Medieval towns: everything you wanted to know

Summary

History Extra Podcast Summary
Episode: Medieval Towns: Everything You Wanted to Know
Release Date: January 5, 2025

In this enlightening episode of the History Extra Podcast, hosted by David Musgrove and featuring Professor Carol Rawcliffe, listeners are taken on a comprehensive journey through the intricacies of urban life in medieval Britain. Professor Rawcliffe, an esteemed expert in medieval urban history, addresses a multitude of listener questions, debunking myths and shedding light on the realities of life in medieval towns and cities. Below is a detailed summary of the key topics discussed, enriched with notable quotes and timestamps for reference.

---

1. Urbanization in Medieval Britain

Population Distribution and Town Sizes

Professor Rawcliffe begins by contrasting medieval urbanization with modern times. She explains that during the peak of urban life in the early 14th century, only about 15% of the population of England and Wales lived in towns, with Scotland even less urbanized.

“Far fewer people actually lived in towns than is the case now. ... London, which at its peak has got about 80,000 people. It's not that big by modern standards, is it?”
[01:21]

She elaborates on the relatively small size of medieval cities, listing prominent towns across England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, highlighting their modest populations compared to contemporary cities.

2. Scottish Burghs vs. English Boroughs

Distinct Legal and Economic Structures

Addressing a listener's inquiry, Professor Rawcliffe distinguishes between Scottish burghs and English boroughs. Scottish burghs, she notes, operated similarly to Italian city-states, possessing significant economic monopolies and rights, especially concerning foreign trade.

“In Scotland, these larger burghs have much greater commercial monopolies ... they have economic rights in terms of foreign trade too.”
[03:11]

She contrasts this with English stapletowns, which, while significant, did not wield the same extensive economic powers.

3. Definitions of Towns and Cities

Legal and Physical Characteristics

Professor Rawcliffe delves into the definitions of medieval towns and cities, emphasizing both legal charters and physical attributes such as walls, gates, and defensive structures.

“A charter is a piece of parchment with a seal on the seal of the donor. ... they would give you certain administrative rights.”
[04:35]

She describes how charters granted towns rights like electing officials, levying tolls, and holding courts, effectively making larger cities akin to "tiny kingdoms."

4. Cleanliness and Urban Health

Debunking the Myth of Filth

Challenging the common perception of medieval towns as unsanitary, Professor Rawcliffe presents evidence that many towns prioritized cleanliness to prevent disease and maintain economic prosperity.

“Most medieval towns put a great emphasis on the cleanliness of their streets and the clean water supply.”
[08:02]

She cites regulations from places like Bristol, where dumping chamber pots in the streets was punishable by hefty fines, underscoring the community’s commitment to urban hygiene.

5. Public Bathhouses in Medieval Towns

Limited Presence and Social Implications

When asked about the prevalence of bathhouses, Professor Rawcliffe notes their rarity in England compared to the continent. Public bathhouses in England, such as those in Southwark, were few and often associated with prostitution.

“The only really well-documented bath houses in England for the public ... are in Southwark.”
[13:41]

She contrasts this with the more common bathhouses in continental Europe, where they served charitable and hygienic purposes.

6. Food Production and Urban Agriculture

Urban Self-Sufficiency

Discussing how medieval towns sourced their food, Professor Rawcliffe explains that many inhabitants maintained orchards, gardens, and even livestock within or near town walls, contributing to a degree of self-sufficiency.

“Even in London, which is very crowded, the city within the square mile ... people have orchards and they have gardens.”
[15:20]

She highlights cases from courtrooms where theft of produce like pears and apples underscores the presence of urban agriculture.

7. Cooking and Eating

Medieval Fast Food and Culinary Practices

Exploring medieval equivalents of fast food, Professor Rawcliffe describes how individuals without kitchens relied on communal cookshops or bakeries to prepare and purchase meals like pies and pasties.

“A lot of people would go to the local cook shop or they'd take away a pie, which was easy to carry.”
[18:32]

She shares anecdotes of both high-quality offerings and instances of food adulteration, reflecting a diverse culinary landscape.

8. Heating and Fire Risks

Heating Methods and Fire Prevention

Professor Rawcliffe outlines the various methods medieval people used to heat their homes, such as wood, peat, and coal, and discusses the significant risks of fires in urban settings. She details regulatory measures implemented after devastating fires, especially in London post-1212.

“After a disastrous conflagration, the rulers of London introduced these stringent measures for rebuilding. So you rebuild in stone.”
[20:46]

These measures included building regulations, fire-fighting equipment requirements, and curfews to mitigate fire hazards.

9. Timekeeping

From Liturgical to Clock Time

Addressing how medieval residents kept track of time, Professor Rawcliffe explains the transition from liturgical time marked by church bells to the adoption of mechanical clocks in the 14th century.

“You have what's called liturgical time, church time, and you have clock time.”
[25:20]

She notes the significance of public clocks as symbols of civic pride and their role in regulating daily life.

10. Traffic in Medieval Towns

Medieval Congestion and Its Consequences

Professor Rawcliffe confirms that medieval towns experienced traffic jams akin to modern cities, particularly during market days. She describes the congestion caused by carts, horses, and pedestrians, leading to accidents and public safety issues.

“You imagine people coming in market day over a bridge ... you've got these great pileups of carts, people on horseback, people walking pilgrims.”
[27:33]

She highlights the dangers posed by heavy animal traffic, including fatal accidents involving children.

11. Immigration and Foreigners

Diverse Populations and Integration

Exploring the presence of foreigners in medieval towns, Professor Rawcliffe distinguishes between "aliens" (foreigners from other countries) and "strangers" (intra-national migrants). She discusses the roles immigrants played, such as introducing beer brewing from Holland and contributing to various trades.

“There are different kinds of immigrants. ... we have a population of people who come and settle largely, not exclusively, from places such as Germany, the Low Countries, France, and Italy.”
[29:38]

She also touches on occasional anti-immigrant sentiments and riots, though generally emphasizing harmonious integration.

12. Law and Order

Enforcement Without a Formal Police Force

When addressing law enforcement, Professor Rawcliffe explains that medieval towns relied heavily on community participation and hierarchical authority rather than a structured police force. Laws were enforced through a combination of official officials and public reporting.

“A lot of health regulations are enforced from the bottom up because a lot of the people living in towns ... will report neighbors who dump waste.”
[34:05]

She describes punitive measures ranging from fines to public humiliation, emphasizing the communal responsibility for maintaining order.

13. Work and Play in Medieval Towns

Occupations and Recreational Activities

Concluding the episode, Professor Rawcliffe provides a vivid portrayal of medieval urban life, detailing the diverse professions ranging from craftsmen and merchants to service providers like midwives and lawyers. She also paints a lively picture of recreational activities, including religious plays, public festivities, alehouses, and storytelling.

“The main sorts of work in towns ... you'd have a wide variety of different manufacturers depending on the demand.”
[37:35]

On the leisure front, she highlights the cultural vibrancy of towns, where citizens engaged in music, theater, gaming, and social gatherings akin to modern-day entertainment.

---

Conclusion

Professor Carol Rawcliffe adeptly dispels numerous misconceptions about medieval urban life, illustrating that towns and cities of the Middle Ages were vibrant, organized, and complex communities. From effective public health measures to bustling marketplaces and diverse populations, medieval towns exhibited a level of sophistication that challenges our contemporary stereotypes.

As Professor Rawcliffe aptly summarizes, the integration of public behavior with community welfare was pivotal in shaping the resilience and dynamism of medieval urban centers.

“It's an essential feature of medieval times ... these societies would fall apart [without consensus and agreement].”
[37:35]

Listeners are encouraged to explore more about medieval pig-keeping in urban environments through a dedicated podcast episode mentioned by Professor Rawcliffe.

Credits:
This episode was produced by Jack Bateman and features insights from Professor Carol Rawcliffe, author of numerous works on medieval urban history.

Transcript

[Ryan Reynolds]

Hey there, Ryan Reynolds here. It's a new year and you know what that means. No, not the diet resolutions. A way for us all to try and do a little bit better than we did last year. And my resolution, unlike big wireless, is to not be a raging and raise the price of wireless on you every chance I get. Give it a [e-mail] switch $45 upfront.

[Mint Mobile Announcer]

Payment required equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first 3 month plan only taxes and fees, extra speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited. See mintmobile.com for details.

[David Musgrove]

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. What was it like to live in a British town or city in the Middle Ages? Were they really filthy hotbeds of crime and violence? And where could you get a slap up meal if you are hungry? In today's everything you wanted to know episode, Professor Carol Rawcliffe answers listener questions about medieval urban life. Filth and fire, fast food, foreigners and fighting in the streets. They're all covered in this conversation with David Musgrove.

[Professor Carol Rawcliffe]

Can we kick off with a very quick summary of how urban spaces changed during the course of the Middle Ages?

What I'd like to start out by saying is how different urbanization is in medieval Great Britain from the way it is now, which not all listeners may quite realize, because far fewer people actually lived in towns than is the case now. I think Britain's very heavily urbanised today. But if you take England and Wales at the peak of urban life, which is probably beginning of the 14th century, in terms of population, only about 15% of the whole population of England and Wales are actually in towns. And in Scotland it's probably lower at about 10%. Very few of them have a population of over about 1,000 people. And London, which at its peak has got about, I suppose, 80,000 people. It's not that big by modern standards, is it? I'm in Norwich and that never gets above 25,000 and it's about eight after the black Death. So you're just looking at a smallish group of big cities. You've got, I suppose, York, Coventry, Bristol, Norwich, London, Exeter, Newcastle in England you've got Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dundee, Perth, Berwick in Scotland you've got Carnarvon, Pembroke, Cardiff, Brecon, Monmouth, Newport, Denbigh, Caernarfon in Wales, and Dublin, Wexford, Cork, Waterford in Ireland. And Galway is much smaller. So you know, you've got this concentration in a few big places, more scattered towns and cities, but there are far fewer of them than there are today.

This is probably a good moment to just pick up on one of the questions we've got, which picks up on title that I chose for this, Towns and Cities in Medieval Britain. And a history lecturer on Twitter on X queried the British bit there and wanted us to talk a little bit about how Scottish burrs were definitely different from English boroughs. So could you give us a sense of the difference between the north and south of the border?

It is striking because, of course, Scotland is an independent country, it's got its own king, and you have the larger birds in. In Scotland have very different rights and privileges from those to the south, particularly in economic terms. Because, just to give you a little example, suppose I'm a shoemaker and I live near York, and it would be sensible for me to trade in York because it's nearest, but if I want to go and sell my shoes in, say, Beverley or Ripon or Hull, you know, I can trot off and do that. Now, if you're in Scotland and you live a short distance from Edinburgh, then you are bound to do your commercial activities there, because by charter, these larger towns and cities have much greater commercial monopolies. And in that respect, one historian has described them as being more like Italian city states, in a sense. And also these larger berths have economic rights in terms of foreign trade too, because the major staples of trade have to go through them. They have to be traded through these ports. And although in England you have Stapletowns from 1353 onwards, they don't have the same sweeping economic powers.

You just defined some of the legal rights and obligations that these towns and cities had. Were there specific definitions of what a town and or city meant in the Middle Ages in Britain?

Yeah, there are, and I think I. The idea of definition is fascinating identity. Personally, I'd say about the three types of these, and one would actually be, it's not so much legal, but it's the actual physical appearance of a town. In the Middle Ages, towns were very separate entities in the landscape. And although you do have suburban growth, you're very much aware when you're approaching a big town, because you've got walls and you've got gates, and you go in through these walls and gates, and there are often moats and ditches as well, because these are defensive structures. The port cities, you know, they mean business as warlike entities. So you have this great sense of being in a different kind of space. These walls and gates often appear on the town seals, which are used to authenticate urban documents. So Dunfermline, for example, has got a splendid gateway with two great royal lions. Norwich has a gateway as well, with a royal lion. So these are important signifiers, I think, but the main definitions would be legal, and these would come through charters. And a charter is a piece of parchment with a seal on the seal of the donor. Often these charters were beautifully illuminated with gold leaf and color because they're such important documents. And these charters, if you're an urban community, would give you certain administrative rights to elect your own mayor or alderman or bailiffs or whoever's running the place. And they would give you mercantile rights or commercial rights to levy tolls and exactions, perhaps in markets or when people come through the gates, and that's a major source of income. And then they would also give you legal rights, so you can hold particular courts, you can prosecute particular crimes, and in return for these rights, you would pay money, what is called a fee, farm, to the person who had granted it. Now, in many cases, this is the crown, and in the later Middle Ages, the Crown grants additional rights to some of the larger royal boroughs in terms of being incorporated. And that means you are a body, so you can acquire land. And the really large ones, again, like Norwich or Bristol or York, London, of course, have county status, and that means that they can appoint their own sheriffs and their own justices of the peace. So they're almost like tiny kingdoms. They have a lot of independent rights. Now, along with these royal boroughs, you have what are called seigneurial boroughs, and those are run by seigneurs, they're run by lords. But also, and I think talking about defining yourself, I think the culture of towns, certainly bigger towns, is quite different. There's a really strong sense of urban pride, urban difference. They're urbane as opposed to rustic. They are culturally, perhaps, see themselves as being more civilized and even quite small towns, surprisingly, have this great sense of heritage and past and their greatness. I mean, somewhere like Oswestry, which is on the Welsh border, at least two poets write these great long panegyrics, these great poems of praise, saying how wonderful Oswestry is, you know, and how marvellous the markets are and what wonderful things you can buy there. And again, you know, somebody else, some local poet, describes Brecon as the Constantinople of Wales. I mean, that's great, isn't it?

I've been to both Brecon and Istanbul, and I'm not sure they're comparable urban settlements, but let's leave my views out of that. Now, look, you just talked about urban pride there. And that sort of leads us nicely into our next question, actually, which is a really popular search question, is just how dirty were towns and cities? And specifically, is it a myth that people emptied their chamber pots onto the street? So can you help us out with that?

Well, yes, this is my hobby horse, because I am a historian of urban health, particularly, and I go into battle about the cleanliness of medieval towns, because most of them are a lot cleaner than we think. I mean, we have this Monty Pythonesque image of people wading through squalor, which is, I have to say, largely the fault of the Victorians, who propagated this idea of Victorian society being much cleaner. But in fact, not all towns and cities, but many towns and cities put a great emphasis on the cleanliness of their street and the clean water supply. And that's a defining feature of urban life. In some ways, people did empty chamber pots into the streets, but they got in terrible trouble if they did. So I think it's in Bristol in the end of the 14th century, there's a regulation that any man or creature who empties a pot of urine into the street is going to be fined three and fourpence, and that's a weekly wage for a journeyman or an artisan. So, you know, you're punished for doing this, you're punished for throwing dirt into the streets. And there are three reasons, really, for this, why people are so keen about health. I mean, there's the public image, which I've spoken about, and if you look at court proceedings in medieval towns, a lot of complaints about insanitary nuisances feature on that, and the disparagement to the town. If you're a city like York or London, you know, you don't want to have filthy streets, so there's that. But there's also a question of medicine, and this is important because in the Middle Ages, people don't have microscopes, they don't know about germs, so they believe that infectious diseases like plague are spread by bad smells, miasmas. And so you keep your streets as clean as possible, because if you don't, you're likely to have epidemics of plague and these become lethal for towns. In the 15th century, we all know about the Black Death, but there are a succession of plagues after this, which take a terrible toll on urban life. And so people are very jittery for that reason. It's self preservation. And then the second reason which ties in with it is economic, because people don't want to be in a town or city which is filthy because they're afraid they're going to get ill, so they go and trade elsewhere. And you get a lot of references to this in the letters that kings send to towns and cities. It's interesting. 1497, Henry VII writes to Dublin and James IV writes to Edinburgh. And in both cases they are complaining that the streets are too dirty, they're going to cause plague, but they're also going to prevent people from coming and trading and therefore royal revenues are going to be affected. You know, there's a rationale for this. So the question is, what sort of measures can you take to make your town or city cleaner? And the answers to this are pretty much what we do today. You have refuse collections. You have men who come round and remove dung hips and filth from the streets. After the Black Death in London, they pay for 24 new refuse carts on top of the ones that they have already. You employ rakers, men and some women who go around, you know, like people cleaning the streets today to pick up refuse. You have quite strong rules about animals in the streets because a lot of people keep animals in towns, pigs, and you find people for letting their animals loose. You introduce very stringent controls on butchery. Late medieval, particularly in England, but throughout Great Britain, people are very carnivorous and butchery is a big problem because you've got all these animal carcasses. So you have very strict controls about that. You clean up markets. Cambridge, the market from 1379 has to be cleaned twice a day, morning and afternoon, in theory at least. And what you also do is you introduce zoning. And this is a big feature of larger towns and cities. So what you do is you move unpleasant or dangerous industries as much as you can to the periphery. Posh people, the rich people live in the centre. Less affluent people live in the outside. So you move something like tanning, which is very smelly, or butchery, tallow making, which is awful, dyeing, skinning, furious parchment makers, lime burning, smithies to the outside of the town to make the inside much more pleasant. That's the theory. And of course one of the big questions which I cannot answer is how far the regulations are actually followed on a day to day basis. But we do know that local people, quite ordinary working people, took serious exception to major sanitary nuisances and reported them. So I'm sticking to my view that medieval times were cleaner than we think.

And let me just mark listeners cards, if anyone's really interested in medieval pigs, let me tell you that we've Got a whole podcast, specifically Medieval Pigs in Urban Environments. So listen to that search on the podcast feed for more on that very interesting topic. Right, let's move on, Carol, because we've got a really good question here from the excellently named what would Lady Macbeth do? Who wants to know to what extent were bath houses common in towns and cities?

Oh, this is a good question. And I'm puzzled by this because on the continent, particularly in Germany, you have a lot of bathhouses. And setting up a bathhouse in Germany was a charitable thing to do. And you get, for example, cases of people in Aachen, which was a big pilgrimage centre, endowing bath houses where the pilgrims can go and get deloused, you know, and clean up. Now, the only really well documented bath houses in England for the public, where anyone can go in and use them for a small fee, are in Southwark, and they're called the stews because they're a bit like saunas. You know, you sweat out impurities and they are associated with prostitution, they're associated with brothels, and they're licensed, but occasionally they are shut down. For example, best case I know is in 1507 when there's a massive epidemic of syphilis, very contagious at that point, and it's associated with prostitution. And so Henry VII closes them down. I mean, they open up again by popular demand soon after. But I haven't been able to find much other evidence about public bathhouses, even though having baths is part of a medical regimen. Baths are used for both prophylactic and therapeutic medicine, although they're not recommended during plague time because you can open your paws there, you're sweating and foul air might come in. But I've had a lot of trouble finding other bathhouses, so if any of your listeners find them, please let me know because I'd be very interested for evidence of that.

Okay, challenge issued, so listeners get in touch. Right, let's move on to our regular correspondent, AgroBiodiverse, who wants to know how much food was grown within towns and cities?

That's, again, a fascinating question, and the answer is a lot. Even in London, which is very crowded, the city within the square mile, of course, which is walled, people have orchards and they have gardens. But in other places where you have a lot more rural space within the walls, like Norwich, which is very rural, there's pasture land, there are orchards, big orchards, places where people can graz, cattle, bits of land where you can grow vegetables have small holdings, and a lot of people have gardens. So you grow a lot and you get evidence about this from courtrooms, interesting cases where people steal pears from somebody's orchard or in coroner's rails where a boy gets beaten to death for scrumping apples. You can pick up this evidence from interesting places. And bigger towns obviously rely on food that's brought in from outside, but there are food supplies within, and not just what you grow, but also fishing. I mean people don't think much about urban fishing except as recreation. But most towns and cities are on rivers and this is an age before agriculture and industrial pollution. And so you know, they're teeming with fish. And so if you are a burgess, if you pay your dues, pay your taxes, you often have fishing rights so you can supplement your diet in that way. Although we do get cases of overfishing because people are using nets when they shouldn't supposed just to use lines. And then as we've just mentioned, you know, talking about urban pigs, there are lots of pig owning in towns. People have them in the back, kill them in November, you know, fat them up and have them from bacon through the year. People keep poultry, lots of instances of geese, ducks, hens, which aren't supposed to wander in the streets, but do. And then again you have cows. And one of my favorite examples of cows comes in the reign of Henry viii actually in York. And when Henry visited there's strict regulation for everybody to remove their animals to be on the walls and then they could bring them back afterwards. There was a six and eight penny fine for putting a cow into your house or hiding your cow in your home. And the mind boggles about that. But it does show us that people within the wards of York, few people anyway, were keeping cows and they'd have them for milk and they'd have them for cheese. So there's a considerable level of sufficiency here. And we do need to remember that a lot of townspeop own land in the area just around the walls in the suburbs. So they go out, I mean an allotment, you know, so you'd go out and cultivate your bit of field and whatnot just outside the walls. So you know, you're not totally reliant on foodstuffs that are coming in from other places.

I find it quite hard to imagine how you would hide a cow in your house.

Me too.

[Jack Bateman]

Oh, such a clutch off season pickup, Dave. I was worried we'd bring back the same team. I meant those Blackout motorized shades. Blinds.com made it crazy affordable to replace our old blinds. Hard to install. No, it's easy I installed these and then got some from my mom. She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and install hall of Fame sun. They're the number one online retailer of custom window coverings in the world. Blinds.com is the goat shop.

[Professor Carol Rawcliffe]

Blinds.com right now.

[Mint Mobile Announcer]

And get up to 40% off select styles plus a free professional measure. Rules and restrictions may apply.

[Professor Carol Rawcliffe]

What about cooking? Zanji asks. Wants to know whether people cooked in their own homes or used communal kitchens. Wants to know about fast food. What were the eating options available?

Well, I can tell you that Kentucky fried chicken and McDonald's and all these other kebab shops and the rest have a long and distinguished history. Because fast food is a big thing in medieval towns, particularly the big ones, where obviously you have a lot of visitors, a lot of tourists, but also you have to be quite rich to have an oven. You've got to be quite, well, you know, reasonably well off to have a house with an oven. And most people have an open hearth where cooking isn't an option. And there are a lot of single men as well in towns, apprentices, labourers and the like, who are living in perhaps one room or sharing a room, and they don't have facilities either. So what you would do is, if you're a family, you might make your dough and then you take it to a baker's oven to have it cooked, and then you go around and collect it and pay a small sum. And we have interesting cases of bakers chopping bits of dough off people's loaves, profiteering in that way and getting prosecuted for it. But what a lot of people would do would be go to the local cook shop or they'd take away a pie, which was easy to carry a sort of pie or a pasty from one of these places. And as today, some of them have a bit of a. Bit of an unfavourable reputation that can be rather unpleasant. You get a lot of cases in London of people suing the owners of cookshops because the pie has been rancid, it's got elderly pigeon in it. Or they are pretending that their pies are venison when they're nothing such, they're bits of mutton. Some of the cookshops must have been quite good because one of the things that people draw attention to in these panegyrics I mentioned, there's a guy called Fitzstephen who, at the end of the 12th century, writes this wonderful panegyric to London, and he says one of the best Things in London are the Thames side cook shops, where you can get these wonderful pies and they're full of roast meat, depending on your purse. And you can have boiled meat, you can have fried meat and you can get something, you know, for every pocket.

I want to go to a question which I know you've been working on, so I'm really interested to hear your answer to this, which is a popular search term about how did people heat their homes and how big a risk was fire in urban environments.

Yeah, I'm working on fire at the moment and it's a fascinating subject. Well, people heated their homes in a variety of ways and it would depend actually where you live, because the main suppliers of fuel are wood, chopwood or firs or brushwood. Or if you live in a peat producing area in parts of Scotland or East Anglia, you'd use peat. And in some places, such as London and on the North Sea coast, you would use coal. And coal and peat are pretty noxious. And it's interesting, the archaeological evidence from skeletal remains shows that a lot of people have quite bad sinusitis. And this is caused by living in smoky environments. Because unless you're relatively well off, you don't have a chimney and you would have a fire in the middle of the room with perhaps this sort of space in the roof for the smoke to leave. And that's very disagreeable, particularly for children. And you also have a lot of respiratory disorders. And so that's how people heat. And if you're grand, you have a lovely fireplace, you know, with a proper chimney to it. But as to fires, well, people think fires occur an awful lot in the Middle Ages and indeed they do earlier on. But there are important changes and I think it's useful to note these. London was subject to terrible numbers of fires, up to 1212. And in 1212, after a disastrous conflagration, the rulers of London introduced these stringent measures for rebuilding. So you rebuild in stone. Anything within the walls is supposed to be in stone, not in wattle and daub or clay. And it's not to be thatched. So it has slate tiles or brick tiles on it on the roofs. And there are other rules about having space between houses, party walls and the like. And these regulations are adopted in many other towns and cities throughout England. And it's important to note that London does not have a major fire. It has lots of small fires, but no major fire from 1212 until 1665. And that's a long time. So it shows you how effective these regulations are. And at the same time, as many towns and cities are introducing these rules about building, they also introduce rules about the sort of equipment you have and what you do if a fire breaks out. So every parish is supposed to have buckets, it's supposed to have ladders, it's supposed to have what are called croomes, and they're these great long poles with hooks on the end for pulling down burning buildings so you can create a firebreak. And there are similar rules that in hot weather, you have to have a bucket outside your house or a barrel with water in it. And in some places, like Worcester, they actually have a sort of embryonic fire brigade, because the people who fetch water from the river supposed to come along with their horses and carts with buckets of water if somebody shouts fire, you know, so people are very aware of the risk. And on top of this, and this is a great feature of urban life, you have the curfew, and that comes from couvre feu, or cover your fire. And so a watch will go round at a certain time in the evening, you know, nightfall, to make sure that everybody has dampened down their fire and that there's no fires visible through windows. And that is a very important measure for making sure fires don't break out. Although in some places the curfew is not always very effectively observed. So these measures are in place. And therefore, you know, you do find that there are fewer of these great urban conflagrations, you know, from 13th century onwards. But you do get them because these rules are broken. Plus, of course, they're deliberate fires, there's arson, and you get a lot of that on the Borders, the Welsh Borders, on the Scottish Borders, and there in many places, they think, what's the point of putting all this money into building? Because we're going to get burnt down. So in somewhere like Carlisle and the Scottish Burrs near the border, they deliberately choose wood, timber and wattle and ore, because they know they're going to get raided and they might just as well have something that is easy to rebuild. And you also get attacks on the coast by the enemy. I mean, Southampton gets attacked in the 13th century, very bad attack by the French. So there are those incidents as well, plus, of course, the occasions of urban rioting. Here In Norwich in 1272, we burnt down part of the monastery and the cathedral. So these things happen as well, but not as often as you'd expect.

Time's pressing on. So let's go to the next question, which is, how did people know what the time was in medieval towns and cities.

Yeah, these things we take for granted, don't they? So how do you do it before all these modern technology? Well, obviously, I've just mentioned poultry in town. So you've got an avian alarm clock, haven't you? Get all these cocks, cranes. So you know when to wake up. You have two types of time. You have what's called liturgical time, church time, and you have clock time. And in the earlier period, up to about the beginning of the 14th century, people tell the time by church bells ringing for the services that are held at regular points through the day, from matins right through to vespers. And if you look at urban records, you will see that things are dated that way. You know, you say something that Joe Bloggs is arrested in the market for being drunk just before vespers. And so that's how people know the time. And this is how markets are regulated. You know, they open at a specific time, close at a specific time, regulated by liturgical time. But from the 14th century onward, you get clocks which tell the time as we know the hours, going 1 to 12, 1 to 12. And so you now see references to 9:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the afternoon. And initially these clocks are on church buildings. And some of them are very, very big, very impressive clocks at St. Albans, for example, places like that. And people rely on those clocks. But towns begin to think, well, hang on, let's have a clock of our own. We want one of our own. So London gets a clock in Soper Lane, a municipal clock, which is in the middle of the city, that's from the end of the 14th century. And there's another clock near Newgate, where there's shambles, where there's the meat market, and then a few other towns and cities build their own clocks. And like having your own Guildhall, you know, like having your own very beautiful market square, these are a sign of urban development, I think. And they're, again, a way of asserting your own civic pride. You pay for a clock. People invest money in building a clock.

I wonder if everybody could tell the time, though. That's an interesting question. But we haven't got time for that one because we've got to move on. I want to know, next popular search term, did they ever have traffic jams in medieval towns?

Yeah, of course they had traffic jams. You imagine people coming in market day over a bridge, across a moat, through a gate, you know, and you've got these great pileups of carts, people on horseback, people Walking pilgrims, all sorts of people. And this is why so many hospitals are situated at city gates, because that's where you collect money from all these people passing by. They are notorious bottlenecks, these places. And a lot of crime takes place there as well. You know, if you're up, if you're a pickpocket, you go there. And you also have traffic jams in markets. You know, you have all these animals coming into markets, urban markets, sheep, cows, pigs, poultry. And a lot of places have regulations. It's a sort of park and walk. You know, once you've unpacked your packs from your horse or you unloaded your cart, it has to go back out and park in the, in the suburbs. And similarly, people who are on horseback, and of course it's like cars today, horses, current and modern motors, you have to go and park them in an inn or some stabling on the outskirts or near the market and not wander around with a horse. Because there is a very important sort of safety aspect here. Because if you look at coroner's records, which are fascinating, fascinating source of evidence about towns, you find that a lot of children are getting killed in traffic accidents. And if you look at the carts, they're quite fearsome. They've got these big iron shod wheels and you know, they're ripping up pavements and get a lot of very sad cases of children being killed and other grown ups as well in these accidents. So, you know, life in medieval towns is not just risky because of the dirt, it's risky because of the traffic. And there are lots of complaints about it, just like today, especially as horses are leaving so much muck, which adds to the sanitary problem.

This next question does sort of speak to modern concerns a bit, I think, which is from Bel Buchanan, who wants to know, were there foreigners or travelers settling in town and cities in this period?

Oh, yes, lots of immigrants. And there are different kinds of immigrants. There are immigrants who come from overseas who are called aliens. That's not a pejorative term, it's just to distinguish the fact that they are not from your own country. So the people who come from other parts of the country are called strangers. So I'm a stranger living in Norwich because I come from Yorkshire and I might have been regarded with a bit of suspicion in the Middle Ages because coming from such a long distance and perhaps having a funny accent, you know, but people from other parts of the, of the country are strangers. And you also have people who are on the road, pilgrims, vagrants, we'll come back to that in a moment. Now, aliens, these are people who are coming from abroad may actively be encouraged. So, for example, in Scotland, when a lot of the royal births are being set up in the 12th century, English people, interestingly, and Flemings, people from Flanders, were encouraged to come in and form the nucleus of these urban populations. Similarly, when parts of Ireland, parts of Wales, are conquered by the Anglo Norman monarchs, English people, Anglo Norman people, are encouraged to go and settle there. They're planted there. In a sense. Dublin is essentially an English colony. But there are other kinds of immigrants who come from overseas for different reasons, possibly for trade. London Lombard street has Italian bankers. It has lots and lots of foreign merchants. All the major ports along the North Sea coast have what are called steelyards. And these are the entrepot where the Baltic merchants, the Hansa, settle. There's a wonderful steelyard still in King's Lynn, still standing. But these people are transient, they come and go just as English merchants overseas come and go. But you have a large population, also quite a striking population of people who come and settle. And they come and settle largely, not exclusively, from places such as Germany, the Low Countries, France and Italy. And there's been a wonderfully exciting project that was run a few years ago that you can look at online and it's really, really interesting. And it's called England's Resident Aliens in the Late Middle Ages. And that has documented over 64 people coming in from overseas to settle and what they do, who they are, where they live and the culture that they have. And some of them take up particular jobs. For example, there's a big, big switch from ale to beer. In the 15th century. People get a real taste for beer. And beer is a foreign import. It comes in from Holland. And a lot of the Dutch immigrants are beer brewers, you know, Hans Beer brewer, he's called. And they settle in towns to provide this basic service. They're not very popular with the alewives, but, you know, they settle and they form their own, you know, little trade group. Some of them are shoemakers. They, you know, often take up particular occupations and some of them, quite low status, become servants. But most towns and cities of any size will have resident groups. And for most of the time, they get on very well. I mean, Norwich has a mayor who comes from Bruges, so they are integrated, they're generally welcome. But sometimes, just occasionally, you have this eruption of anti immigrant feeling and you will have riots. As you get in 15th century London, you get them in Yarmouth, you get them sometimes in King's Lynn, just Occasionally these flashpoints, but we shouldn't over emphasize the fact. And then there's a lot of movement around within the country. People travel from the north to the south in search of greater opportunities and a lot of people are on the road because they're homeless. But the reception for vagrants, particularly after the Black Death, is not necessarily very friendly. There's a lot of hostility in some of the larger towns. People who are hale and hearty and able to earn a living, or so people think, but have chosen to beg instead. So, you know, there's a harsh side to medieval times and there's also an intrusive side to medieval times. It's not all sweetness and light and, you know, cheering in the streets for mayoral processions. You know, there's a dark side to it as well.

Well then, thinking about that dark side, that leads us on very nicely to the next question, which is about law and order. Popular search term. How were laws enforced in towns and cities? And specifically who was actually in charge? Was there a chief constable in these towns and cities?

This is one of the questions I've often been asked when I've been giving talks about public health and I rattle off all this legislation and then somebody will put a question, say, yeah, but who enforces it? And the answer is it depends on the issue in question. So a lot of health regulations are enforced from the bottom up because a lot of the people living in towns, as ordinary people, do not want to live in filth and squalor. So on the one hand you have the rulers of towns introducing these laws, but ordinary people, you know, they are keen to live in a really a cleaner and more sanitary environment. And they will report neighbors who dump waste, report people who have smelly pigs, and they also report people whose moral conduct they think isn't very good. So they will report prostitutes, they will report disorderly houses, they will report people who are dicing or gaming or drinking. So there is that bottom up level policing, and this is essential in a medieval city because you don't have a police force, you don't have a paid police force like you have today. So at the top you will have the senior officers, you will have the mayor, the aldermen, you will have the town councillors, you'll have the bailiffs, and they will have a few salaried officers, they'll have a few constables, not like constables today, but more like their assistants, they'll have sheriffs if it's a countytown, but there isn't a large staff of paid Enforcement officers. And so to a certain extent, you are relying on this sense of patriarchy, this sense of hierarchy and this sense of deference. Now, this certainly exists in the Middle Ages, but the extent to which it exists is an interesting question that urban historians tend to debate. You also have, and I should stress, it's quite draconian punishments, a lot of punishments. A corporal, you can end up in the pillory, having people throwing rotten cabbages and dead cats at you for particular offences, or you can be imprisoned or you can be expelled. There's a sort of red card system where you commit an offence once, you get fined, committing an offence twice, you get a bigger fine and then the third time and you get expelled. And that is a terrible threat if you depend for your living on trade or on a service like being a barber surgeon. So there's that threat and the threat of public humiliation, the threat of being fined. And some of these fines are astronomical. After the Black Death, some of these places introduce fines of 100 shillings for dumping waste. Well, hardly anybody earns 100 shillings, but the fine would be negotiated, you know, to suit your pocket. So the answer to this question is the structure is there. But it depends to a really, really notable extent upon consensus. And I think it's at this point we need to remember how religious these communities are. So there's a very strong moral element here and this very strong sense that a well governed town is dependent on a well governed household, which is headed by this patriarchal father figure, just as a mayor rules a town. So there's this integration between private behavior and obedience and public behavior and obedience, which is really rather alien to us today. So the answer really is it depends on a lot of consensus and a lot of agreement, otherwise these societies would fall apart.

I'm going to conflate these last couple into one big question. What did people do for work and play in medieval towns and cities?

Well, the main sorts of work in towns, the main occupations, they'd fall into different groups. There'd be manufacturing, there'd be food and drink production, and then the service industries like midwives, barber surgeons, physicians, lawyers, people who provide a service. And the bigger the town generally, the more diversity you get. So in food and drink, you know, obviously you've got the sort of bakers, brewers, people who run cook shops, providing that sort of service. And then in manufacture, where you can have a wide variety of different manufacturers depending on the demand. So you have people in the building trades, masons, roofers, carpenters, plasterers, people who are wheelchairs, making Cloth, depending on the area you live in. If you are in an area with a lot of sheep, you have a huge cloth trade. Dyeing, spinning, weaving, fulling, all the activities associated with clothing tanning. Most places have a leather industry, which is pretty noxious. Shoemaking, making clothes, making hats, making saddles, making bridles, making carts, making wheels, all the things that keep the economy going. You have lime burners, smithies, people making tools. And then because most of the large towns have a big religious population, churches, monasteries, colleges, friaries, hospitals, you've got stained glass makers, embroiderers, people who make bells, you have people doing all these bookmaking in the sense of not putting bets on, but making books, scribes who provide for this big market. And where you've got a lot of gentry, you've got a nobility, you have a huge demand for luxury, luxury goods, Fur coats, lots of ferriers and skinners. People want luxury fabrics, mercers like Richard Whittington. And then people want luxury foods, they want drink, they want wine, they want all these exotic wines that come from abroad. So, you know, if you look at a place like London, there's a huge range of different crafts and industries, and the bigger ones form themselves into guilds. So a big town is full of loads and loads of different commercial activities. And when it comes to entertainment, well, medieval people really knew how to enjoy themselves. I say it's a religious society. So you have lots of religious processions, mystery plays, miracle plays, some of which are very serious, some of which are great fun. Lots of public festivities, bonfires, public entertainments. There's a wonderful entry in the records of King's Lynn, where the town pay for a conjurer with a performing dog, and also for a bagpiper from Northumberland. You've got a lot of music, you have city weights who are paid trumpeters, minstrels. And they perform on civic entertainment days, you know, in processions. And if you're rich, you can hire them for the day. And then, you know, at a local level, a lower level perhaps, you know, there's lots of guild feasts, there's parish feasts, and then people go drinking. They have lots of ale houses, lots of taverns, which is where wine is sold. They gamble. Not supposed to gamble, but people do. And so, you know, there's the sort of activities we do today, socializing, drinking, enjoying themselves. And if you're naughty, you can go and visit a prostitute, because prostitution is generally licensed in most towns, so you might slip into the red light district, but, you know, there's opportunities for all sorts of entertainments. People aren't as po faced as we as we might think. Upper status people, higher status people own books and more and more people become literate in the later Middle Ages. And so they're reading, they're reading Legends of Robin Hood, they're reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, or they're having them read to them. They're reading urban histories and chronicles and poems about the place they live in. So there's a lot of that kind of activity. People will gather around in the evening and tell stories and listen to these great chronicles. So there's entertainment to suit every sort of person and every sort of purse, really.

[David Musgrove]

That was Carole Rawcliffe, Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia. Carol is the author of numerous books and articles on medieval urban history, and she also joined us on the podcast recently to share why keeping fit was a surprisingly big deal in the Middle Ages. You can find a link to that episode in the description of this one. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.