Dr. Eleanor Yonega (2:12)
Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanaga and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobspacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to Popes to the Crusades, we delve into the rebellions, plots and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here. Feasting, festivals, homage seas the castles that we have discussed this month played host to dramatic, important, and sometimes violent scenes. Discussions of these historical events can help us to flesh out the castles that we encounter. And to be honest, when we encounter them, they need that fleshing out because Most of the time, we're left with just their ruins. I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanaga and today on Gone Medieval From History Hit, we are discussing the enigmatic castles that we are most likely to encounter today, those that are in ruins, and how these impressive and beloved buildings came undone. As we've seen over the past month, castles were used for all sorts of reasons. But what makes a castle a castle and not a fortress was the express function of the castle as a living space for nobility and royalty. Any well fortified hill can technically be a fort, but it took living areas to make it a castle. And when we are talking about the fanciest people in the Middle Ages, they aren't going to want to be living in anything that is anything less than sumptuous and at the very least, comfortable. As we moved out of the late medieval period and into the early modern, there were some advances that made life more comfortable that were pretty difficult to amalgamate into the extant fabric of castles. As we move into the late medieval period, a huge change came about in tech that helped everyone to keep their homes. Chimneys. Prior to this invention, most hearths were in a central location in homes in general, including in castles. This didn't mean that smoke had nowhere to escape escape. There were usually vents for smoke in the walls or in the ceiling, but it didn't do as great a job in funneling out smoke as chimneys could do. In fact, the brand new tech was enthusiastically taken up in castles where possible. If you were building a brand new castle, you were in luck. From the 12th century onward in England, Conisborough Castle near Doncaster, which was built around 1185, was the first first to sport a chimney. But this didn't necessarily catch on very fast and eventually castles were obliged to knock through walls to make sure that they had the proper fireplaces ready to go. This was a huge pain, but was done. And almost any castle you visit today will have a fireplace that you can tell is just ever so slightly wonky. So far, so good. Better air. But here's the thing. Moving the fire from a central location in a great hall to a wall is great for ventilation. It's not as great for keeping the room warm. Suddenly all the warmth is down one particular end and it isn't circulating as well. It might also happen that your grand dais where you set up your throne was in a central location. So yes, you could impress everyone when they came in, but also so you could take advantage of the lovely central hearth, but now you've got a fireplace on one of the Walls, and its warmth isn't exactly reaching the middle of the room. How are you meant to be comfortable and impressive under these conditions? It's not that chimneys couldn't be fitted. It's more that they couldn't be fitted into the framework of how castles were laid out to work. And I bring up chimneys because issues like these extended into many other creature comforts as time went on and architectural features changed and certain materials became more readily available. For example, glass. Many medieval windows were little more than actual portals in a wall which let in air. Again, this was at a premium if you didn't have a chimney, but they also let in light. They could be closed up with shutters at night to keep out drafts, but they were opened in the day to brighten things up. Any brief glance at medieval architecture will tell you that one fashion which changed over time was an increasing in the size of windows. Matt and I discussed this in our episode on churches. But a quick and dirty way of dating medieval buildings is to see how many fingers you can align with a window and guess the century based on that. So if one finger fits in the window, it's probably 11th century. If you can fit your whole hand, it's likely 15. Part of this was down to the architectural know how of how to put a big ol hole in a wall and retain structural integrity over the period. Some was down to how expensive glass was. Glass was a luxury commodity in the medieval period, but as glassmaking techniques improved and the number of trained glaziers expanded, the price began to drop significantly. So the adjusted cost of this sort of luxury was a lot more in the 11th century than it was in the 15th. As a result, the fancy sort of people who wanted and could afford glassed windows could have much larger ones for similar prices later in the period. So, again, if you're building a castle in the 15th century, it's perfectly possible to put in some nice large windows now that building techniques to do so were standardized and glass was cheaper to come by. But what if you were in your ancestral castle that was built in the 12th century? You're again going to find yourself knocking through some serious and highly protected walls just to let some light into the place. And that, in and of itself, is hugely expensive. Now, this isn't to say that it wasn't done. Pretty much every castle has a hodgepodge of window stiles poked here and there and everywhere, showing how these major renovations were seen as desirable. However, big beautiful windows and streaming light also made a castle weaker. And part of the point of a castle was to protect the people inside in case of war. So you had a toss up on your hands. Do you want a light, bright great hall or do you want to protect it against attack? It's a difficult call to make and one that can be avoided by just building a nice new pleasure palace with all the chimneys and windows you could ever hope for, and then retreating to a castle or fortress if things got bad. The same considerations are on display when we get to the modern invention that you probably don't think about that privacy. If you lived in a medieval castle, well, there wasn't a whole lot of this. The master of the castle, whether royal or noble, probably had his own bedchamber where he retired to at night, likely with his wife. But guests, several guests and their retinues and servants, these people might not have their own rooms to retreat to. And many actually slept in the great hall itself at night. As time went on, people started to feel like they wanted more space to themselves. And it's hard to renovate a castle to include lots of tiny little rooms for the help. Yes, you could construct other outbuildings in the castle yard, and this was certainly done, but there you run up against the fact that space inside the walls is going to be limited. So as expectations for a private sleeping area increased with modernity, the desire to stick with the castle simultaneously plummets. It's just easier to start from scratch and create a situation where everyone gets a room rather than retrofitting them into a stone box. And as the modern period continued, the expectation of certain creature comforts and the difficulty of fitting them in only got worse. Consider, for example, plumbing. Castles, of course, had bathrooms and kitchens which could be supplied with water, but the supply in question was often done by good old fashioned manual labor. Servants went to the well and carried water where it was needed. This was a massively difficult and time consuming task. It got even worse if you were drawing water for a bath and the water had to be heated and then moved about. Now, granted, that wasn't necessarily a concern for the fancy sort of people who simply employed others to move water for them. But it was costly in terms of human hours. And when plumbing became a thing, it began to look downright wasteful again. Living in a massive stone building was an enemy of retrofitting precision plumbing. It's so difficult and fiddly that here in the uk, it's not uncommon to see retrofitted plumbing on the outsides of Victorian residential homes, rather than having it added into the interior walls. If it's that difficult to add it to a 150-year-old house. Imagine how difficult it would be to do it to a 700-year-old fortified stone building again, are you going to confront the cost of that, or are you just going to start from scratch? The same goes for even more modern considerations like electricity. This would be a massively difficult thing to integrate into the fabric of an old stone building. I grew up in a house that was built in the first years of the 20th century. It was wired for electricity. Like, come on. My childhood wasn't that dire, but it was wired in a very early 20th century way in that each room had one plug socket. This isn't really acceptable now. And again, it was built with the miracle of electricity in mind. Even if you wired a whole castle, it would probably have to have been redone again at least once by now. So it's not an expense you can just tick off and never think about again. In an era where castles aren't necessary, this is often a bridge too far for those who would inhabit them. In theory. You can also extrapolate this out to things like central heating. Sure, wood burning fireplaces in their chimneys are extremely atmospheric, but most people want to be able to control temperature a bit more than that. Putting a series of radiators through a castle requires the same punching through walls as anything else, and a lot of people would rather just not bother, and that is understandable. I am of course talking about extremely modern considerations, but the fact that castles were difficult to renovate and that ideas of comfort were always changing was even on display in the medieval period itself. One fantastic example of this is Castle Rising in Norfolk in the 14th century. It was home to one of my favorite queens, Isabella of France. She was also known as the she Wolf, just because she happened to rule the kingdom in tandem with her out of wedlock boyfriend, Roger Mortimer. While she was regent for her minor son, Edward iii, she ended up in Castle Rising, retired. And when I say retired, I mean of course that she was sent there after Edward toppled Said out of wedlock boyfriend from the throne in a coup, Roger was hanged for usurping royal power. But Isabella was the King's mum, so she was given several castles and asked to please not do it again. One of these was rising, and from 1331 it became one of her main residences. Isabella liked Rising for the excellent hunting, but the castle itself was not up to her elaborate tastes, so she had an entirely new complex of buildings constructed in the central bailey to see to her needs, including a bedroom And a chapel. If a decidedly 14th century woman like Isabella didn't want to deal with a remodel, can you blame people who expect flushing toilets, heating and wifi if they don't feel like doing it either? Okay, can kind of blame them a little bit. But still. If ideas about comfort had an effect on the use of castles, so did taste. More generally, as we approach the early modern period, fashions began to change. And so subsequently did expectations of what a royal or noble residence should look like and could do. While one such consideration was certainly comfort, another was fashion. As tastes changed in the early modern period, more and more wealthy people wanted to emulate the neoclassical elements of Renaissance style. Some castles like Stirling were able to adapt to this more easily. So called Renaissance alterations could include things that were more or less cosmetic, adding in stucco work, painting over medieval murals, and including classical scenes instead. However, one big change was often very specifically windows. And as already discussed, this was a huge expense and headache when you needed to cut through a massive stone wall. Now, the people who might choose to commit themselves to fashion usually were the sorts who had super deep pockets. Having said that, even in the case of many royal houses, it was much more cost expedient just to do a grand hall or a few rooms here and there as a nod to taste changes rather than committing to a whole new decoration scheme and layout. Some castles and families who weren't quite, quite so well off could throw their money at easier things like Renaissance gardens. You know the ones they have hedge mazes, symmetrical layouts and grand water features. It was a nice way of pretending to be in Italy without literally having to bash through your own walls. But as the period wore on and fashions changed and changed again, the most fashionable sorts who really wanted to prove that they were up to date with all the latest continental styles found it much easier and much more chic to just start from scratch and build a palace. Or if you weren't royal, a house. This isn't an audio format, so you can't see me doing air quotes, but I am putting the most dramatic air quotes of all time around house here. It's easier just to make Kensington palace with all its huge glorious windows, beautifully inlaid floors, an intricate stucco, than to try to shoehorn all of that into Dover and turn it into a pleasure palace. I mean, imagine trying to get a harpsichord up a tight spiral staircase. It's a logistical nightmare.
