Town Life

Life in town would vary on where you went. In large towns, there were walls surrounding the cities to protect them from attack. The also had large gates which were the only entrance to the town. The larger towns were also very cramped, so to make up for lost ground space, people would build buildings upwards. Sometimes the people would even have their building arch over another to have more room in the upper levels. This odd shape of the buildings caused the streets far below to be shaded all day long, while the buildings got all the sunlight.

            Towns were normally cluttered in filth, such as garbage thrown from windows, dung from roaming animals, and rotting fish leftover from the butcher. People would need to watch their step if they had to walk in the streets. People also didn’t have toilets so they had to use a ditch in their backyard. They were emptied annually and the contents would be dumped in fields surrounding the town. People got sick very easily in medieval times. Sickness would come from the mess surrounding them and the crowded buildings. There were even more deaths than births! The population only grew from the new people moving in.

            One upside to the towns was the market. Each market would come once a week and merchants, peasants, and craft workers would sell their items. Arguing would happen constantly, people would argue that the price was too high or that it was too low, they would say it wasn’t going to change or threaten to price it higher. The debate would subside once the people decided on a price in the middle of their requirements.

A peasant's workshop

            Peasants were very important in medieval times; they sold goods in the market, they harvested crops, and tended to animals. One of those animals was pigs. Pigs were useful to people in many ways. Their bristles were used for brushes, their skin for leather, and their blood for black pudding. Their meat was obviously used for food; their fat was used to make candles and their bones to be boiled into a mush to feed the pigs that were still alive. Peasants had different jobs for different times of the year. When it was winter, they would clean ditches, fix fences, and put dung all over their fields to fertilize them for the spring. In spring, they plowed and planted crops. When it was June, they would cut the grass to dry into hay to feed their animals for the winter months. After that, they would weed their whole fields, which required bending over for long hours, straining on their backs. By August and September, the harvest began, they would pick and sort the crops, but after that they would beat them to separate the light from the heavy. They would then toss the mixture in the air so the light, useless crop would blow away out of the good crop. Once all the hard work was over, and they had harvested their entire field, they would have a big feast celebrating the hard times being over and that they can relax for a while. Directly after the feast, they would start the cycle over again and it would begin with a long, hungry winter.