Peasants in the Winter

 Winter was a tough period for medieval peasants.  For one thing, they would have had a difficult time keeping warm.  We probably do not appreciate our furnaces enough—turn up the thermostat, and heat appears!  Medieval people of all sorts, not just peasants but the rich and powerful, would have killed for a furnace (well, maybe not literally).

They had firepits, but peasants would not have had fireplaces, a thirteenth-century invention.  A fireplace, while not filling the room with smoke the way a firepit can, also sends a lot of its heat up the chimney, so it's inefficient, and if fuel is hard to get or expensive you don't want to be inefficient.  Building a fireplace was also a skill that most peasants didn't have, and they wouldn't have had the money to hire a mason.  So fancy medieval fireplaces might be found in castles (as seen below), but not peasant houses.

 

The best way to stay warm was to stay in bed, snuggled up against other people.  Fortunately there was very little work to be done in the winter, other than taking care of the animals, so there was plenty of time to stay in bed.

 Animals in fact could be advantageous to have.  They wouldn't actually live with the humans, but a medieval farm house would generally have the barn or stables attached, or perhaps on a lower floor with the humans living above.  Some of their body heat would thus help keep the structure from becoming too frigid.

But a farm would still have been a brutal place in the winter (and remember, probably 90% of the medieval population lived on a farm).  The water that both humans and animals needed might well have frozen.  The courtyard and the dung heap, where both human and animal waste was deposited, would have been a muddy mess, or a frozen muddy mess, scarcely better.  Worst of all, the food might be running out.  Everybody tried to stash away plenty for winter, but there was no doubt that it could be a close run between when the root vegetables, stored grain, and smoked meat gave out and when the first dandelion greens appeared.

Appreciate your furnace and the grocery store.

© C. Dale Brittain 2023

For more on medieval peasants, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages. Also available in paperback.