Mediaeval living questions

[Ray McCarthy]

But part of the 24 acres would be grass grazed, part grain, part other ...
taxes paid in produce
yield very much lower than in many areas today (Of course Australia it's maybe how many 100s of acres per cow/sheep) so 24 acres might be a lot some places and barely enough others.
Grain is quite different. Modern barley is no use for thatch. Reeds is cheap thatch. Good thatch is barley stalks.

I studied self sufficiency in 1970s to 1980s, but I forget most. Two goats and five hens used up half of our 1 acre.
Oil, leather, cloth, pottery etc all be paid with by produce?

Lots of loss due to mould, vermin etc too.
better off people had a dovecot to have pigeon meat in winter.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Just adding to this - the same book also refers to a virgate - the land needed for a family to live - as varying between 15-32 acres across Britain.

Additionally, the book mentions that Elton - the village being used as an example - has a population of around 500 people, and 1500 acres. While that means many people were not working the land, I'm also left wondering if that means food needed to be bought or brought in from other places.

Posting just to add to the original figures.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Convert the 500 to families.
Then consider which would have trades that get income from outside the village,
Perhaps:
Miller, Blacksmith, Inn, Potter, Fletcher, Leatherworker, Weaver, Dyer, Maybe carpenter/Barrel maker etc ... Not every village would have all trades. Villages and people not part of any village or town would have to trade/barter for stuff out of their own area.
If the village was on a major route, then the Inn might have more workers.
If we assume average of five per household (may be low as Grandparents if alive, or unmarried brothers/Sisters of Parents may be part of extended family) that then is 15 acres per family. Also very old people or very young eat less. Babies all breast fed and for very much longer (2+), but I don't know what age weaning would have started.

 

[Aquilonian]

Brian, the figures in the book don't add up. Population of 500 (which sounds right for a big village- 500 families would be a town in those days) and 1500 acres = 3 acres each.

Ray, In the vast majority of English villages, almost everyone would have been a farmer/farm worker. I've studied the populations of many 18th/19th century Cornish and Devon villages during my family history research. A village would typically have its own blacksmith and a miller if in a corn-growing area, but not the other trades you mention. Not enough demand. These more specialised trades were in the towns.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

What I thought, that a village might only have one of the trades if other villages using the service and the town farther away?

 

[Aquilonian]

What I thought, that a village might only have one of the trades if other villages using the service and the town farther away?

Bear in mind all transport is at walking pace. People did a lot for themselves, without paying specialists. In big cities, many trades catered to the aristocracy making luxury goods. Pre-modern societies were immensely unequal- one great lord could keep dozens of craftsmen in business.

There were some specialised villages, eg where minerals or other special resources were available. Such as fishing villages on the coast, obviously, charcoal burning and iron-smelting in Forest of Dean and Forest of Arden, etc. Also some trades were itinerant- because not enough demand in any one village. From 14th century the Gypsies did some of those trades, eg tinkering (mending and sharpening metal tools), but they weren't the only itinerant workers, there were many, some travelling sinly, others in groups. Eg the gangs who made and repaired dew ponds on the chalk downs of southern England.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Reading Everyday Life in Mediaeval England by Christopher Dyer, and the figure of 15-20 acres per family is again mentioned. However, rich villeins could have 60-120 acres, and have their own tenants.

So the figures remain generally consistent.

20 acres sounds like a huge area to me. And yet, I also read that there are 640 acres in a square mile - enough for 32 families, all things presumed equal.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

20 acres sounds like a huge area to me

It's not really. Calculate boundary and how long it would take you to walk round it.
Look up how many acres per cow and per sheep are needed/used typically in different countries. Naturally the Irish Midlands and Australian outback are at opposited ends of the scale!

 

[Tulius Hostilius]

Brian, you raised here some very interesting questions some of each were equally interesting answered by Aquilonian and others.

I do not have any book here, so I will only say some general considerations, some of them were already stated.

When we talked about Medieval times we must not forget that we are talking about 1000 years in the history of man. So even within that period the conditions changed. It is considered that around the year 1000 there was a “Renaissance” the population increased and some new techniques were introduced.

Also in the European continent there are also significant changes. What is assumed as true in one region can be a complete lie in other.

1. About food storage. A farmer would have to had some place to storage the grain, individually, belonging to a community, or even owned by a Lord. As it was already stated rats and birds were a major threat. That didn’t change much until the 18th or even 19th century.

2. Bread was generally the basis food. Each farmer family would make her own bread (for instance that happened in some Portuguese regions until the 20th century). The bread had a long live condition. It could be eaten probably a month or two after being made. They also could make some biscuits that would be conserved even more time (later in the 15, 16 and 17th centuries that would be the basis of the Portuguese and Castillian sailors). Even so in some regions the people could be obliged to use a communal or a Lord’s mill. Small ovens would generally be at home, especially if the houses were far from a village.

The family would make also their own beer/wine, honey, olive oil… besides there are form to preserve food that we forgot with the refrigerators, using salt, sugar, honey aromaticherbs or importing spices. Making wine and beer was a way to preserve grapes and cereal, making jams… etc… etc… in sunny places fruits and meat/fish could be dried in the sun.

3. As for the Acres that a family would need to survive that, as already was stated, would change much with the soil, the grain that was produced, the producing techniques. But don’t be surprised if those areas could reach, for instance, 10 acres. When we are talking about 10 acres we are not necessarily talking about 10 acres producing grain at the same time. At some point there was crop rotation and lands that rested for 1 to 3 years without any production, but that could be leaved to cattle. Besides some parts could be Forrest. The Forrest had a big impact for the Medieval economy, has hunting ground, recollecting the much needed wood, or fruits and mushrooms…
I choose 10 acres as a sample because I personally have 10 acres and I can’t say that is that much.

4. At some point slavery was talked here in the thread. I don’t think that I need to do a disclaimer against slavery here, but, just in case, let me state that I am against it. But generally today we look to slavery has it is today or as we see it on movies. It was not always like that. Slavery was an institution for millenniums. For a family to buy a slave it would be a major investment. In principle the slave would almost become part of the family (we are not talking here about a slavery society, like the ones that existed in the American continent in the 18th century). A slave would mean to the family more working force and one more person to feed, so they would try to make it the best of it. There was violence against slaves in this period? Most probably was, but there was also violence against the women and the children (in what we call today domestic violence), and between children (I can’t say that those days were more violent than today, but they wouldn’t be easy ones).

...

 

[The Judge]

I was reminded of this thread the other day when I was reading Country Living as there's apparently been a series of articles about a small holding in Sussex, and this month's edition (ie the one dated September -- I've no idea why magazines can't date their magazines for the month they actually appear) is about harvesting and preserving their crops. I don't know if you're still thinking about the whole issue of crop storage, but if you are, it might perhaps be worth a quick peruse when you're in a newsagent/supermarket next. As to which, though you've no doubt already thought of this, I'm pretty sure there are specialist magazines for smallholders which might give a good bit more detail.

 

[The Judge]

I attended a session of 4 talks yesterday on food and drink in past times. The first was on "Medieval English Peasants -- Diet and Agriculture" by Dr David Stone at which I made copious notes -- if anyone ever has a chance of hearing him, I'd recommend it. I thought some of his talk might be of interest, and to keep it altogether, I've resurrected this old thread rather than start a new one.

He started by giving examples of the kind of things one might buy for 1d in the late C13th which I found interesting as it throws light on the relative value of goods: 4 loaves bread; 1 chicken; 1¼ pints honey; 2 oz pepper; 2 lbs cheese; dozen eggs; 12½ herrings; 16 pints ale; 2 bottles French wine; 6 bottles English wine; 68 pears; 84 apples.

He was largely concerned with peasants farming land for themselves, not workers on a lord's demesne. He said most research work is skewed to the more abundant records which show the produce of lords' lands and he argued this doesn't reflect the subsistence peasants either in terms of types of crops grown, nor productivity, since one can produce more per sq ft and of better quality on a smaller scale when it comes to eg digging rather than ploughing, manuring, and weeding -- and, of course, people work better when working for their own survival rather than for someone else's profit. Plus the peasant would have a garden as well as the landholding, which would be productive.

Most barley was milled into flour, rather than malted for ale. He had figures for 280 Suffolk households in 1283 ranging in wealth. The poorer farmers grew lots of barley and less rye, but this was reversed for the wealthier -- suggesting they were eating the barley not drinking it. The percentage of oats grown also grew more among the wealthy, and wheat was non-existent among the poorest. At one village, oats -- which would be used for pottage -- amounted to 85% of one harvest. Oats could also be used for brewing ale, and one Norfolk peasant had 6x more malted oats than malted barley. [Or paid 6x more tax -- my notes are ambiguous -- but I suspect it amounts to the same thing.] Oaten ale was particularly favoured in the SW -- that produced in Cornwall was said to be like "wash pigs had rolled in" [I think it was "rolled" and not anything worse!] and in Devon it would make any outsider drinking it throw up.

He gave details of grain allowances given by way of pension and alms. A pensioner in 1328 [not sure where as I was too rushed to take it down] received 33% of the total in each of peas and barley, and 17% for each of wheat and rye, and no oats; alms given in Norwich in 1346 amounted to 23% peas, 46% barley, 23% rye, 8% wheat [presumably again no oats].

Pigs, chicken and cows were the most important livestock, as one might expect. Pigs' bacon etc is best when the animals are 2 years old, and he showed how as the price fluctuated each year the number held by one farming household varied [from 1 to 8, I think, from memory], so they kept some or all the animals longer in a low price year, and fewer when the price was higher, suggesting these were sold, not simply kept to be eaten by the peasant and his family. He gave examples of the selling price of pigs which I've written down as 1282/3 2.83s, 1286/7 2.39s. [Presumably averaged prices over the year, otherwise the decimal points are a bit odd.]

Chickens were ubiquitous. in the late C12th the Bishop of Durham's tenants made payment in kind of nearly 3000 hens each year. And chickens and eggs were the last items that were made as payment in kind when all others were commuted to coin in the late C14th. A hen might produce 100 eggs a year, which was much the same until the early C20th (nowadays it's 280-300pa).

Herrings were the go-to food if grain supplies were low. In the early 1300s during a time of the worst harvest on record, murrain in animals, and drought, the price of herring was stable at 10d for 100 (though itself higher than the 12½ per penny the previous century), and there's no great price spike until 1337 with the start of the 100 Years War, when fishing was disrupted and supplies cut.

Legumes were a significant peasant crop, often used for animal fodder, but also eaten in the green in the summer. Vetches were also eaten, as were onions, garlic and leek. [No mention of root crops in my notes, but I might have missed that.] Also hemp was grown, mostly for turning into rope, but hemp seeds were eaten, and wild greens, even hogweed. [Not to be confused with giant hogweed which was introduced here in the C19th I think, and which causes phytophotodermatitis!]

Apples and pears were abundant, and many peasants made and drank cider as that was a better use of resources than making ale from cereals.

He had a chart showing the harvest food provided to workers per man day at Sedgeford in Norfolk. In 1256 it was 7 lb bread, 2.5 oz pottage, 2.8 pints ale, 3.7 oz meat, 15.5 oz fish, 9.7 oz dairy. In 1424 those figures were 2 lb bread, 1.6 oz pottage, 6.48 pints ale, 16.9 oz meat, 3.5 oz fish, 4 oz dairy. Lots more meat and ale, much less bread and fish. Mostly due to a rise in the standard of living after the Black Death with the consequent shortage of labour and the need to attract and keep workers.

Lots of other facts in my notes, but that's probably enough. The real astonishing fact for me, was that at age 20, the life expectancy of a peasant was greater than a monk's! Presumably only male peasants, though, since childbirth/bearing was a big killer of young women.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Great notes! Thanks for sharing them.

An interesting pointer I've read in a non-historical book (Seymour's Self-Suffiency) is that the type of grain available can depend a lot on the soil types available, and the climate. For example, that wheat really requires the richest soils (which the richest landowners may lay claim to), whereas barley prefers poorer and drier soils (and therefore more accessible for the lower classes), and that oats grew best in cooler and wetter climates (hence why oats are popular in Scotland).