# The structure of a mediaeval inn



## Brian G Turner (Apr 25, 2014)

Something I've not come across in my research, but have a few niggles about, is how a mediaeval inn was structured.

I've checked various online sources, including Wikipedia, but none address my main question.

Which is - what would the main drinking area be called?

I picked up the term _common room_ from Robert Jordan's _Wheel of Time_ series, which sounds better in a period context than modern terms such as _bar lounge_ or even just _lounge_.

So, so far, I have it that patrons can drink and eat in the common room, and pay a nominal fee to sleep overnight in there when busy.

Drinks would be served in a tap room - which can be locked overnight to prevent patrons draining the stock.

From some of the old pubs I've been in, this makes sense so far - to me, at least.

The problem I have is that a _common room_ for me still conjures images of a small and intimate room - and feels somewhat askew to describing a large drinking area in a very large inn.

Can anyone advise if I'm on the right path, or if I need to correct this? If so, any useful sources I can reference on this kind of specific detail?


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## Mouse (Apr 25, 2014)

Can't help, I'm afraid. The only time I've used inns or taverns, I've never been specific about names of things. But... 'common room' to me is where we ate our lunch at college. To my ears it sounds really modern.


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## HareBrain (Apr 25, 2014)

We ate our lunch in a "refectory", a term probably intended to suggest monastic columns and old oak tables, but which actually meant cold pizza.

To me, "common room" conjures foam-padded armchairs with ripped vinyl covers, and tacky carpets. I'm not sure why you'd have the associations of "small and intimate", but I don't think it would be widely shared. The common room is the main area in the Prancing Pony in LOTR, for example.


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## AnyaKimlin (Apr 25, 2014)

Can you just use bar and lodgings?  Although I think bar is regency possibly early 19th Century.

From the regency era things like the saloon, snug etc came into being.


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## The Judge (Apr 25, 2014)

I've had a quick look through my copy of The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, to see if Chaucer mentions the layout of the Tabard Inn, but I can't see he calls the room in which they eat anything specific.  However, an extract about Southwark inns in an 1878 book which talks of the Tabard refers to "the host's room", "the hall" and "guesten-room" -- I've googled the latter expression and can't find it used elsewhere, so whether it's genuine or a Victorian cod-medieval coining I don't know (I suspect the latter).  I found that article at British History Online Southwark - Famous inns | Old and New London: Volume 6 (pp. 76-89) which might be of some interest. 

I share HB's memories of University common rooms which puts me off the expression, but it just means, of course, the room open/available to all, as opposed to a private room.  I think I'd use "common hall" if it's of any size, especially the earlier your book is set when there wouldn't be fireplaces at the wall as we know them (high ceilings were helpful in dispersing the smoke, I imagine).  You certainly shouldn't be using "lounge" which is definitely late Victorian when used for a room.

As for the room where the beer etc is kept, I'd avoid calling that a tap-room, as that's also a relatively modern word (googling quickly throws up 1807 as its first use).  I know in a private house it would be called the buttery





> "place for storing liquor," originally "room where provisions are laid up" (late 14c.), from Old French boterie, from Late Latin botaria, from bota, variant of butta "cask, bottle;"


 but that might be a bit confusing to modern sensibilities, so I'd just call it the barrel or cask room.  I'd have thought most stock would be situated in the cellars, though, to save valuable earning space on the ground floor.


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## Brian G Turner (Apr 25, 2014)

Cheers for the replies - who would have thought it would be so difficult to name the space mediaeval people drank in?

Just think of all those fantasy novels we've read where they must have drank in limbo. 

_Common hall_ and _cask room_ do sound more useful terms, but I'm going to need to research this more. I may not need specific names - perhaps people simply drink in the [Inn name]. 

But I do need to get a better idea of how customers got their drinks. So far I've presumed something like a bar, with tankards refilled directly from taps in beer casks/barrels. However, I have seen references to it being done very differently - with third parties buying from the cellar, and then charging what they can when they serve - presumably by request.


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## Overread (Apr 25, 2014)

Brian you might also find that there's a marked difference between rural and urban areas in how drink was served. It might even vary region by region as well. Some areas might well have multiple different rooms for different uses; whilst others might be a case of all in one.


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## Brian G Turner (Apr 25, 2014)

Indeed, I'm looking at urban centres - I'll have a search through a couple of mediaeval guides I have, and see if they have anything specific. Happy to go up to the Tudor Period and earlier Renaissance if required.

Just have nothing immediately obvious to hand at the moment, just when I'm questioning my terminology!


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## The Judge (Apr 25, 2014)

I don't think it really helps in your quest for names and the like, but I found this interesting:  Reconstructing the site of Richard III


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## Brian G Turner (Apr 25, 2014)

Right, am back after a few hours basic online research into this. 

A big problem seems to be that I have envisaged mediaeval taverns as like modern English pubs in terms of layout - open plan bar room fronted by a bar. Looking more into this, and remembering _Olde Worlde Pubbes_ I previously visited (for research purposes!) I remember they were commonly made up of a handful of small rooms, or else a larger room broken up into small booths or alcoves, ie:
Nellies - A Brief Tour

Oh, and here's a link I started with, giving basic information but sometimes great source links:
Researching the History of Pubs, Inns and Hotels in Britain

And another with some nice pictures of period buildings - thought generally external shots:
TimeTravel-Britain.com: Your Guide to Historic Britain

I found this from a general RPG gaming wiki:
Inn - The Arcana Wiki

And a short random piece about pub names:
Medieval Tavern Names

So far, inns are relatively small buildings that can have a few different rooms downstairs - sometimes these might have specific names relating to position, people, decoration, or any other miscellany.

Larger inns appear in later periods, and when researching the Renaissance I somehow ended up looking up paintings of the Dutch Golden Age:
paintings of taverns - Bing Images

Specifically, Jan Steen, who paints stunning character images full of life and colour, and - most importantly - of reasonably ordinary people (as opposed to neo-classical idealism):
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=j...wDQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1600&bih=777#imgdii=_

I also came across this forum thread which makes some interesting points about heating - I've made a note of the fact that sharing a bed in the cold would be seen as ordinary - if you had to sleep in a public place with others - and a reminder that privacy was a privilege of the rich:
Heating in Medieval Inns - Straight Dope Message Board

So what was the main drinking area called?

Well, so far, if it wasn't in a room that had already been given a proper name, then "common room" seems ... about as close as I can get. "Bar room" seems to imply a bar, which always appears to be a later historical development.

Also - a point about drinking - here in the UK, we know to go to the bar to order our drinks. However, in Europe it may be more common to be waited upon at your table. I've also seen it suggested previously that the inn might sell its ale to serving staff, who then re-sell the drinks at whatever price they can get to the patrons - effectively working as self-employed "middlemen" as opposed to employees.

Also, I'm making a personal note to myself that personal boundaries will have potentially less meaning in such a period setting.

Overall, I've realised that I'm going to have to redesign the inns in my WIP - but that's all right as I already knew there was something wrong with them anyway. As they form important settings in my story, this is no small change, but it'll be better for it. Also, am going to have to find out more about galleried inns. 

Right ...

EDIT: Oh, and also, this: http://www.neverenoughworlds.co.uk/things-i-learned-while-researching-tudor-houses-arent-tudor/


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## Aquilonian (Apr 26, 2014)

This from "Old Cornish Inns" by HL Douch, chapter one on 16th and 17th century Cornish inns. 

"The rooms in Edward Castle's inn (he died at Liskeard in 1638) had individual names- Bell, Bull, Crown, Dolphin, Dragon, fleur de Lys, Greyhound, Helmet, Lion, Phoenix, Rose, Star and Swan. 

Another inkeeper in same town, same period, had rooms named Apollo, Crown, Dragon, Fleece, Fleur de Lys, George, Lion, Prince, Rose, and Swallow. Also a kitchen, lower cellar and upper cellar. Most inkeepers had other trades as well. 

In 1691 a Truro innkeeper's will itemised his property room by room, as follows:

Parlour- 1 featherbed, etc furniture
Chamber over the parlour- 1 featherbed, etc furniture
Chamber over the Hall- same again
Chamber over the entry- same again + nine stools and a table
Chamber over the cellar- 2 beds, 7 stools, a great chest, etc
Room over the Great Cellar- linen, no furniture
Higher Cellar- 6 hogsheads of beer, 4 stools and a small table
Lower cellar- 11 hogsheads of beer, 4 brass pans and 1 brass kettle, 1 furnace, 1 brewing keeve, tubs, 1 coole, 2 buckets. 
In the Hall- 18 pewter platters, 18 plates, 12 porringers, 1 dripping spoon, 1 copper flagon, 1 salt cellar, 1 brass candlestick, 1 old press and cupboard, 4 metal crocks, 2 small skillets, 1 small kettle, 1 settle, 1 table board, 2 spits, 1 gridiron, 2 pottle flagons, 1 fire prong and pan, 1 pair of bellows. 

So there seems to be no seperate kitchen- cooking must have been done in the Hall as that's where the cooking equipment was, guests also ate there, up to about 18 could eat at a time.

The parlour and two of the chambers seem like bedrooms, but other chambers also contain several stools and tables, as if people also sat around there. The distinction between the parlour and the other chambers is unclear, and it's unclear which rooms were for guests and which for the innkeeper and his family. 

I'm guessing that some guests might have had had their meals brought up to their chambers and others would have ate in the hall. The disproportion between the number of beds and the number of stools suggests that most guests shared their beds, although of course locals could also have drunk in the inn and gone home to their own beds. 

The lower cellar was equipped for brewing, the higher cellar was only for storage but people could also sit around there- family and staff presumably?


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## Brian G Turner (Apr 26, 2014)

Cheers for that, Aquilonian.


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## The Judge (Feb 12, 2015)

I imagine you've sorted out the terms you want to use now, Brian, but in case it's of further help, I came across some detail just now in a book about buildings in Salisbury which might be of interest.

Number 51 High Street was built in 1602 as an inn, and in 1649 had the following features: hall, parlour, kitchen, solar, 2 butteries, coal house, tap house, 2 drinking rooms, stable, woodhouse, a fair dining room, 4 fair chambers, 3 chambers for servants, a shop and a garden of ten perches.  

Unfortunately, we can't tell from that which rooms were integral in the building.  The stable is going to be a separate structure within the precincts of the inn, and I imagine the coal house and woodhouse are stand-alone or lean-to sheds or similar, which suggests the tap house was also a separate building, but it's silent about the kitchen.  What's interesting, though, is the "drinking rooms" and having two of them, which are separate from the parlour and solar.


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## Brian G Turner (Feb 12, 2015)

Cheers for that - the few references I've managed to find always have only a handful of guest rooms - and also a few drinking rooms. It's totally alien from the modern image of a single big drinking room, and lots of guest rooms. 

I'm suddenly wondering if the building materials weren't strong enough to support a larger structure with a single large drinking room room. If built of wattle and daub, and stone was still reserved for the rich, then that might make sense.

And yet timber buildings could be wide and tall - Norse and Romans proved that.


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## Gramm838 (Feb 12, 2015)

Wasn't it around the 1630's or so that her 'snug' came into use in English pubs? I remember reading something about this on a plaque outside The Argyle in Argyle Street, next to Oxford Circus.

Maybe the room wasn't even given a name in the medieval period - common room feels like something later and has connotation of Oxbridge, and I don't suppose that even if it meant somewhere that common people drank, that the users would refer to themselves as common anyway. It implies that there was a separate area for the gentry, but I doubt they went to the local pub on a regular enough basis to have a room set aside for them.

The novels by Michael Jecks are set in medieval Devon and Cornwall and have a number of passages set in pubs but they all seem to just be one room in a building, but I don't remember them being named in any way.


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## The Judge (Feb 13, 2015)

Off the top of my head, I'd have said "snug" was more a Victorianism.  I've just checked with the Online Etymology Dictionary, and that has it entering the language in the 1590s possibly from a Scandanavian source (though my ODE says probably from Low German or Dutch, and as it was a nautical term originally the Dutch is perhaps most likely), but it didn't mean cosy etc until around 1620.  It's a US site, so "snug" as a term for a room in a pub isn't mentioned there, perhaps because it's too much of a Britishism.  However, random googling suggests that the original term for the room was "snuggery" (ie a place where one is snug) and this was subsequently shortened to "snug" and that "snuggery" itself is from around 1805-1815.

"Common" in this sense doesn't mean inferior, as in commons and nobles, but communal/general/public ie open to everyone, not a private room eg one used by people staying overnight who didn't want to mix with the locals.

Brian, although the method of structure is going to make a difference to weight bearing and all the rest of it, I'd suspect the reason for a mulitplicity of small rooms rather than one large drinking den is a matter of warmth -- I imagine it's easier to keep two small rooms well heated than one large one, especially if any flue is located in the party wall, so heat is retained.  As for number of sleeping rooms, don't forget there weren't the number of travellers on the road that we see today.  I think only the more wealthy are likely to have the individual rooms (which they'd likely share with their travelling servants) and the rest would likely bed down hugger-mugger in the drinking rooms once the inn was closed for the night.


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## Brian G Turner (Feb 13, 2015)

The Judge said:


> I think only the more wealthy are likely to have the individual rooms (which they'd likely share with their travelling servants) and the rest would likely bed down hugger-mugger in the drinking rooms once the inn was closed for the night.



Indeed - and shared dormitories were a norm for poorer travellers in the early mediaeval period. Sleeping in the common room is another reason why drink can't be on tap in the same area, but I've struggled to find out anything about the 'cask room'. I figure I can use simple assumptions here.

I went to an old inn in Beverley over the summer, that traces its roots to the 1600s - and again, it was comprised of many smaller rooms, each with its own small hearth. The hearths may or may not have been a later addition, but the issue of small rooms for better heating makes a lot of sense.


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## Brian G Turner (Feb 16, 2015)

And here's a little more of The White Horse Inn, aka, Nellies, of Beverley:
http://www.nellies.co.uk/abt.htm

And a picture, which shows some of the interesting small details:


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## The Judge (Feb 16, 2015)

Look at those floor tiles!  And the (?bread?) oven in the hearth.  A wonderful looking place.

Actually, seeing that (and hearing all the complaints about the TV _Wolf Hall_!) reminded me of something we tend to forget, which is that indoors would have been so much darker than we are used to.  Before the availability of cheap window glass, most window coverings would have been opaque to some extent, eg thin horn, eg oiled paper, and to converse heat they'd be small anyway, so natural light would have been reduced.  Candles were expensive, and the cheaper rush lights would have provided only weak illumination.


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## Ray McCarthy (Feb 16, 2015)

Windows were taxed too at one stage.


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