented on the Bayeux Tapestry, most memorably in the image of mounted Norman knights charging the line of Anglo-Saxon warriors on foot. It’s a powerful rendition of horses making history – and for William, Duke of Normandy, those animals proved critical in securing his victory. William began the day of the pivotal action, 14 October, by ordering reconnaissance missions, receiving intelligence from returning mounted scouts on the whereabouts of Harold’s forces. When the two armies later closed in to do battle, the Bayeux Tapestry shows us, the duke mounted his warhorse and exhorted his knights to “prepare themselves manfully and wisely” as they cantered towards the forthcoming engagement. During the nine-hour struggle, William was in the thick of the fighting – and two, or possibly three, of his horses were killed beneath him. The crucial part of the battle came when a rumour spread among the Normans that their commander had been killed. The duke hurriedly rode among his now-fleeing troops, his helmet raised to prove that he was alive, so preventing a rout. At this key moment it was the mobility provided by his mount that allowed William to be in the right place at the right time, averting disaster (for him). Despite the oft-repeated tale of the ‘arrow in the eye’, Harold’s death probably came after a group of mounted Norman knights broke through his bodyguard and cut him down. On this most dramatic of days, it was the horse that was William’s enabler – for intelligence-gathering, command and control, helping save his army from defeat by allowing him to visibly lead from the front. Yet though the horse helped cement the success of the Conqueror’s military career, it also played a part in its end. In 1087, the now-overweight William was characteristically urging on his troops as they set fire to the town of Mantes in France when his horse jumped a ditch – and “his stomach projected over the forward part of the saddle”, resulting in the rupture of the king’s internal organs. He died of his injuries some weeks later, his otherwise anonymous horse an unwitting participant in the death of one of England’s greatest warrior kings. 2. The Bruce's canny cavalry gambit Faced with a mighty English mounted army, the Scottish king used both horsemanship and cunning strategy to rout the invaders Robert the Bruce’s famous victory at the battle of Bannockburn, fought over two bloody days on 23–24 June 1314, was a landmark in the history of the British Isles, paving the way for Scottish independence from English rule. That outcome hinged on the inability of the English to effectively use their heavy cavalry in the face of tactics masterminded by the Scottish king. Edward II had invaded Scotland with a vast army, aiming to raise the siege of the strategically vital castle of Stirling. The core of his army comprised men at arms – professional soldiers, knights and nobles – on warhorses that were the embodiment of English military power. Heavily armoured and emblazoned with arms, these were elite steeds, expensively bred and trained in a royal stud network. The English army of around 13,000 substantially outnumbered Robert’s force of perhaps 6,000. A prelude to the battle known to every Scottish schoolchild proved an ill omen for the English. In a scene echoing the age-old clash of military champions in single combat, on the first day of action the English knight Sir Henry de Bohun spotted Robert the Bruce in front of his troops, and aimed to strike a decisive early blow by charging at the Scottish leader on his warhorse, lance in hand. Mounted on a smaller and more nimble mount, Robert skilfully manoeuvred to dodge his opponent and, standing up in his stirrups, in the words of the epic medieval poem The Brus, “Struck him such a great blow, That neither hat or helmet could stop”, cleaving Sir Henry’s “head to the brains” and smashing his battleaxe in the process. In preparation for the main action the following day, the Scots devised tactics to negate English cavalry strength. They chose for the battlefield a site where heavy horsemen could not operate easily – the area was marshy and intersected by a network of streams – and pockmarked the landscape with a minefield-like network of covered pits or ‘pots’ designed to trap horses. Fighting in compact formations known as schiltrons, the Bruce’s pike-armed foot soldiers were able to resist the disordered attacks of the English cavalry, which eventually disintegrated and broke. As King Edward was led away from the field towards the security of Stirling, Scottish soldiers were able to get close enough to grab at the caparison (cloth covering) of his horse, which was wounded beneath him, forcing the king to remount in his humiliating flight. 3. Under his dead body English rule in France was brought to a violent end when a renowned commander became trapped beneath the corpse of his own horse In the summer of 1453, with the tide of the Hundred Years’ War having turned in France’s favour, the veteran English commander Sir John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, found himself at the head of an army attempting to relieve the beleaguered garrison at Castillon in Aquitaine. His target was the besieging French army’s fortified encampment outside the town and, encouraged by dust clouds from what he believed were retreating soldiers, he ordered his own troops to attack. Talbot was the only Englishman to remain mounted – on a white riding horse – and went into battle without armour, honouring a vow he had made to the French king while a prisoner some years earlier. It soon transpired, though, that the French were not retreating – in fact, the dust had simply been raised by horses leaving the camp – and that Talbot’s men were facing the whole French army, dug in behind their fortifications and ready to fire more than 200 guns. Talbot, against the advice of some of his subordinates, pressed on with the assault, possibly because he believed that “his name alone would cause the enemy to flee”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/08/2AYGJ83-eae7084.jpg" width="1772" height="1181" alt="A brightly coloured image depicting a war scene. Many men, all dressed in armour and carrying spears and guns are attacking each other in a large group. One man is trapped under a white horse that has fallen down" title="A 15th-century illustration depicts the death of English commander John Talbot (bottom left), trapped under a stricken horse at the 1453 battle of Castillon (Image by Alamy)" /> What followed was a disaster for his forces: they were cut down by swathes of cannon fire, with every shot from the French artillery taking out up to six English soldiers. After two hours of fighting, the English army was attacked in the flank by a group of Bretons – and, as Talbot sought to deal with the threat, the whole French army sallied out from their camp to complete the rout. While attempting to steady his retreating forces, Talbot’s horse was struck by a cannonball. As the earl lay powerless beneath his steed, a French soldier dispatched him with an axe blow. Talbot’s smashed body was identified by his herald the following day, the telltale feature being a missing tooth in his lower jaw. An examination of his skeleton in the 19th century found evidence of a 7 x 1.6cm hole in his skull, confirming the violent manner of his death. Though described by his adversaries at the time as France’s “dread and terror”, the old earl was held in such respect by the French commanders that they founded a chapel on the spot where he had been killed – a fitting tribute to a veteran campaigner of the chivalric age. His horse received no such monument, though it had played a vital part in the first battle in which artillery proved to be the decisive weapon – and which was also the clash that ultimately led to the end of English rule in France. 4. Did a lost horse doom a dynasty? As the battle of Bosworth raged, Richard III launched a cavalry charge at Henry Tudor but ended up losing the throne – and his life “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” Richard III’s final words before his death at the battle of Bosworth, as imagined by Shakespeare, have a special place in English memory. Tudor propaganda has, famously, coloured popular views of that king’s character and reign, but we have a good understanding of the demise of England’s last Yorkist king – and it was an event in which horses played a central role, if not quite as portrayed by Shakespeare. On 22 August 1485, Richard’s army clashed with the forces of Henry Tudor in the Leicestershire countryside in what’s often considered to have been the final battle in the Wars of the Roses. Following an infantry engagement between the vanguards of the opposing forces, Richard – spotting that his rival was protected by only a small lifeguard – mounted a heavy cavalry charge at Henry. This was not necessarily the desperate act of a doomed monarch, as has been argued; it could have been a carefully calculated attempted decapitation of the rebel leader that would end the battle there and then. In the words of the prime Tudor source for the battle, Polydore Vergil, the king “strick his horse with the spurres” and charged, accompanied by a small body of capable and loyal knights. The gambit almost succeeded: Henry’s standard bearer was killed in the melee, but the charge was stopped and driven towards a marshy area. Richard’s actions were all the more remarkable given that previous battles in the Wars of the Roses had seen little in the way of cavalry action; most of the clashes had been brutal slugfests in which leaders as well as soldiers fought mainly on foot. The king’s attack ultimately proved to be a brief last hurrah for the fabled heavy cavalry charge by medieval knights. The grim reality of exactly how Richard met his end has become clearer since his remains, discovered beneath a Leicester car park in 2012, were subjected to scientific analysis. The concentration of multiple wounds on his head shows that he wasn’t wearing a helmet, and must have been dismounted when he suffered these blows. This accords with the account of Molinet, the only contemporary source detailing Richard’s final moments, who said that the king was killed by a Welsh halberdier after his horse became stuck in marshy ground. In a final indignity, Richard’s dead, naked body was hung over a horse to be taken back to Leicester for burial. A wound through the buttocks, revealed by analysis of the skeleton, suggests this was when a “humiliation injury” was inflicted on the royal corpse. What might have happened had Richard’s cavalry charge broken through and killed Henry Tudor? This is one of the great ‘what ifs’ of English history. In the event, that failure of horse-powered warfare proved the turning point of the battle that heralded the end of the Middle Ages – and tipped England into a new Tudor future. 5. How the mighty have fallen When Henry VIII took a tumble during a joust, he suffered an injury that may have transformed the Tudor dynasty Bosworth may have witnessed the last hurrah for the mounted knight charging across the battlefield, but the knightly tournament lost none of its importance. It remained the pre-eminent vehicle for displays of aristocratic masculinity well into the 16th century. Henry VIII took particular enjoyment in jousting, and constructed a series of purpose-built tiltyards at his lavish homes. It was at his palace and equestrian centre at Greenwich on 24 January 1536 that the 44-year-old Henry suffered a famous accident while jousting with his courtier and friend Sir Henry Norris. During a tilt, Henry’s lance hit Norris’s saddle – and the force of the impact toppled the king from his own saddle, with his horse landing on top of him. Some accounts detailing the severity of Henry’s injuries state that he was knocked unconscious for two hours. Others glossed over the episode, but there seems little doubt that the incident was serious. At the very least, the fall seems to have opened up an older leg injury that plagued the king for the rest of his life, and which also curtailed his ability to take part in hunting. Certainly, Henry never jousted again, and historians have speculated that this accident sparked a turning point in his reign and character. Over the years that followed, the once-athletic king became an increasingly unhealthy, unpredictable and despotic tyrant. While the horse in question may not have been wholly responsible for a sea change in the personality of the king, it may unwittingly have had a hand in the royal succession. Not long after Henry’s fall, Anne Boleyn miscarried his unborn son – a misfortune that, the queen and others believed, had been brought on by worry following the king’s accident. The exact cause of that tragic episode remains unknowable, of course – but if the pregnancy had gone to full term, and if Anne had given birth to a male heir, then the history of the Tudor dynasty could have been very different. Oliver H Creighton is professor of archaeology at the University of Exeter. Robert Liddiard is professor of history at the University of East Anglia. They are co-editors of Medieval Warhorse: Equestrian Landscapes, Material Culture and Zooarchaeology in Britain, AD 800–1550 (Liverpool University Press, 2025) This article was first published in the August 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Live locally, live sustainably, live medieval
If you want to live a sustainable life today, you need to think local. For that, you can channel the experience of the Middle Ages, as Dr Ian Mortimer suggests
When I have a spare moment, I dabble in making hazel hurdle fence panels. It’s gloriously therapeutic. You get yourself a fat bundle of six-foot-long straight hazel rods, ram a few of them vertically into the ground at regular intervals and then cajole the rest of your rods through them on the horizontal, weaving them in and out of the uprights. The trick is to bend the rods robustly so that you can feel the fibres creaking and twisting through your palms, but you can’t be so hard on the wood that it cracks and snaps. It’s bad if that happens. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/Hurdles-panels-f647815.jpeg" width="1006" height="774" alt="A fence made of light brown hazel rods, weaved together. In the background, there is a wall covered in ivy and a wooden structure with fairy lights on it" title="“My shabby efforts at making hazel hurdle panels,” explains Dr David Musgrove. “Note the amateur broken ends of the rods.”" /> I am a rank amateur at this, and the results of my labours are woefully rustic, but I like the process of getting there. If you’re doing it properly, you’re supposed to split the hazel rods in half, but I’ve yet to conquer that art. To see it done masterfully, there are loads of informative videos of competent, serious chaps in forests teasing the wood into beautiful hurdle panels. People have been making hazel hurdle panels for millennia. In the Somerset Levels, archaeologists have excavated them in situ where they were laid down in the Neolithic period as trackways to help people get across the boggy ground. They survive, amazingly, because peat grew up over them and protected them. The trickiest bit of making a hazel hurdle is procuring the rods. You have to coppice trees (ie cut them down to the base) in order to encourage the hazel to shoot up in straight stems. If you’re managing a woodland, you would crop the coppiced hazel on a regular rotation every five to seven years. It’s a very sustainable building material because the wood grows back fast and parallel, and we know that in the Middle Ages, they were definitely managing their local woodlands to supply this. The medieval mindset It’s just one of many examples of sustainable living that our medieval forebears were engaged in, according to the historian and author Dr Ian Mortimer. “They managed their resources in a way that they knew they could get continuing crops off – if you pollard or coppice a tree, it’ll grow back stronger. They knew about all that sort of thing.” For Mortimer, there’s a lesson there for us – we should look back to the Middle Ages for inspiration for living sustainably today. Now I know what you’re thinking: those medieval folks weren’t living sustainably because they wanted to, but simply because they had to. Read more | What was life like in a medieval town? A historical A-Z It’s certainly true, according to Mortimer, that life in 11th-century England was precarious for many. He notes there was a regular cycle of famine at the time, so much so that some parents were willing to sell their children into slavery, “because that was a child’s best chance of survival”. There wasn’t much surplus around, and for most people, there wasn’t ready access to markets to transfer the surplus anyway, so most communities were pretty much self-sufficient and heavily dependent on their own productivity and ingenuity. By the time we get to the 13th century, however, things are different. England was much more of a market economy and a lot of goods were moving around. Surpluses could be transferred from places with plentiful supplies to areas in need. The precariousness of a subsistence economy was thus overcome. Nevertheless, communities continued to source most of their food and raw materials from their locality. The less distance it had to travel, the less vulnerable the society. WATCH | Dr Ian Mortimer on the medieval mindset of maximising sustainability View Green Video on the source website “Local production combined with a market economy is a very positive way of maximising sustainability. Whether the Middle Ages had a concept of environmental protection or not, people living then certainly knew how to marshal their local resources and wider networks. And that included working together, collectively and collaboratively.” To avoid the spectre of food shortages, medieval farmers had to manage their risks across the community, share good and bad land equitably among one another, and accept communal rules about what was gathered when, where and by whom. “Look through the manorial customs of medieval manors, and they’ll be saying when the peasants can go take their pigs into the woods to get the beech mast from the ground, and when they’re allowed to pick up the fallen sticks for their firewood, how much timber they're allowed to take for their houses,” observes Mortimer. “When you think about an open field system, which is what we had across most of central England, you can see how they divide all the strips of land into areas where no one’s going to have all their land blighted by a frost pocket because it’s all divided up and scattered, so there’s an average sort of production level across all the fields.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-2181029275-23ca640.jpg" width="4960" height="2923" alt="Two peasants – one dressed in a red top and blue hat, the other in a blue top with red hat – are bent over in the woods, gathering sticks and twigs. In the background, there are fields, thatched cottages and a man riding a white horse" title="Two peasants gather sticks and twigs, turning them into bundles. This traditional wintertime activity is shown here in a Book of Hours c1550 (Image by Getty)" /> Community values What Mortimer is describing there is a way of living communally where resources were shared in a way that was seen as equitable. It had to be managed and rules observed of course, and that’s where the customs of the manor, and the writ of the lord’s local representative, the reeve, came into play. This wasn’t some utopian land of harmony – some people didn’t conform, sometimes there were disputes and disagreements, and sometimes the lords of the manors pressed hard with their demands on the peasants. But there was a strong element of co-operation among these communities to allow for this way of living. Living sustainably was only sustainable if they worked together. People in the Middle Ages would not have understood the concept of sustainable living – to them, it was just living. So you might take the view that this interpretation is simply historians today mirroring 21st-century concerns and projecting them onto the past. Of course, that’s true to an extent – history is always a reflection of the present. However, academics have been writing about this aspect of medieval life for quite a while. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-1156947533-1ba6999.jpg" width="5414" height="4372" alt="A shepherd dressed in light brown and red stands by his flock of sheep. He stands on a yellow path, next to a cream building. In the background, there are more buildings, lots of green trees and a big blue building" title="A shepherd leading his flock, as depicted in a 15th-century miniature. There was a strong ethos of cooperation between medieval peasants (Image by Getty)" /> There is an interesting paper written back in 1990 by Jules Pretty, who is now emeritus professor of environment and society at the University of Essex, and a noted voice in sustainable living. His paper, published in the Agricultural History Review, and called “Sustainable Agriculture in the Middle Ages: The English Manor”, makes the argument that the medieval peasantry valued highly the goals of stability, sustainability and equitability. Like Mortimer, Pretty stresses the importance of neighbourly cooperation: “Villagers traded ale, cereals, hay, livestock and wood, and hired out livestock, ploughs, harrows and carts. Secondly, they provided support and mutual help for each other, particularly through crop and plough-team sharing arrangements. Peasants lent grain, livestock, tools and household utensils to needy neighbours, though these arrangements were more common between small and middle landowners. Thirdly, communal decisions were taken against individuals who had attempted to over-consume or underinvest in the communal resources – in particular those who had encroached onto the common wastes, had over-used the commons, over-gleaned the fields, or had neglected their obligations to maintain roads, ditches, hedges and gate.” Read more | 5 things you (probably) didn't know about... late medieval England Waste not, want not Of course, they were also very mindful of not wasting what they did produce. All parts of the animals they kept were eaten, and they consumed the old animals rather than the young so that they could be sure of getting all the resources (milk, wool, that sort of thing) from them in life. They made sure that they returned what they could to the land they worked as well. The use of animal, and human, excrement for manure was a major concern. And when it came to building materials, they were very happy to reuse stone and timbers from old structures wherever they could – you only have to look at the Roman bricks in the great Norman tower of St Albans Cathedral to see that. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/dreamstimel218021476-2c7d446.jpg" width="2736" height="1826" alt="A photograph of St Albans Cathedral. To the left, a tree partially obscures the building. To the right, a large building with many arched windows and a large tower." title="The Norman tower of St Albans Cathedral includes reused Roman bricks, just one example of a sustainable building practice in the Middle Ages (Image by Dreamstime)" /> In his forthcoming book, Mortimer’s A-Z of English History (Old Street, publication scheduled for 21 October 2025), Mortimer succinctly explains this, and he’s let me quote a few paragraphs here: “Today, few of us keep vats of urine stored around the house. But up until the 19th century it is collected and put to use in fulling wool and scouring cloth, as well as being employed in various dyeing processes. It is in demand because it’s a natural and cheap source of ammonia, which is an alkali. People also use spots of it when removing stains from clothing. It becomes more efficacious when it is old, so people really do store vats of it for long periods of time. Thus, when you imagine the smells in an ordinary medieval home, along with the smoke and the traces of rotting offal in the rushes, add the smell of stale piss. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-56258750-f833761.jpg" width="4018" height="4915" alt="A document showing drawings of 12 bottles of urine. The top 5 are filled with urine from red to green colour, the second row of four have orange and yellow, and the last row of three contain very dark red to black urine" title="A series of flagons containing urine, which, until the 19th century, used to be stored by people at home for various tasks (Image by Getty)" /> “The point here is not to laugh at how gross life was in the past. It is rather that people in the pre-industrial age look at things that we think of as undesirable in different ways. In the 1960s the sociologist Mary Douglas famously observed that there is objectively no such thing as ‘dirt’ but rather what we call ‘dirt’ is simply ‘matter out of place’. A good example is manure: in the garden, it is definitely in the right place; in the middle of your living room carpet, it is dirt. This is why medieval people keep hold of things that neither you nor I would want lingering around the house. In a world created by God, everything has its ‘right place’. “Usefulness is the key. Or sustainability, as we might call it today. Medieval people keep old ashes from the hearth to make potash, which is used for scouring pots and pans with handfuls of straw. They also use potash for making lye (in which you wash your hair, even though it is strongly alkaline). It is also a key ingredient of liquid soap (in which you clean your clothes). Likewise, medieval people will eat all manner of offal that we would throw away. Apples are kept carefully for a full year; if they turn rotten, they are pressed to make cider. Nothing is wasted. Bones are boiled for their marrow. Fat is stored in dripping pans. Skins from all sorts of animals, including goats, dogs and cats, are made into gloves. Fallen boughs and sticks are put aside for firewood. The heat that remains in an oven after the bread has been baked is used to make small cakes. ‘Waste not, want not’ is the motto by which everyone lives unless they are rich enough to be a ‘waster’, and even the wasters let their castoffs and rubbish be used by other people. Almost nothing is thrown away except broken pottery and the cloth used to wipe your ‘nether end’.” The three Rs In our interview, I didn’t chat to Mortimer about the repair culture in the Middle Ages very much, but we did run a fascinating interview on the HistoryExtra podcast a little while ago with the German medievalist Professor Annette Kehnel, author of The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability. Kehnel explained how the repair business was a thriving one in European medieval cities, with people making their livelihoods by repairing clothes, shoes and household goods. You can listen to that here. So, if you think of the three Rs of sustainability – reduce, reuse, recycle – the people of the Middle Ages were absolutely living the second and third values in that list, but not so much the first. Reducing consumption wasn’t really in the gift of most people, with the limited resources available to them, though Mortimer does note that the strictures of the church in terms of not eating meat does play into that: “ You could take the view that the restriction on eating meat across Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays in the Catholic church was not just a spiritual thing, but also about eking out protein because you don’t need to eat meat every single day. Eating fish as opposed to meat then naturally balances things out.” Read more | Why there’s no such thing as a typical medieval peasant To conclude then, Mortimer’s message, drawing on his knowledge of the Middle Ages, is that, if we want to live sustainably today, “Necessities all need to be local and all need to be transported within the locality, in a way that’s reliable and energy-efficient and low cost.” There are problems with that. It’s much more difficult to buy locally if you happen to live in a modern conurbation, and as is regularly reported, it’s often much more expensive to buy locally produced foods than it is to get imported products in a supermarket. But there are urban co-operative movements springing up across the UK that are trying to address those problems. It’s been argued, and counter-argued, that the decline of neighbourliness occurred in the post-medieval period as the ethical code of the old village community unwound in the face of more individualistic behaviour in the 16th and 17th centuries. That debate has been going on among social historians of early modern England for decades, and it carries on still. I’m not going to get into that here, but perhaps the message is that locality, community and sustainability fit together. That certainly was the case in the Middle Ages, and maybe that’s something we should think about today. If we want to live sustainably, we need to think about how we live as local communities and cooperate harmoniously. This article is part of HistoryExtra's new Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter for more articles and podcasts exploring the ways in which history can help us live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.
What was life like in a medieval town? A historical A-Z
What was life like in a medieval town? Were the streets really filled with filth? How did people make a living, and where could they grab a bite to eat? Speaking on the HistoryExtra Podcast, Professor Carole Rawcliffe takes us through an A to Z of urban life in Britain in the Middle Ages. Words by James Osborne
A… is for Architecture According to Professor Carole Rawcliffe, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, would-be travellers in medieval England, Scotland and Wales approaching a large town would likely first notice the distinctive walls and gates. These were more than just practical defences, going as far as symbolising civic identity. “Walls and gates often appear on the town seals,” Professor Rawcliffe explains. Dunfermline and Norwich, for example, proudly displayed their gates alongside royal lions. B… is for Bathhouses Bathhouses were not as common in England as they were in Europe. While in Germany, bathhouses were considered charitable institutions, in England, the best-known examples were the Southwark ‘stews’. These were not just public baths but also doubled as brothels, a connection that led to their temporary closure in 1506 during a major outbreak of syphilis. “Henry VII closes them down […] but they open up again by popular demand soon after,” explains Rawcliffe. C… is for Cleanliness The idea that medieval towns were drowning in filth is an inaccurate one. The reality – according to Professor Rawcliffe ­– was that “most towns put a great emphasis on the cleanliness of their streets and their clean water supply”. Read more | A brief history of human filth: how did people try to keep clean in the past? Laws were strict. Bristol, for example, imposed a fine of three shillings and fourpence (a week’s wages for a journeyman) for anyone caught emptying chamber pots onto the street. In Cambridge, market spaces were required to be cleaned twice a day from 1379 onwards. Towns also hired ‘rakers’ to clear dung, introduced refuse collection, and regulated butchery to prevent animal waste from contaminating public areas. D… is for Disease Towns were vulnerable to epidemic disease, particularly the Black Death, which killed vast swathes of the urban population in the 14th century. The belief at the time was that plague spread through ‘bad air’ (miasma), leading to street-cleaning measures in an attempt to prevent outbreaks. In 1489, both Henry VII and James IV of Scotland complained in correspondence to Dublin and Edinburgh respectively that dirty streets would not only cause plague but also deter traders, reducing royal revenue. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/GettyImages-599954069-b0f1c15.jpg" width="671" height="1024" alt="Death Strangling a Victim of the Plague. From the Stiny Codex, 14th century." title="Medieval towns were vulnerable to epidemic disease, particularly the Black Death, which killed vast swathes of the urban population in the 14th century. (Photo by Getty Images)" /> E… is for Economy At their peak in the early 14th century, only around 15 per cent of England and Wales’s population lived in towns, with Scotland’s urban population being even lower at 10 per cent. There were a handful of larger towns – London (80,000 people), Norwich (25,000), York, Coventry, Bristol, and Newcastle – that dominated trade, while smaller boroughs were economically dependent on their markets and craft industries. “If you were a shoemaker in York, you could go and sell in [nearby] Beverley or Ripon,” explains Rawcliffe, but in Scotland, this was much more restricted due to “commercial monopolies that made Scottish burghs more like Italian city-states”. Read more | Medieval manners and etiquette: dos and don’ts of the Middle Ages F… is for Fire Fire was a constant danger in medieval towns, especially given the high density of wooden buildings and open hearths. But the idea that towns burned down regularly is misleading. Rawcliffe explains that after London’s Great Fire of 1212, also known as the Great Fire of Southwark, new laws required new houses within the city walls to be built with tiled roofs. These measures worked, as “London did not have a major fire from 1212 until 1666”. Other towns introduced similar regulations, requiring water buckets outside houses during hot weather, and ensuring that parishes had ladders and ‘fire hooks’ – long poles used to pull down burning buildings to create firebreaks. In Norwich in 1272, fire was a deliberate act of urban violence: during a riot, angry townspeople burnt part of the cathedral and monastery in an act of rebellion. On the Scottish and Welsh borders, fires were even more common, as towns were frequently attacked and burned during conflicts. Listen on the podcast | Medieval towns: everything you wanted to know G… is for Guilds Guilds regulated professions, ensuring quality control and fair wages while also playing a key civic role. Some were deeply connected to immigration; Flemish weavers in Norwich and Dutch brewers in London brought their skills and formed trade associations. “A lot of the Dutch immigrants in England were beer brewers,” explains Rawcliffe, “and they help drive the switch from ale to hopped beer in the 15th century.” Wealthier guilds had their own halls, and many participated in civic pageantry. Some also provided charitable support, ensuring that their sick or elderly members were cared for. H… is for Housing Medieval towns were built densely, but zoning laws helped manage the space (more on that later…). Richer residents were more likely to have lived in town centres, while ‘smelly’ industries – such as tanning, dyeing, and butchery – were pushed to the outskirts. Houses ranged from grand stone merchant homes to simple timber dwellings. Multi-storey buildings became common to maximise limited space. In York, housing shortages were so severe that some people resorted to keeping livestock indoors (and one regulation meant that residents would be fined six shillings and eightpence for hiding a cow in their house!) <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/GettyImages-639163716-43cf0ba.jpg" width="983" height="1024" alt="Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire, 14th century. North Yorkshire. It was one of the wealthiest abbeys in England until it was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1538. Artist Peter Dunn. (Photo by English Getty Images)" title="Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire, 14th century. North Yorkshire. It was one of the wealthiest abbeys in England until it was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1538. Artist Peter Dunn. (Photo by English Heritage/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> I… is for Immigrants Medieval towns could be relatively multicultural. “We have records of 64,000 documented resident aliens in England in the later Middle Ages,” explains Professor Rawcliffe. Norwich had a Bruges-born mayor. Meanwhile German merchants lived in London’s Steelyard. However, tensions could flare. In London in 1517, a violent anti-foreigner riot – later known as ‘Evil May Day’ – targeted immigrant merchants and revealed simmering resentment towards outsiders. Read more | The Evil May Day Riots of 1517: what happened? J… is for Justice Medieval towns had no police force, so law enforcement relied on local officials and community reporting. Bailiffs and town constables managed everyday law enforcement, while serious crimes were tried in town courts. Punishments were often public. The pillory (where offenders had rotten food and even dead animals thrown at them) was a common sentence for fraud or selling bad food. For repeat offenders, the ultimate punishment was banishment – and this could be catastrophic. “If you’re expelled, that’s it. You lose your business, your trade,” Professor Rawcliffe explains. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/GettyImages-1022817348-c16d01c.jpg" width="847" height="1024" alt="Illustration showing medieval punishment. Ridicule was regarded as a great remedy against minor offences. (Photo by Getty Images)" title="Illustration showing medieval punishment. Ridicule was regarded as a great remedy against minor offences. (Photo by Getty Images)" /> K… is for Kitchens (or lack of!) Many homes lacked cooking facilities, so towns had a thriving ‘takeaway’ food culture. Cookshops sold pies, roasted meat, and soups, making fast food a staple of urban life. But poor hygiene was a problem: London’s cookshops were frequently sued for selling rancid meat, or falsely advertising mutton as venison. For those who could afford it, medieval towns also had taverns, where you could enjoy wine, ale, and spiced dishes imported from overseas. L… is for Livestock Animals were a common sight in towns. Even within walled cities like London, people had orchards, pastureland, and gardens. Norwich, which was relatively rural, had cattle grazing inside the walls. Read more | Child-killing "demon-hosts": pigs in the medieval city But keeping livestock could be chaotic. Loose pigs wandering the streets were such a problem that many towns issued fines to those responsible for them. M… is for Markets Markets were the heart of medieval towns, both economically and socially. They were where townspeople purchased food, fabric, tools, and other essentials, and where merchants from the surrounding countryside and even overseas came to sell their goods. Different towns became known for their specialities. York’s market was famous for its high-quality meat, while Brecon’s market was once poetically described as “the Constantinople of Wales” due to its thriving trade. However, market spaces could also be chaotic and dangerous, with large crowds and frequent traffic congestion as carts, livestock, and pedestrians all tried to navigate narrow streets. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/GettyImages-173275080-050d377.jpg" width="1024" height="762" alt="Fair at Westminster, London, in the 14th century. Markets were the heart of medieval towns, both economically and socially. (Photo by Getty Images)" title="Fair at Westminster, London, in the 14th century. Markets were the heart of medieval towns, both economically and socially. (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Strict rules were in place to prevent fraudulent trading. Weights and measures had to be officially checked, and bakers, butchers, and brewers who sold underweight goods or spoiled food could face severe punishments, including being put in the pillory. As Professor Rawcliffe explains, medieval consumers were far from passive: “People would sue the owners of cookshops because the pie had been rancid or was pretending to be venison when it was just mutton.” N… is for Nightlife As much as medieval towns were places of work and trade, they were also places of entertainment. After the day’s business, people gathered in alehouses, inns, and taverns to drink, socialise, and sometimes gamble. Some of these establishments had a rough reputation, but they were essential to town life. Town musicians, known as "waits", performed at civic celebrations, and minstrels and travelling performers entertained in taverns and at feasts. Read more | 6 ingredients for a memorable medieval feast There were also more organised forms of entertainment. Guild feasts, mystery plays, and religious processions were popular, particularly on festival days. Town records show that King’s Lynn once paid for a conjurer with a performing dog, while other towns brought in bagpipers or theatrical performers. However, nightlife could also be a source of disorder. Drunkenness, brawling, and illegal gambling were common complaints, and town officials often introduced curfews to maintain order. “If you look at urban records,” says Rawcliffe, “you will see that fines for gambling, fighting, and drinking too much crop up regularly.” O… is for Occupations Medieval towns had a huge variety of occupations, ranging from butchers and bakers to high-status professionals like lawyers, physicians, and apothecaries. The types of jobs available depended on the town – London had Italian bankers on Lombard Street, while Norwich had a thriving textile industry dominated by Flemish weavers. Trades were closely regulated by the guilds, which controlled apprenticeships, training, and quality standards. Some occupations were more hazardous than others – tanners, dyers, and blacksmiths were pushed to the outskirts of towns due to the smells and fire hazards associated with their work. Service jobs were also common. Many people worked as domestic servants, stable hands, or market porters, and there was a significant number of female brewers and midwives. At the bottom of the social scale were beggars and casual labourers, who often struggled to make a living. Read more | What was life like for a medieval housewife? P… is for Pilgrims Religious pilgrimage was one of the key reasons for travel in the medieval period, and towns that housed important shrines saw huge economic benefits from pilgrims passing through. Canterbury, York, and Walsingham were some of the most popular pilgrimage destinations in England, attracting thousands of visitors each year. Read more | How to go on a medieval pilgrimage These visitors provided a steady stream of income for local businesses. Inns, taverns, and cookshops profited from pilgrims needing food and shelter, while market stalls sold souvenirs such as badges, relics, and prayer books. Some towns even had pilgrim hospitals, providing food and basic medical care to the poorer travellers. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/GettyImages-171095061-a3aac22.jpg" width="631" height="1024" alt="Canterbury pilgrims portrait - illuminated manuscript Geoffrey Chaucer (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)" title="Canterbury, York, and Walsingham were some of the most popular pilgrimage destinations in medieval England, attracting thousands of visitors each year. (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Q… is for Quarters Medieval towns were often divided into distinct quarters based on occupation, wealth, or ethnicity. London had an Italian quarter where Lombard bankers operated, while Norwich had a large Flemish community of weavers. Some of the quarters were defined by craft or trade. Smithfield in London, for example, was known for its butchers and meat markets, while other areas housed goldsmiths or cloth merchants. These divisions helped with the organisation of trade and taxation, but they could also create tensions. Foreign merchants were often resented by local traders, leading to periodic anti-immigrant riots, such as the ‘Evil May Day’ riot mentioned above. R… is for Roads Despite the relatively small size of medieval towns compared to today’s cities, traffic congestion was a problem. Town streets were narrow and often unpaved, meaning that carts could get stuck in the mud, especially in wet weather. Bridges and gates created notorious bottlenecks. “You imagine people coming in on market day over a bridge, across a moat, through a gate – you've got these great pileups of carts, people on horseback, pilgrims, traders, and pedestrians,” Professor Rawcliffe explains. This congestion was not just an inconvenience but a significant safety risk. Read more | The A to B of medieval travel: 8 tips for travelling in the Middle Ages Accidents were common, and children were particularly vulnerable. “If you look at coroner's records,” says Professor Rawcliffe, “a lot of children are getting killed in traffic accidents, run over by carts with big iron-shod wheels.” Some towns tried to regulate traffic by banning certain vehicles from central areas or requiring carts to be parked outside the walls on market days. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/GettyImages-1181179069-3e18433.jpg" width="1024" height="753" alt="Gates like this one in Southampton could create bottlenecks on busy days. “You imagine people coming in on market day over a bridge, across a moat, through a gate – you've got these great pileups of carts, people on horseback, pilgrims, traders, and pedestrians,” Professor Rawcliffe explains. (Photo by Getty Images)" title="Gates like this one in Southampton could create bottlenecks on busy days. “You imagine people coming in on market day over a bridge, across a moat, through a gate – you've got these great pileups of carts, people on horseback, pilgrims, traders, and pedestrians,” Professor Rawcliffe explains. (Photo by Getty Images)" /> S… is for Sanitation If medieval towns weren’t actually as dirty as you might have expected, who was responsible for keeping these streets clean? Larger towns employed ‘rakers’ – people paid to remove refuse – and some introduced public latrines. London, after the Black Death of the mid-14th century, invested in 24 new refuse carts to help keep the streets clean. Read more | Your guide to the Black Death However, enforcing these rules was not always easy. Butchers were supposed to dispose of waste outside town walls, but many dumped animal remains into rivers instead. There were also fines for keeping pigs in town, since wandering livestock added to the mess. Complaints about filth and bad smells were common in legal records, showing that townspeople were very aware of hygiene issues and often took action against their neighbours when cleanliness standards were ignored. T… is for Timekeeping Before the widespread use of mechanical clocks, time in medieval towns was marked primarily by church bells, which rang for religious services and signalled the opening and closing of markets. This method of timekeeping was known as liturgical time, and daily life was structured around these intervals. “If you look at urban records,” Professor Rawcliffe explains, “you will see that events are often timed by church services –‘just before vespers’, for example.” However, from the 14th century onwards, towns began installing public clocks that divided the day into regular hourly increments. London was among the first to have municipal clocks, with one installed in Soper Lane by the late 14th century. Other major towns soon followed suit, with town halls and guildhalls boasting large, highly visible clocks that became symbols of civic pride. U… is for Urban pride Towns were more than just places of trade; they were sources of immense local pride. Citizens boasted about their town’s history, importance, and grandeur, sometimes to absurd degrees. Poets and chroniclers wrote panegyrics –poems of praise – celebrating their hometowns. Read more | Michael Wood on amazing insights into medieval daily life “Even quite small towns had a great sense of heritage and their own greatness,” says Rawcliffe. She gives an example of Oswestry, a market town on the Welsh border, where at least two poets wrote lengthy verses about how marvellous its markets were. In another case, a local poet described Brecon as “the Constantinople of Wales”, drawing an ambitious comparison between a small Welsh town and the great Byzantine capital. V… is for Vagrants Towns attracted not only merchants and craftsmen but also beggars, wanderers, and the unemployed. These individuals, known as vagrants, were a cause of anxiety for local authorities, particularly after the Black Death. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/GettyImages-463954817-dbf18a2.jpg" width="1024" height="453" alt="Medieval towns attracted not only merchants and craftsmen but also beggars, wanderers, and the unemployed. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)" title="Medieval towns attracted not only merchants and craftsmen but also beggars, wanderers, and the unemployed. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)" /> With so many people displaced by economic hardship, towns feared that large numbers of jobless and homeless individuals could lead to crime or unrest. To control vagrancy, many towns introduced strict laws. Able-bodied beggars were often expelled unless they could prove they were actively seeking work. However, not all vagrants were criminals. Some were simply travelling workers looking for employment. Others were pilgrims, mendicant friars, or displaced peasants seeking a fresh start in town. W… is for Warfare Towns could be dangerous places during times of war, particularly if they were fortified strongholds or major trading hubs. Some, such as Southampton, were vulnerable to coastal raids – in the 14th century, the town was attacked by the French in a violent plundering raid. Read more | Medieval warfare: five deceptive ways to win a battle On the Scottish and Welsh borders, warfare was an ongoing reality. Some towns, such as Carlisle, were regularly raided during conflicts between England and Scotland. Townsfolk often rebuilt homes and defences with the expectation that they would be destroyed again. To protect themselves, towns strengthened their walls and gates, and in some cases, they maintained small militias. Wealthier towns could afford paid guards, while smaller settlements relied on watchmen and armed citizens. X… is for Xenophobia Despite benefiting from foreign trade and immigration, medieval towns sometimes experienced anti-foreigner violence, such as with the Evil May Day riots of 1517, when English apprentices rioted against foreign merchants, accusing them of taking jobs and undercutting local businesses. Similar hostility could be found in smaller towns. Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn saw periodic clashes between local merchants and foreign traders, especially the Hanseatic League’s German merchants, who were accused of having unfair trading advantages. However, not all immigrants were unwelcome. In some cases, towns actively invited foreign craftsmen and traders, particularly Flemish weavers and Dutch brewers, who helped drive economic growth. Y… is for Young Apprentices Apprenticeships were the gateway to skilled work in medieval towns. Boys – and sometimes girls – were taken in by a master craftsman, living in their household and training for several years. “You had to be quite well-off to be an independent tradesman,” explains Professor Rawcliffe. Apprenticeships usually lasted seven years, and during this time, the apprentice was expected to obey strict rules, including bans on gambling, drinking, and immoral behaviour. For those who successfully completed their training, the rewards were significant. A qualified craftsman could become a full guild member, gain status, and eventually take on apprentices of their own. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/GettyImages-51240219-cb35e56.jpg" width="1024" height="1019" alt="Circa 1250, A pair of medieval armourers at work. One is beating a helmet on an anvil, while the other is squinting along the blade of a sword to check its straightness. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="A pair of medieval armourers at work, c1250. One is beating a helmet on an anvil, while the other is squinting along the blade of a sword to check its straightness. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> Z… is for Zones Medieval towns were carefully zoned to separate different types of activity. Authorities pushed unpleasant industries to the outskirts, while the wealthiest residents lived near the centre. “Tanning, butchery, tallow-making, parchment-making, and dyeing were all moved to the periphery,” Professor Rawcliffe explains, as these trades produced horrific smells and waste. Markets were centrally located, often around a main square or near the church, while wealthier homes were built close to the guildhall or civic centre. The most undesirable housing was typically near town walls or gates, where residents were more vulnerable to crime and attacks. Zoning laws weren’t just about practicality – they also reflected social hierarchy. The closer you lived to the centre, the more important you were. Wealthy merchants, officials, and clergy occupied prime real estate, while the poor were pushed to the fringes. Listen on the podcast | Medieval towns: everything you wanted to know
Michael Wood on amazing insights into medieval daily life
"Globalism is ironing out the fabulous texture and diversity of the old world", writes historian Michael Wood
Coming from industrial Manchester in the cold, rainy north of England, I have loved the Mediterranean all my life. The wondrous diversity of landscapes, cultures and histories, and the peoples around its shores – all are an inexhaustible delight. Recently, I’ve gone back to an old favourite book, A Mediterranean Society by Shelomo Dov Goitein. Published from 1967, it’s never included in those ‘great historians’ debates, but it is a masterpiece. A portrait of medieval merchant communities in the eastern Mediterranean, its canvas is huge, stretching across Europe to India, and from Morocco to Crimea. It centres on one of the world’s most amazing historical archives: the Cairo Geniza (‘storeroom’ in Hebrew) of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat, Old Cairo – a stone’s throw from the Nile. A windowless box of a room on the second floor, reachable only via a rickety wooden ladder, by the 19th century it was stacked floor to ceiling with boxes of documents. A photo from 1898 shows some of them: heaped, crumbling, wrapped in cloth, crammed in wooden tea chests. These were the business documents – and so much else – of medieval Jewish merchant communities, and are especially rich for the period 950–1250. There were 400,000 of them – the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts anywhere in the world. Read more | Michael Wood on the rise of a new world order The Geniza was one of hundreds that once existed in the hyper-literate society of the medieval Levant. They survived because Jewish tradition dictated that Hebrew script was sacred and should not be thrown away but stored or buried reverently in a cemetery. Removed from Egypt in 1897, this incredible treasure trove is now divided between many libraries, with the majority of the documents in Cambridge. After the Second World War, Goitein – already a great scholar in the languages of the Near East – decided to dedicate the rest of his life’s work to the archive. The result was his portrait of the Geniza in five volumes, the last of which went to the publisher on the day he died in 1985. There were many other offshoots, too, including a fantastic book of medieval letters from the India trade annotated and translated by Goitein and a colleague. The documents in the Geniza include a vast range of texts. As well as business records there are materials with philosophical, legal, scientific, mystical and linguistic contents, school exercises, merchants’ account books and communal records. Especially fascinating is the huge correspondence comprising thousands of documents dating from the ninth to the 13th centuries. There are letters from Jewish traders en route from Egypt and Tunisia to Yemen and ultimately to India. Their business ties went to Seville and Samarkand, even to Kyiv and Rouen; their ports included Marseille, Genoa and Venice. We read in Viking-age sources from western Europe about Jewish merchants who spoke Persian, Arabic, Aramaic, Latin and Greek – and here they are, motors of a new world driven not by violence and conquest but by trade, exchange, contacts, profit and loss. The Geniza contained riches beyond measure. Goitein’s database features more than 35,000 people, notably 200 main families whose stories could be traced over centuries. We can join them in Fustat, sheltering from the fierce heat in the street outside, or sitting in a reception room where you drank tea while sorting out your insurance for boats to Morocco or down the Red Sea to India. Read more | Kavita Puri on India's long Jewish history These documents reveal details of daily life from late antiquity until around 1200. In them you can discover, as Goitein did, “900-year-old attitudes toward messianism, remarriage, homosexuality, foreign travel and pigeon-racing”. Ancient correspondence and business accounts “reveal clues about excommunication, social drinking, the price of flax, the Judeo-Arabic terminology for so-called sweating sickness, the total absence in this older Middle Eastern world of the Bar Mitzva ritual, and the prevalence in the same context of good, hot take-out food”. Globalism has brought many good things, but it is fast ironing out the fabulous texture and diversity of the old world. Within the walls of the Geniza, those stories still live. And isn’t that why we all love history so much? Literally, all human life is there. This column was first published in the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
What are the Easter treats known as Biddenden cakes, and who were the Biddenden Maids?
What are Biddenden cakes? Every Easter Monday, a Kent village celebrates the story of the Biddenden Maids, medieval sisters who were reputedly joined at the hip and shoulder. Who were the sisters, and why did they become a symbol represented on these Easter biscuits?
Every Easter Monday, in the village of Biddenden in Kent, a charity doles out tea, cheese and loaves of bread to local pensioners, and distributes hard-baked biscuits, known as Biddenden cakes, to villagers and visitors alike. Stamped on each cake is a representation of the ‘Biddenden maids’, conjoined twins from the 12th century who supposedly left money in their wills to found the charity. Joined at hip and shoulder, the twins, usually named as Eliza and Mary Chulkhurst, are said to have lived to their thirties and died within six hours of one another in 1134. There is little evidence, though, that the Chulkhursts actually existed and the earliest account of what is probably a legend was only published in 1770. Jan Bondeson, a senior lecturer at Cardiff University, takes up the tale to trace what can be known about the Biddenden legend… Who were the Biddenden Maids? According to tradition, the Biddenden Maids, Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst, were born to fairly wealthy parents in the year 1100. Their bodies were joined at the hips and shoulders. They were naturally very close friends, although one source states that they sometimes disagreed in minor matters, and had “frequent quarrels, which sometimes terminated in blows”. In 1134, Mary was suddenly taken ill and died. It was proposed that Eliza should be separated from her sister’s corpse by means of a surgical operation, but she refused with the words, “As we came together we will also go together”, and herself died six hours later. In their joint will, the two Biddenden Maids left 20 acres of land to the churchwardens; the rent from these Bread and Cheese Lands was to provide an annual dole to the deserving poor. When Biddenden Church was visited by the Archdeacon of Canterbury on Easter Day 1605, the custom that “on that day our parson giveth unto the parishioners bread, cheese, cakes and divers barrels of beer, brought in there and drawn” was not observed, because it was usually accompanied by “much disorder by reason of some unruly ones, which at such a time we cannot restrain with any ease”. Read more | Eggs, bunnies and Jesus Christ: the history and origins of Easter In 1645, the Rector William Horner brought a lawsuit to claim that the Bread and Cheese Lands were glebe land, but he lost the case. In the 18th century, the charity was distributed directly after afternoon service, and the church was filled with a large and hungry congregation. Those who did not gain an entrance into the crowded church had to be content with the hard Biddenden Cakes with the maids’ effigy, which were thrown out among the populace from the church roof; already in the 18th century, these cakes were much sought after as curiosities. A gravestone marked with a diagonal line, situated near the rector’s pew, was shown to visitors as the Biddenden Maids’ place of interment. Did the Biddenden Maids really exist? The 18th-century sources on the Biddenden Maids agree that the charity had existed for a very long time and that it had been given by two conjoined twin sisters. An anonymous article in The Gentleman’s Magazine of 1770 states that the maids were conjoined from the waist down to the hips, and thus not joined at two separate anatomical sites. They were not known by any particular name. In spite of the high antiquity of the tradition, the writer did not doubt its authenticity. But Edward Hasted’s History of Kent stated that the legend of the Biddenden Maids was merely a vulgar tradition. The charity had been initiated by two maidens by the name of Preston; the picture of the women on the cakes was the likeness of two poor widows, the most likely recipients of the Biddenden charity. But the charity can be traced back into the first years of the 17th century, and in the legal documents from Parson Horner’s lawsuit, it is said to have existed for many years. Furthermore, the depositions of witnesses among these documents inform us that these lands had originally been given by “two Maidens that grew together in their bodies”. This shows that already in the 1650s, tradition stated that Biddenden Maids were conjoined twins, and Edward Hasted’s claim to the contrary can be disproved. It is remarkable that these depositions of witnesses do not contain the names of the benefactors, neither Chulkhurst nor Preston. Because the twin sisters’ name was stated to be unknown also in the reliable 18th-century accounts of the tradition, the names Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst must be suspected to be a later invention. Another difficulty in accepting the tradition of the Biddenden Maids is the nature of their condition: on the available cakes and drawings, they are depicted as being conjoined both at the shoulders and at the hips. It is extremely rare for conjoined twins to have two separate parts of conjunction, and few modern teratologists (those who study malformations in foetuses) would accept the possibility of a fusion at the hips and shoulders in a pair of viable twins. History's Greatest Conspiracy Theories Member exclusive | Was the moon landing faked? Did Shakespeare actually write his plays? Were the pyramids built by aliens? Expert historians offer their perspectives on history's biggest conspiracy theories. Listen to all episodes now It is more likely, however, that they were only conjoined at the hips and thus belonged to the teratological type pygopagus. Such conjoined twins each have two arms and legs, and it has often been noted that in order to walk without difficulty, they put their arms around each other’s shoulders; this might have led to the Biddenden Maids being depicted in the way described above. A fair proportion of the pygopagus twins are perfectly viable at birth, and several of the historical cases have reached maturity. The Hungarian Sisters, Helena and Judith, were a celebrated pair of 18th-century pygopagus twins; the sisters travelled extensively through Europe and were examined by many eminent anatomists and naturalists. They died in 1723 aged 22. Millie and Christine, pygopagus conjoined twin girls born in Columbus County, North Carolina, in 1851, were on tour as human curiosities for the larger part of their adult lives, and travelled to Europe several times. In the early 1900s, they retired from show business, but Millie became ill with tuberculosis and died in 1912, Christine following her eight hours later. In the light of these three case histories, it is not unlikely that the Biddenden Maids may have lived as long as 34 years. Nor it is impossible that one sister survived the other for six hours. The Biddenden Maids are not mentioned in any of the major teratological works of the 16th and 17th centuries. In contrast, there is a remarkable accumulation of reports of conjoined twins in the beginning of the 12th century. Lycosthenes’ Chronicon Prodigorum et Ostentorum stated that there were conjoined twin brothers born in England in 1112, and that their bodies were joined at the hips and upper body, as in the popular descriptions of the Biddenden Maids. The Chronicon Scotorum tells us that in 1099, a woman gave birth to “two children together, in this year, and they had but one body from the breast to the navel, and they were two girls.” The Annals of the Four Masters has an almost identical description, although the conjoined twin girls are stated to have been born in 1103; in the Annals of Clonmacnoise their year of birth is given as 1100. These ancient descriptions add credibility to the old tradition that the Biddenden Maids were really born in 1100. It should be added that in this year, King William Rufus was found dead in the New Forest with an arrow either of a hunter or an assassin in his breast. Several prodigies were said to have preceded the death of this monarch. The birth of conjoined twins might well be regarded as another strange happening foreboding the king’s death, and thus be noticed both in the chronicles and in folk tradition. Read more | When women tied up men for Jesus: why Henry VIII tried to ban the medieval festival of Hocktide Based on a revised extract from Jan Bondeson's book Freaks: The Pig-Faced Lady of Manchester Square and Other Medical Marvels (Tempus Publishing, 2004)
How pigs caused a stink in medieval England
Dolly Jørgensen explores medieval England's love-hate relationship with the urban pig
They attacked children. They exhumed dead bodies. They were even thought to be in league with the devil. And yet, despite this long list of misdemeanours, pigs were an indispensable part of urban life in the Middle Ages. Speaking to Spencer Mizen, Dolly Jørgensen reveals why medieval city-dwellers were so dependent on swine – and explains what city authorities did to prevent rogue pigs from running riot. Dolly Jørgensen is the author of The Medieval Pig (Boydell Press, 2024) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones
Medieval towns: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
Were medieval towns filthy? How often did fires break out? And where could you get a slap-up meal? Carole Rawcliffe answers listener questions on urban life in the Middle Ages
What was it like to live in a British town or city in the Middle Ages? Were they filthy hotbeds of crime and violence? How often did fires break out? And where could you get a good slap-up meal if you were hungry? In this 'everything you wanted to know' episode, historian Professor Carole Rawcliffe speaks to David Musgrove to answer listener questions about medieval urban life – from filth and fire, to fast food, foreigners and fighting on the streets.