A day in the life of a MEDIEVAL INN

Medieval inns were a really important part of the medieval infrastructure, but what was the average day like in the average medieval inn? Let's find out. Our day begins well before dawn. If you think about it the guests are all going to get up at around dawn. If you want to give them fresh bread it takes about three hours to make, so three hours before dawn somebody is going to be starting in the kitchen and possibly a little before that the more junior members of staff of the kitchen have got to start the fire, get everything organised and then the kitchen is going to come awake. So if people are getting up at six in the morning, well your three in the morning is when the kitchen is actually starting to stir. There'll be noises, there'll be lamps lit and people are starting to make the bread, knead the dough, mix it all up, get the oven heated up ready to go. Now that doesn't of course mean that there isn't a gap. Most people would have probably started to go to sleep at around I guess 11 or 12 maybe earlier depending on how much they're carousing. But basically there would have been this quiet period around midnight up to about three in the morning when not much was happening. Was there likely to be a guardsman? Quite possibly. There were definitely night watchmen around. Would the inn have had its own night security? I guess yes, that's a possibility. But remember there's not much in the way of double glazing. Noises, there are going to be animals on sight. Anything that kicks off, animals are going to make a noise. People sleeping next to the animals or near to the animals. You can tell when something is going wrong and you'll be alerted to that. And a lot of people weren't that deep sleeping. There's going to be snoring, there's going to be all sorts of noises from the clientele. So maybe people are light sleepers and therefore if there was any trouble they would hear it and respond accordingly. There will of course be animals around. There will be the inn cat. There's at least one cat. It's not so much a pet although it's fairly likely I imagine that some people would have liked it. But it's not really a household pet. It's there for a job. It does mousing in particular. So it's there to keep the vermin down and there are always going to be mice and rats in any farmstead, even today that's the case. Back then absolutely very important to keep the mice out of the grain, keep the mice out of the flower and out of the cellar. Now rats were probably dealt with by the rat catcher and the rat catcher would come around every so often, maybe once every month or thereabouts with his dog. It's often a terrier type dog and would go down to the cellars and would catch the rats and get paid per rat he caught. And in some towns there was a municipal rat catcher, maybe more than one. But in this case there are no rats in the cellars because the rat catcher came last week and there aren't too many mice either because the cat's good at her job. In the medieval period a lot of people kept company basically. They might have apprentices, they might even have servants, they certainly would have staff of one sort or another. And often they varied age. So the most junior would usually be the youngest and some of those would be from a modern perspective little more than young children, learning the craft and doing the jobs that other people wanted to not do. So whilst the kitchen is busy with the bread and the bread is starting to rise and is going to be cooked in a little bit, some of the younger members of staff, some of the younger guests if you like, have already got up. They've got to go down to the stables to check on the horses. Their master is going to want to leave at dawn. That doesn't mean you just get on the horse and go. The horse has got to be prepared, the ponies have got to be prepared, they've got to be brushed down, they've got to have their morning feed. And the stables are likely to start to wake up about an hour before dawn as people are getting the horses ready. So there's a sense of excitement as well in this place because everybody knows, the horses certainly know, and the ponies and the mules all know that something is happening. They're used to this routine so they know they're going to get fed, horses get hungry and they get excited when they get their feed. The feed will vary, some of them will just get hay, some of the posher horses might get oats and barley, in some cases as much grain as a person would eat of course, or even horse bread. Horse bread is a type of bread made with peas in a lot of cases and so the wealthiest patrons, the one with the white destra, who's come to stay, that destra is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds equivalent to today's money and everybody's terribly impressed. But it's got to be fed a special diet so he's paid more for this horse to be fed horse bread and oats and the other horses are all getting excited as well. So there is a sort of shared camaraderie in the stables, you've got the kitchen is doing things, bringing in water and activity happening there. It's still dark, don't forget, and the stables are starting to bustle. There's kind of a shared camaraderie because a lot of these people are very young and a lot of them are learning their craft, maybe they know each other, maybe there's an unofficial kind of, not exactly an organisation, but people have travelled the same way so they have friends and they know what's going on. Imagine the situation though that the white destra has lain down in its own poo, it's created a stain, the apprentice knows the knows it's got to be clean so they're damping it down and wiping all the stable stain off it because it needs to be dry and it needs to be brushed down again so that it's perfectly presented for the man of nobility to get on and ride out in the morning. Everybody's very aware of their status and their appearance as well. But nonetheless the stables are getting busy and it's not even dawn yet. As dawn breaks most people are waking up. The medieval day began with sunrise, ended at sunset, not quite, but those are your travelling hours if you like. So more in the summer, if you're travelling at all in the winter, much shorter days. The people that stayed in the posh rooms, the ones that have spent more money than most people, were using the bowl and the jug of water and the cloth to freshen up, hands, faces, other bits and pieces, getting ready for the journey ahead. Most people would have stayed in the common room though and they will be getting up from a corner they found themselves or lying on a bench or some kind of blankets they've arranged in the common room, coughing, spluttering, blowing their noses, all sorts of things that a bulk of people will do when they've all stayed in one area. Some of them may be using potentially a communal bowl of water for freshening up, others possibly won't bother this time or maybe they'll do that in a stream somewhere on their journey or perhaps they just won't bother because the journey ahead is going to be dusty and mucky. So they just shrug and put their clothes on and get going again. The latrines will be busy of course, they may not have been cleaned from last night. I'm not quite sure when they'll be cleaned but my guess is they'd be after people left during the day so they might be pretty mucky. You're going to have solids in one area and liquids in another because remember those are collected separately and the place will probably smell quite bad. Some people will be nursing hangovers, other people are still asleep in the corner perhaps but there's a general feeling of getting up and going on the journey. Medieval breakfast was quite an important meal but at an inn it's likely to have been fairly simple. Even if you paid a lot of money, unlikely to have for example porridge with cinnamon in it. Cinnamon was very expensive. At the very best inns you might get something like that but that would have been a very dramatic additional cost. So porridge, hot bread because bread has just been baked and is ready for you and that would have been lovely. The smell would have filled the area, everybody would have been looking forward to the hot bread. Would have been water as well, water to drink. The inn has its own good water supply, a well, so that one is fairly plentiful. Might even be some ale left over from last night. The ale wife hasn't made a batch yet so it might have all been drunk but there might be some left and if it's not drunk within a couple of days it has to be thrown away so maybe that was encouraged as well. There may well be some wrinkled apples depending on the time of year, some apples that are perhaps a little kind of beyond their best by date but they would certainly be very edible and you know wrinkled apples are absolutely fine to eat, they're completely safe so if you had those that would be great. So cheese, porridge, bread and fresh water. The sun is now fully up over the horizon but the courtyard itself is still very much in shadow. Remember these things were quite sort of small scale and the building's quite tall so the courtyard itself is still going to be quite cold and covered in shadow but there is a sense of excitement because people are going on the next step of their journey. Some people are saying their goodbyes to people, talking about when they're going to meet up next. Other people are concluding deals, maybe paying for things and exchanging goods. People are packing the ponies for transport, getting on their posh horses and maybe showing off their new steed and generally there's going to be a sense of onward progression. The gates would be opened and most people are going to be travelling roughly, well they'll start their journey at roughly the same time. Many people like to travel in groups, it might be for safety perhaps in some parts of the world but generally speaking I think it's because they all set off at roughly the same time from the same place. So if you're travelling from this inn to the next inn and you're going at roughly the same pace and you are with the same people you're going to travel with them in a group really. So the whole place is going to be buzzing with excitement and grumpiness because some people are going to be noticing filthy hangovers as well. Other people are a bit disappointed, people may be deciding they're not going to go just yet, they're going to stay at the inn perhaps. Generally after a kind of everybody leaves in one group they all sort of go and then there's going to descend on the inn a sort of strange quietness because all that bustle and hustle the only people left behind are the permanent residents of the inn, the innkeeper, the staff and a few recalcitrant travellers that are still tucked up in bed and haven't decided to go on for their journey, they're just too ill. But that might be few and far between. The cleaning now begins because all the patrons have left. So the first thing that's going to be tidied up is all the dung that is going to be left behind from all the horses, mules, donkeys, ponies, whatever it might be. The creatures are going to have left clear evidence of their passing. There's going to be steaming dung sitting there, fresh dung. That's going to be scooped up and put on one side, it's going to be sold or it's going to be put on the inn's gardens and used as fertiliser. There's a little bit of extra value there for the innkeeper. By mid-morning the hullabaloo of all the travellers has died down. The place just reverts to being an inn. The people that work there are busying their jobs. The innkeeper returns from saying goodbye to the more important guests. They've obviously encouraged them to come back again and spend their coin. But now the innkeeper turns to getting the inn ready for the next cycle, for that evening, that afternoon evening when the new guests are turning up. So the people are sent off to do their regular tasks. The latrines have got to be cleaned and sorted out. People have got to be, well if there's some of them sort of sleeping in corners, the rooms have got to be checked. Things, lost property has got to be tidied up and maybe put in the lock box to be given to people when they come looking for it. Smashed mugs are probably going to be tidied up. The odd drunk is perhaps woken up with a bowl of water on their face, I don't know, and kicked on their way, got rid of, generally speaking. And the money is counted. The money is counted. The books are entered because that's very important. Bookkeeping was done physically. Pen and ink, perhaps a scrivener themselves would come in mid-morning to actually account for all the expenses of the inn. Remember some inns were owned by the innkeeper but others were owned by abbeys and the nobility and they would want an account of the money taken in and the money spent. So that was very important. The books would be kept up to date. The money itself would be put in a lock box and strong box which was kept in the accommodation of the innkeeper in physically a strong box with metal straps over it, iron straps and a key. That key was obviously kept on the person of the innkeeper pretty much all times. And generally the place was tidied up and got ready for the next set of guests. Maybe weekly the rushes which are a type of plant that's cut and strewn on the floor. Maybe weekly those would be changed. Maybe more often in the more expensive upmarket inns. But generally speaking I think it's likely it was more or less weekly. They'd be swept up, put into wheelbarrows, taken to the midden pile, taken to rot down and to be used again. Very little in the medieval era was actually discarded. There were no municipal tips as such. There were middens, there were rubbish pits for broken things but generally speaking anything that could be reused or recycled, not specifically recycled in the way we understand it today, but could have a use further would be kept, would not be discarded entirely. Things were burnt, things were put in piles, things would have rotted down and been put into use again as fertilizer. The poshest of establishments might have used herbs to sweeten the air. So they might have used mint or thyme in the actual flooring so that when people trod on it it created a nice aroma. That is probably quite rare though because it's fairly expensive and possibly reserved for when you knew nobility were visiting, when you wanted to put on a good show and perhaps charge them a bit more than you would normally. By midday the inn is actually bustling with activity. All the guests that are staying over have left. The odd recalcitrant one has also been kicked out. The common room has been tidied up and is ready to receive people at lunchtime because that's an important thing that an inn does. An inn becomes a central commerce for lunch and so it's a sort of social centre for the local area. Not so much travelling guests but people who might want to have a meal and do a deal if you like. So business people, people just socialising on their lunch break. The posh rooms are sorted out and tidied up. The linen probably hasn't been changed. It's probably been stretched out, freshened up a little bit and put ready. Bowls with jugs of water and cloth have been put there ready for the posh guests. Maybe something special has been done if somebody really important is turning up but otherwise they're just left ready. The common room of course has been tidied up a good few hours ago. The stables are being sorted out. Fresh hay is being got ready for the new horses and the new ponies and things that are going to turn up and generally things are settling down. Now the local people start to turn up for the lunchtime. A lot of business is done in an inn. A lot of business deals are done over lunch, over food. It's likely there's some kind of pottage on which is effectively a sort of vegetable stew possibly with a little bit of meat. The concept of vegetarianism was not really a thing. You didn't define yourself as vegetarian. Some religious people didn't eat meat and certain times of the year you're not supposed to eat meat but broadly speaking people had a fairly plant-heavy diet because it was the cheapest food and the most readily available. Only if you were very wealthy would you have had roast meat of any sort and possibly only for really important feasts and banquets. The kitchen is starting to take deliveries as well so people are carrying baskets of vegetables in. Some of these inns would have had long-term deals with local small holdings, local farmers and they would bring baskets of carrots or turnips. Potatoes of course not in Western Europe at this time. Potatoes and tomatoes come from the New World so they weren't known but there would have been herbs coming in, there would have been onions, there would have been all sorts of different food coming in. Carefully checked. A lot of it was locally grown so there'd be mud on it but that's easy, you just wash that off and somebody junior in the kitchen would have been doing that and chopped up. Usually prepared by boiling. A lot of food was boiled at this time. Not all of it but a stew was a very familiar concept for people so whatever was in it would be seasonal vegetables likely. Maybe thickened with a little bit of bread from last night that has gone a bit stale. Bread was rarely thrown out so food, unless it was really not edible by humans, was in short supply. So the slops you gave to the pigs, those are the bits you really can't eat but if you can eat it then that's what you're going to be doing. Bread can be used as a pudding. It can be used in what's called bread pudding. It can be sweetened and used as the core ingredient of a dessert for the fancy meal. So maybe that's what happened. Maybe the bread left over has gone a bit stale because there are no artificial preservatives and that is then used by the cooks to make bread pudding for that evening's dinner. Local merchants start to turn up and they are probably not going to be drinking ale. Some of them might drink the ale if the alewife has delivered fresh ale which may well have been done on a daily basis. The inn is likely to either have an in-house alewife or a deal with somebody in the local area that is renowned for producing good ale and that would be delivered on a regular basis. The common room is filling up with local, not dignitaries exactly, but local important people. So people that aren't necessarily the peasantry but people that are doing deals and want to be seen in the inn. Innkeepers were often involved in quite a lot of local commerce. So this was a place where deals were done. Cloth was sold, wine might be purchased as well, wholesale or retail if you like. You might want wine for your slightly posher townhouse for that evening. So there were deals to be done and people to be met. Now some of these worthies, if you like, might want to drink ale. They would possibly be drinking water as well. There is a hot drink though that is possible. So tea was not really known. There was tea, black tea came from China, wasn't widely drunk, but there were herbal tisanes. There were types of hot drink that used herbs really. Things like mint which grew wild and was cultivated. You could also put other forms of herbs into hot water and drink those. So it's a possibility people were having that as well. No coffee of course. Coffee was known. Coffee was available in the Middle East and Africa, but wasn't widely drunk in medieval Europe at all. That comes in around the 17th, 16th and 17th century. The lunchtime patrons have all left now. There's a few people staying, just having an extended lunch. But by and large the inn falls a little quiet again because the travelers haven't started to turn up and the lunchtime guests have all left. So this is a time to check everything's ready for the evening rush and also for people to accept deliveries. Now firewood is obviously hugely important and large amounts of firewood would have been used up by any reasonable sized inn. Cooking, heating, all the personal spaces needed to be heated. So I think it's likely that wood was delivered on a regular basis. So I think it's possible it was delivered in the afternoon. There's no evidence of that, but I think that makes sense to me. It's fairly heavy. It's going to have to be sorted out during the day, packed and transported. The innkeeper probably has a long-term deal with the woodsman who is going to fulfill the requirements on a regular basis. So the wood will turn up pulled in a cart by a single horse probably and then has to be unloaded. The woodsman will do that but also the general helpers of the inn will help unload the wood. It'll be stacked possibly outside to dry further and good dried wood taken in again. You've got to make sure you season wood because it burns better that way. But everybody would have known that then it was completely normal. You'd have a stack of wood drying and you'd have a stack of wood for actually using. But you'd need a lot. I imagine an inn would get through a couple of wagon loads of wood every single week at least. Some of them probably got through a lot more than that. So there's a lot of shoving and carrying of wood to be done on a regular basis. It's now sunset. The inn is at its liveliest. All the travellers are in through the gates. The gates have been pushed to. They've not been locked yet. There might be some late arrivals that turn up at the last moment. But basically everybody's now resting and going into the common room and it's starting to get quite lively. There are clean travellers. Those are the ones that have ridden here off the mud. And there will be lots of muddy people because the majority of guests have walked and it's pretty muddy out there. Certainly dusty and everybody's a bit dirty. They've brushed themselves down before they go into the common room and try to knock most of the mud off their boots. But it's still going to get muddy and people are a bit sweaty and travel worn. Nobody's washed and everybody's just quite tired from a day's physical walk in most cases. This could be 10, 15, 20 miles. That's a sufficient effort to make you quite tired. And the common room is filling up. The kitchen is busy creating the pottage and so there's a smell of food and a certain amount of anticipation as travellers find the corner for themselves to sit in. Somebody gets out a chessboard and challenges the whole common room. Does anybody here want to play chess? Somebody else decides to start a game of dice in the corner. There's a little bit of gambling going on. A lot of people don't get involved because they know there's a lot of cheating that goes on. But nonetheless that's quietly happening there. In the centre of the common room is the fire, the communal fire. That's looked after by the staff and it is not a massive fire. It's creating the warmth and the atmosphere. Would there be music and entertainment? Well not always but sometimes because this time a troubadour has turned up. He turned up in the afternoon and wanted to speak to the innkeeper. The innkeeper said sure yeah you can play music. I'll give you food and basic lodgings and you can keep all your tips. If anybody gives you money you get to keep those. But basically I'm not going to pay you but do what you want. And try not to upset my clients either. So he is going to try to judge the mood of the place. And in some places he might start a bawdy song and decide that that's not working at all. And in others he might want to sing a lament or even political satire as well. He might pass on news via a song for example. So the troubadours, the travelling entertainers, were a thing but they weren't probably as common as you might expect. And they would probably frequent big inns in major crossroads because after all they want to get paid money if they can. It's not just food and lodging. They need to get some cash as well. But it did happen and they did pass on satire and politics a little bit. So and in some cases the troubadours and the entertainers were actually officially spies as well. We find that out in history that some of them gathered information. They listened to conversations. They sparked chats about certain things. They asked around. They gathered information and might feed it back to their master who might be a local lord. Might even be the king. You never know. Anyway the dice game in the corner started to get a bit rowdy. So the innkeeper goes over with one of his bigger stable hands and just calms them all down and everybody calms down. And now a few people have eaten and they start to make their choices about where they're going to sleep. The posh patrons, the ones that have got rooms, go up to their rooms leaving everybody else behind and slowly the common room starts to settle down. People find corners, choose benches, go and get their blankets and wrap them around them and just sort of prop themselves up in a corner and start to sleep. Not everybody sleeps at the same time of course. Some people are more tired than others and those will crash out earlier and others probably up drinking perhaps too much making a little bit of noise. There's a few shushes and eventually the innkeeper says right stop playing that dice game. Everybody calm down. Everybody's got to go to sleep now. We're all going to get up in the morning. Shut up. So he has to put his foot down and maintain order a little bit. Everybody settles down and finally goes to sleep to around 11 o'clock, maybe midnight for the later people staying up. And for the first time the inn is now settling down and quiet.