How did medieval peasants live

The medieval period in Britain started with the invasion of William the Conqueror in 1066 and ran until the start of the Tudor period in 1485. During this time, life in Britain was tough and no one had it worse than the peasant class, who during the time were known as Serfs. Being a serf meant being a member of the lowest and poorest class of society, which greatly limited your options in life and in many cases could even be compared to modern-day slavery.

What does being a serf mean?

All the land in Britain has long been claimed by someone since the Bronze Age, and being born into anything other than a wealthy family meant you would be living on land owned by someone else. As a serf, you would be expected to pay for the privilege of living on a lord’s land by paying him, but because all serfs were very poor, this payment came in the form of labor. To pay their debts to the owner of the land for being allowed to live on it, a serf would have to give a certain amount of hours each day to work on the owner’s land and produce crops. These crops would be the main income of the land owner and usually consisted of grain or flax, a long fibrous plant used to make linen.

Each serf would be given space to build their homes and a small plot of land to grow their own crops on, but because they were forced to work the owner’s land for most of the day, this left little time to do anything else to make money. It would be the equivalent of working 9-5 all week in exchange for nothing more than your rent and a sack of grain, and then spending an hour or two in your garden growing crops because if you didn’t, you’d have nothing but grain and the occasional fish to eat three times a day. This lack of free time forced the serfs to spend their lives working to make someone else rich. After all, no one could afford to pay their taxes in cash because no one had time to earn any.

What were the homes of peasants like?

Simple and cheap was the way forward when it came to building peasant homes. The lord would sometimes provide a place for people to live but this would mean more taxes and lock the peasants into an even deeper hole, meaning longer working hours. If a peasant built their own home it would be cheap and easy, but mostly cheap. Every single tree on a lord’s land would be owned by the lord and cost the serf money to cut it down and use it, so materials were often logs or planks, sometimes covered in daub or a type of plaster made from limestone. Roofs were almost always thatched with straw, and people would often use a part of their home as a stable for any animals they might own. Homes often consisted of a single room which was especially uncomfortable for large families, with a stone fireplace for warmth and cooking.

How did peasants cook and eat?

Grain has been the most mass-produced food of all time, ever since the Stone Age, grain has been grown in larger quantities than any other food. The reason for this is that it can be dried and lasts for years if kept properly, unlike all the fresh vegetables and meats that a serf wasn’t able to preserve. With the absence of any kind of freezer and salt being very expensive, they had very limited options when it came to preserving anything, so they were forced to eat according to the seasons.

There were two foods available to the peasant class all year round, and they were eaten across the country more than anything else, Grain and Fish. At various times across the medieval period, religious restrictions on meat stopped people from eating it on certain days even if they could afford it, but for some reason, fish wasn’t classed as meat and could be consumed on any day. Meals mostly consisted of soups and stews with grain used to thicken up the dish. Bread was cooked on a bakestone, a flat piece of rock used as a frying surface, or put inside a cooking pot that sits inside a larger pot to create a makeshift oven.

How did peasants talk?

If you went back to the medieval period, you wouldn’t be able to understand a single word anyone said. There were three main languages spoken across Britain during the period, which were middle English, Anglo-Norman, and Latin. The Romans are responsible for Latin being spoken in so many countries because they spread the language during their conquests, and it also later became the official language of the church. Latin faded out over the years because it was mostly spoken in religious establishments and most of their books were written in Latin, but since none of the peasants at the time could read they never had a chance to learn it.

(An early example of the middle English language)

Middle English was the most popular of the three languages and was spoken by the peasant class. The Anglo-Norman language started with the invasion of William the Conqueror who came here from modern-day France, but the language as a whole wasn’t learned because the majority of peasants already spoke Middle English, and so only small influences were absorbed. The word mutton comes from the old French word moton, meaning sheep and the word beef is another old French word called Boef, taken from the even older Latin word of bos, which means a cow or ox.

How did a peasant dress?

Leather, wool, and linen were the only readily available materials to make clothing from. Cotton wasn’t grown in the country at the time and bringing it in by trade was immensely expensive, but wool could be produced each year from their herds of sheep and goats, and leather was available whenever a cow or deer was killed. Flax was the only type of fabric they could actually grow and was produced in large amounts each year to keep up with demand. The plant itself looks like a type of tall and thick grass, but its stem is made up of long fibers that can be dried and twisted into a yarn. The yarn is spun into fabric sheets and then made into clothes, but not a single piece of leftover cloth would go to waste, with the small off-cuts being used for anything from a teeth cleaning rag to a dish cloth to toilet paper.

These materials would be used according to the work and seasons. Leather would be made into boots and sleeveless jackets lined with wool to add warmth, and linen would be the primary fabric for trousers, shirts, and dresses. Linen would be woven quite thick and could provide more warmth than a modern-day linen shirt would. When it comes to waterproof clothing there were only two options, leather and treated cloth. Leather is naturally waterproof but would often be treated with something to help preserve it, but linen isn’t waterproof in the slightest and would need to be treated with something called slack-wax, a combination of wax and oil.

Did peasants wash?

(Medieval soap made from surviving medieval recipies)

Medieval soap was made by combining watered-down animal fats with wood ash which makes the mixture high in alkalies which help to remove dirt and oil. Soap was produced in Ancient Egypt and was especially popular across Rome and Greece, though the recipe did vary quite a lot and included ground-up beetles, powdered bones, and animal blood. Soap is nothing new because an unpleasant smell is the same to everyone, no matter the time period, but being clean did become important during the medieval period because of religion. There was a consensus that being clean was being close to god, and it was a requirement at times to wash before going to church.

How could a peasant earn money?

Earning a little here and there wasn’t a problem, but everything they earned would be spent on the things they lacked from everyday life, like enough food and clothing. The peasant class would have many restrictions on how they could earn money, the biggest of which was that the land they lived on belonged to their lord, along with all its rivers and animals. To go into the woods and hunt a deer would require permission and involve paying the lord a fee or a portion of the deer. Everyone had limited amounts of land that their lord would allow them to grow their own crops on, but they were barely big enough to grow enough food for themselves, never mind a cash crop.

To earn money a peasant would normally make something processed or taken from the wild, like cordage made from reed or nettles and fish which often didn’t have restrictions like wild land animals did. Raw pork would be bought and made into sausages to be sold for a little extra, and milk would be turned into cheese or yogurt. The extra money this would provide was minimal and only provided a small boost to their food stores or the occasional new linen shirt.