13th century (un)dressing in Castles


Dover Castle, Kent, constructed in the 1180s

The lords and ladies living in the stone castles of the 13th century were a lot cleaner than their Elizabethan counterparts. For one thing, they washed themselves, all over. In fact they used soap, which was then made by boiling mutton fat with ash and caustic soda. They used a special twig to brush their teeth with.

As soon as they had attended to their cleanliness (well, they actually had servants to do the attending part for them), they would go about getting dressed. Men and women wore similar clothes; there were stockings of wool or silk to put on, a shirt with long detachable sleeves, which incidentally had to be stitched on every time the shirt was worn. Once this tedious task had finished, a gown had to be worn over all this and secured with a brooch. Unlike the men, the ladies wore a tight bodice over their gowns. If they were going out and it was cold they would wear a coat, which was very roomy and if the weather was really threatening to freeze their various bits and pieces off, a fur-lined mantle would be worn, also fastened at the shoulder by a brooch. As a matter of fact, in those days your station in society was judged by the length of your garments (poor people wore short clothes). Of course, there is always someone to upset fashion’s apple-cart and Henry II did just that when he decided he preferred wearing short items of clothing. Showing off his good legs perhaps?

Anyway, as there were no pockets, people had to tie draw-string purses on their belts or under their skirts. The leather shoes they wore were extremely fine. An elegant gentleman was the one whose shoes were such a tight fit that nobody could understand how he ever got into them, never-mind how he planned to get out of them at bedtime.

For some strange reason (or perhaps not so strange), only men wore underpants, called braies, while women went about bare bottomed, presumably dreading a windy day…

Comments

Anna said…
That is a very good point, one which I was wondering about last night. I really don't know why they stopped washing. I even read that in the 13th century people had baths every morning in giant wooden tubs! :-)))
Tuesday, 10 May, 2005
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Catherine the Great and her Many Lovers

Image
Catherine the Great was empress of Russia from 1762 until she died in 1796. She was born in 1729 in Poland and in 1744 was taken to Russia to marry the young Grand Duke Peter, heir to the throne and not of a sane mind. For seven years during their marriage Peter spent his time playing with toy soldiers and dogs and showed no interest in sex. In fact he had a physical disability, a very tight foreskin, which may have played an important part in that matter. Finally the empress Elizabeth gave Catherine the permission to take a lover, which she did and was soon pregnant. She convinced Peter it was his own child, as was the plan anyway. In the meantime he had been circumcised so that he could perform the sexual act. Catherine developed a taste for young soldiers. She had a special area built in her bedroom, which was curtained off and where she received her lovers. Gregory Orlov was her on and off lover for around thirteen years. He was said to possess excellent equipment, unbelievable ‘st
Read more

Emperor Elagabalus; the Teenage Pervert

Image
When the emperor Caracalla was murdered in 217, the fourteen-year-old Elagabalus succeeded him. He only ruled for 4 years, but in that short period of time he commited a variety of grotesque and debauched acts, enough to make Caligula and Commodus seem rather plain. His real name was Bassianus but as he developed an intense interest in worshippng the Syrian god Elagabal, became High Priest of the cult and so had his name changed to Elagabalus. To honor his god, he demanded that hundereds of cattle were slaughtered daily on huge sacrificial altars. He had a temple built on the Palatine Hill and ordered the Romans to worship a statue of a giant phallus, which didn't go down very well at all... Eventually he decided he was the god embodied. He started to wear women's clothes and make-up, implored his surgeons to cut his penis off and make him a vagina and when they said tehy could not do this he settled for circumcision. His body is said to have been very effeminate and he had a m
Read more

The Smelly Woad Dyers

Image
Woad leaves Before Indigo was imported from the East in the 16th Century, the only source of rich blue dye was Woad, Isatis Tinctoria, a plant which is a member of the cabbage family and which was brought to Britain by the Celts. They called it Glasto, hence Glastonbury, which means ‘a place where woad grows’. The process by which the dye was extracted was lengthy and very smelly indeed, (think combination of raw sewage and rotten cabbage) and the people who did this work, woad dyers, were outcasts of society, since they smelt so much. As a result they were isolated and inbred. There was no way of hiding if you were a woad dyer as even if you washed yourself really well to remove the stench, the blue dye could be seen on your fingers and under your fingernails. Queen Elizabeth I, not being able to stand the stench from their workshops, decreed that woad dyers should be at least 5 miles away from wherever she was staying. As it took 50 kilos of woad in order to produce 5 kilos of pigme
Read more