12th / 13th Century England

Welcome to AW, Kenny.

Have a look, for a start, at the resources sticky at the top of this forum. There is quite a lot of resource material listed there and you may well find something of use. Good luck.

Hi Kenny,
I recently did a paper on urban vs rural life in medieval Europe, and one of the sites I found fairly useful was British History online; http://www.british-history.ac.uk

They have a fair few resources there, particularly the Victoria County Histories that go through each part of England and give a pretty good view of things, a lot of figures from parish registers, types of trade and such.

When you say 'urban settlements', do you have a particular place in mind? If so, then that might narrow your search down a lot. For instance, if you're looking at London, try the Museum of London http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/ or some of their publications. Other cities and towns may have information on their own websites too, or links to somewhere you can find that information.

I mostly used books rather than online sources for my course, so I can't really think of anything at the moment, besides the obvious googling (again if you try specific parts of England you may have more luck). I'll have a think and a trawl through my saved URLs and see if I can find something more.

I have a great book detailing everyday life in Britain immediately preceding the Norman conquest...but that's obviously a century or two too early.

This is an honest suggestion, ok. Not a snide comment or anything.

Why not start with children's books? Clear, well-written, authoritative, accessible, profusely illustrated. Try the children's librarian at your local library.

To see what I'm thinking about, go to Amazon, do the 'browse books', go to 'children'. 'history and historical fiction' and 'medieval'.

I'm not saying this is the best or only kind of research. But it's a surprisingly good place to start.

i don't know if it's the book Doogs is talking about but there is a great little book called something like "life in midevil times" or something, and it's great, it details everything from how the peasants lived, ate dressed to nobility. my sister used to have the book and if you still need info cp me and I'l call her and see if she still does. My fav story in it was the bath of the peasants, It seems that once a week they would fill a tub with water and bath, however they never changed the water and by the time the youngest child in the family got into the tub, well you can imagine......

The Frances and Joseph Gies books, "Life in a Medieval..." are pretty good.
I just bought Margaret Wade Labarge's Mistresses, Maids, and Men, on baronial life in England.

Job's suggestion is excellent. I've found the children's department of my local library a great resource. Although the publishers break things down to where a child would understand, some of the drawings are superb.

Bathing once a week? That often?
Seriously, that sort of bath, usually a tin one in front of the fire in the kitchen, was still being done almost in living memory in working class areas.
King John was considered to be unusual because he bathed so often.

Be a bit wary of children's books - a lot of the information is very good, but they do tend to repeat uncritically things that have appeared in earlier books. For instance, the ale tester never really spilled beer on a bench and then sat on it while wearing leather breeches to test if it was okay. There are far better ways of testing the beer than that - but it keeps getting trotted out with no basis in fact.

OK, I found my documents from last year and some of the reading list for the Urban Development and Environmental Change section of my medieval history course. Some of these might be useful for you;

K. D. Lilley - Urban life in the Middle Ages, 1000-1450 (2001)
F. Rorig - The medieval town (1969)
T.R. Slater (ed.) - Towns in Decline, A.D. 1000-1600 (2000)
C. Dyer - Decline and Growth in English Towns, 1400-1600 ( 1995)
S. Rigby - English Society in the Later Middle Ages (1995)
D. Nicholas - The Later Medieval City, 1300-1500 (1997)
R. Holt and G. Rosser (eds.) - The Medieval Town. A reader in English urban history 1200-1540 (repr. 1995)

I'll second the childrens' book thing, not so much for the information in them but because of the illustrations.

Evaine said:

Bathing once a week? That often?.

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I was a little surprised at that myself, But there's probably a lot of local variation.

Evaine said:

Be a bit wary of children's books - a lot of the information is very good, but they do tend to repeat uncritically things that have appeared in earlier books. For instance, the ale tester never really spilled beer on a bench and then sat on it while wearing leather breeches to test if it was okay.

Click to expand...

Grumble, grumble. Next you're going to tell me that Alfred never burned the cakes ...

Yes. Oh yes. Apply common sense and skepticism right down the line. Don't accept anything uncritically until you're working with primary materials.

That said ... scratch the author of a good children's illustrated history and you may find an Oxford Don. Some of the ... "Life in a ..." "If you lived in ..." series (serieses ?) are immpeccable.

I second lkp's suggestion regarding the Gies books and Margaret Wade Labarge's Mistresses, Maids and Men (also known by the title A Baronial Household of the Thirteenth Century).

Another good book is Urban Tigner Holmes' Daily Living in the Twelfth Century. It's about fifty years old, but since it mostly just organizes information found in primary sources without editorializing, it's still a classic.