What Were Medieval Pubs, Inns and Taverns ACTUALLY Like?
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- Опубликовано: 26 июл 2024
- During the Middle Ages, ale was the most popular drink in England, and Medieval taverns, inns, and alehouses held a very important role in society, providing drink, food, and lodging to weary travellers, pilgrims, and even occasionally royalty. When we think of the Medieval tavern we imagine dark and smelly places with huge wooden tables and benches, places of gambling, violence, and shady business deals. But what were pubs really like in the Middle Ages? Let’s travel back in time for some leather mugs, a bit of royal paranoia, and the occasional stabbing. Welcome to Medieval Madness.
0:00 Introduction
0:45 Holy Last Orders
3:14 Ale Wives
4:37 Inn Today,
Tavern Tomorrow
7:43 Royal
Regulations
9:19 When Ales In,
Wits Out
🎶🎶 Music by CO.AG: / @co.agmusic
Narrated by James Wade
Written by Lisa E Rawcliffe
Edited by Jamit Productions
Thank you for watching.
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Copyright © 2023 Top5s All rights reserved. In this video, we've compiled information from a variety of sources, including documentaries, books, and websites, all with the aim of providing an engaging viewing experience. While we strive to ensure accuracy, we acknowledge that there may be variations in the authenticity of the content. We encourage viewers to delve deeper and conduct their own research to corroborate the information presented.
Having spent a fair bit of time in pubs only heated by open fires, in winter, I can assure you that they're actually pretty cosy. :) When they're mostly empty, one can sit near the fire; when they're full, body heat also helps to warm them.
There are pubs like that in Britain?
@@charliecrome207 yeh. In Ireland too. Typically in the countryside.
Many old inns have open fires, there's nothing better than sitting by the fire midweek when few people venture out with snow on the ground, sipping a hot toddy as your last drink before you stagger home.
@@ben-ow3owyeah ❤
You know what Jennie that sounds like a great way to kill a winter's evening.... Carpe Viva
I prefer drinking in pubs from the 1600’s than I do from the modern day Wetherspoons type places.
Last week I was having an ale in a Cornish old pirate pub built in 1312.
ale was often just ''small beer'', very slightly alcoholic but safer than water...in my family memory we were still fetching small beer from the village pub..
My grandfather was selling beer in jugs to take away in the 1960s
Interestingly, there were different words for female brewers and bakers - brewster and baxter respectively - and both, like the male versions, now fairly common surnames in the UK.
I love your intro. The sounds of wind and flag flapping, the look of it... Please don't change it! It's oddly comforting haha
I love it too! I’ve been wanting to say this. The artwork, that weird looking creature with an animal in its mouth (?) the drums and the whooshing sound, idk it’s great
It is ❤ he already changed once.
😢 Once was enough.... 😊 Still good. But i still love original look.
4real I love that and how he has all the medical art throughout the video to help you visualize everything.
I love it too!
I’ve said the EXACT, same thing since this channel started….It somehow conveys the passage of great time-with medieval imagery (and sounds) fading through the mists of time….
Nice to see Adraien Brouwer getting some love, a forgotten painter of the early 1600’s, he worked primarily IN taverns, from life, on small boards (a lot of jostling and rumpus in those smoky, beer laden dens) - I don’t think he lives much past 35, although the manner of his death is unknown to me.
Just when I thought I knew alot about this era I come across one of your podcasts, so merci! And cheers!
I love visiting medieval pubs across England. Such a shame that many are closing down now.
Some being burned too.
In actual fact there are no medieval pubs still existing several claim to be but the oldest recognised Inn BTW an Inn is not a pub is George Inn in Norton dated to 1345
Yeah I wonder who’s burning them elem
Those 🫎 limbs u allowed ur country to be infested with
probably not too different from British pubs today lol
Probably more civil than now
The one's in Ireland are pretty civil
Until you get glassed.
link l000000ł
No electronics or TVs so it probably got crazy
Thank you for all the absolutely fabulous Art you show. All of it so far is new to me and it’s one of the Huge pluses of Medieval Madness.
Right on time! I was at the pub getting tipsy and thought... "Would I have a long island and candied Brussel sprouts in the 13th century?"
Possibilities unlimited
I belive Long Islands are what they call a "New-World crop" XD
@@fuzzytransmissionman just another high--.ball... gave up alcohol.. lost the taste for it
Mmmm......love a crispy brussel sprout. Cheers!
I most certainly wish that I could have lived during the Middle Ages, I do not believe that i could have asked for more 😮
Eight to 16 pints a day.. Quite an incentive to take monastic orders
Must have been small beer
It was even included as part of their pensions, believe it or not.
added benefit being that after that much drink, you couldn't perform with a woman anyway, so win win
Others have commented on the low alcohol content or 'small beer'. Remember that in those days the rivers and ponds were little more than open sewers - water wasn't safe to drink. Only when it was brewed into ale was it deemed safe. The process 'sanitised' the water, into what we'd now call 'lite' beer in N America, about 0.5% proof or less (and equally tasteless)
Thanks, pal, for some fascinating videos!! Can't say I'd want to live anywhere earlier than WWI.
This is myth. Beer was the only tasty drink around and they could get water just fine. Tea, coffee, sodas etc weren't around.
Loved the artwork you choose. Wonderful visuals.
Lords of the Manor would often license a brewer for beer or ale. However, the demand always outstripped the brewer's capacity. Housewives would then start secretly brewing the beer or ale. If and when caught, the Lord of the Manor would fine them one Pence with a wink and a nod, knowing the fine was merely a tax on the illegal beer sales.
That would be one penny. Pence is plural.
Beer and ale are the same thing. Ale and lager are terms for a difference in fermentation process.
I love this channel 😭 I usually only like to learn about Ancient Rome but you got me interested in medieval history now too!
1:38 Authentic medieval traveler (a young woman alone), in period clothing 😆
Great video!
this guy keeps on nailing it
I love all your videos, especially how you always seem to find so much relevant art to each individual topic.
I always look forward for when you post!
Dont know man, when i hear medieval tavern i actually think about a safe stone building with swords and shelds on the walls, pelts everywhere, lit with candles and a fire! filled with people, food and drink in a world where there is nothing but wilderness! but yeah i guess it also might stink pretty bad in there! xD
That's Skyrim 🙂
That sounds cozy asf
this is the winking skeever in skyrim. Many pubs were not actually made of stone, hence the great fire of london. I feel like hanging swords on the wall around drunk degenerates is a bad idea?
@@dbz9393, @insertwittynamehere8947
I dident say it was historically accurate, i said "When i hear medieval tavern i actually think about" as a reply to "When most people hear tavern they think about x".
I think most pubs in my town are the exact same pubs from back then 😂
Yay!!! New madness ❤
Mate your channel is awesome keep up the good work
Thank you for including the contributions of women in this trade. Interesting how at the beginning, the production of ale was largely a domestic chore deligated to women.
Amazing paintings there, some things don't change!
Feel better! Honestly didn’t notice a difference but like the personal info dump 😊
Another good video
👍
These videos are oddly comforting lol! 😅
Very informative video. Now I need a pint!
I love the kitty cats shown in many surviving drawings of medieval monasteries & Abbeys….
Life in England in those days was short, brutal and smelly, and so were the people❤
so not much has changed
So.....they were Italians?
@shaunsteele6926
We’re not all short.
@@luckybag6814 technically they weren't either, they were just malnourished
average life span was in the 60's i believe. not that short.
Excellent
I always wanted to open a medieval-style pub, but I’m sure the health codes and building laws would prevent such an endeavor.
They looked just like Kensington Ave. in Philly
Must've been a bloody good time!
Very cool :)
Thank you.
It's been reflected on during the Black plague, taverns got pretty insane. Everyone thinking he's going to die, or they've lost most of their family! Drink 🍷🍻 on up!
I'm sixty. I have learned more from your channel than I would have learned back in grade school in five year's including the library. Which over the year's books were as much as forty percent wrong in the first place. Gee... I wonder why that would be???
Example:
Back in sixth and/or seventh grade Tyrannosaurus Rex stood up like Godzilla.
We of course know that they would literally break their back if they tried. And that is just one in well over at least a million facts in over thousands of subjects that were Completely Wrong.
Thank you for setting this area of history correct.
Keep up the wonderful work.
You forgot to mention all those people meeting up to go to the dungeon!
Glastonbury was absolutely ass this year
Your vids are ace though at least 😅
Holborn is pronounced like hobern.
Fun video as always and YOU GOT TO GO TO GLASTONBURY FEST??! So jealous. Sleep (and drink water) off that headache.
Great selection of artwork. The faces look so bizarre. All swollen and drunk. Even a baby in one painting.
Think about how much body heat warms up a room when it's full of people. Each person is basically a 180 pound rock emanating 100 degree heat, sometimes expelling it from the anus.
There once was a barmaid from Sale
On whose chest tattooed the price of ale
And on her behind
For the sake of the blind
Was the same information in Braille
I LOVE this channel!
My ancestor was Geoffrey Chaucer - great grandfather of my 1st cousin 13 x removed, phew. His father John was an acclaimed wine supplier to Royalty. So Geoff would have known his drink. My family lived in Lambeth and Southwark from 1800s until we all moved away in the 2000s.
The conical brass item is a cider or beer barrel tap from the late colonial period. The wooden on/off spicket has rotted away.
Spigot
I was hoping for a later period...the late 1800's but I get what I can get
Basically an Essex flat top pub without the Satellite dish or burnout
Cars
And the large barking dog on the roof. 🇬🇧
I've noticed a lot of smoking pipes in these images. I know tobacco was not around during those times in that part of the world, so is it an inaccuracy? Or do you suppose they are smoking opium or cannabis or something? I'm quite curious.
There are depictions of pineapples as well.
I think those paintings are more recent depictions; mostly thrown in for flavor.
Cannabis could very well have been smoked because hemp was EVERYWHERE, but because it was grown for its fibers I dont think many people really bothered using it recreationally. As for opium, that was probably REALLY expensive because only merchants who dealt with Eastern imports had ready access to it.
Slightly related note: a friend of mine smoked something, but didn't know what it was. It was opium.
The background music is loud af, but great video otherwise!
Definitely too loud.
Please pull back on audio input. We love you n wanna hear you fully :)
first? love this channel btw
I wish we could all go to the Medieval Tavern and we can drink ourselves.
Drink ourselves? I’d prefer to drink the ale, but whatever turns you on.
@@luckybag6814 same, I like ail to. at least what they are considering it in America LOL
@@anenglishmanplusamerican7107 Ale is 'warm fermentation' brewed, without hops, and top-fermented with yeast. Industrialised North American beers are actually lagers - cold brewed and stored, with bottom-fermented yeast. Fortunately, the UK has CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale), while in NA we have a tremendous surge in small breweries making more traditional beers brewed with hops. Great!!
@@pwblackmore I appreciate your enlightening comment about producing lagers and ails in modern times. It’s great to learn new things, even if I can’t see the light you’re shedding on the topic! Cheers to knowledge!
Love from the visual impaired community.
I really really love these lil documentaries about life in these times!!! So I have started to slowly buy n collect gold. I started at 1 gram about 3 months ago. Now have 8 grams gold and 1 ounce silver with two lil extra bars one 5gram one 10gram. So one and a half ounces of silver and only 8 grams gold. What would this be worth in these times please? Can I buy a loaf of bread or a house? Maybe a horse? It would be super cool to know please mate
I'm not sure about your relevance here - but, something to bear in mind: In Roman times an ounce of gold would buy you a nice toga, and some decent sandals - whereas nowadays an ounce of gold would buy you a nice suit and a pair of good shoes. The purchasing value is equivalent... so hang on to that gold!
@@pwblackmore thank you that’s really cool info. Oh I can promise you I’ll be holding on to it
Never discuss your valuables on the net, even in comments. There are unscrupulous individuals who’d find your info and …
(Ex law enforcement, here. Now a medieval historian.)
Your question should have been: what could I buy with an ounce of silver?
Well, lad, glad you asked.
An ounce of silver was worth 20 pence in the LSD scheme of things.
Were you a farmer (aka peasant until the rotten Victorians turned the description into a bad word), you’d make a penny a day. Also as a casual laborer. Note we are talking the low end of wages here.
With your penny, you could buy a four pound loaf of bread. Four pounds of very little gluten and no GMO and chemical additives bread. Unless it was adulterated with chalk, or you got Millstone dust in it, the bread was far healthier than today. Bread was your staple food. You’d add what green and leafies you could, plus fruit, in season. By the way, our bread today has 19 (!) times the gluten of bread in the 1950s, let alone medieval bread.
Beer or ale would set you back 1d a gallon, table ale (aka small ale or beer) a farthing a gallon. Think about that: depending on your wage level, a gallon of beer/ale costs a quarter to a full day’s wages.
Wine, from a half penny to 2d per pint. Wastel, second best bread, would cost 1.25d. It was brown and a bit coarse. Today, it’d be marketed as artisanal bread. Chicken or duck eggs might cost you 1d per dozen.
Clothing was expensive. That’s why you’d hopefully have a wife who could cook and spin (and sew).
I hope that helps.
Cheers!
10:00 Is that a sort of nunchuk?
I note that lots of people were smoking in medieval times according to the pictures! Sir Walter Raleigh was a bit slow
looks like santi stance from xingyi!
"And yet you lie with women! Black Sue ... Fat Phoebe ... Rosaline, Burbage's seamstress ... Aphrodite Baggott who does it behind the Dog & Trumpet ..."
(The special today is a pig's foot marinated in juniper-berry vinegar and served on a buckwheat pancake ...)
good to see my behaviour has survived relentlessly through the ages,,,
16 pints is TWO GALLONS!
8 to 16 pints a day? Where do I sign up?
Without refrigeration I assume all ale was consumed at room temperature, yes?
And it was freshly brewed to be consumed the same day, before the 15th century and the growing use of hops in beer. Indeed, the acid of hops acted as a preservative way before the wide use of refrigeration.
@@nozoto The just brewed ale would be interesting to try.
Ice and souterrain helped keep beer longer.
4 bar loop music name? In ins to tavern
Was that edgewall innkeeper???
0:55 - what's that picture depicting? All the adults in the room eyeing up the child?
i've often heard that wine and beer was nowhere near as strong in alcohol content
as today? If so it was perhaps because it was rushed in production as compared
to today?
What I know about brewing,wine making and stills today,it's not done till it's done .
comment?
Could’ve also been intentional in some cases as in many villages and towns the water wasn’t safe to drink so people would make a low alcohol ale or beer to drink instead of water
Too much is made of the beer being weak. It was generally around 3-4% which whilst not super strong, it’ll still have an effect if you’re drinking gallons of it. Also, stronger beers were sometimes made for festivals and Christmas. I like to think that when you hear about an event that can be described as “medieval madness”, the root cause was always an unusually strong brew in the village.
You're kinda right, and also I guess we can't genuinely be certain
...but the contrasts boil down to more of a distinction between classification:
Pottage for instance was an important staple... Which shares ingredients with ale but shares more similarity with food whilst still having an alcoholic content. (Like in Ancient Egypt)
Also hops weren't really a thing until the end of the middle ages and so I would imagine without their antibacterial effect, the yeasts wouldn't have been as potent at raising the alcohol content.
Wine was infrequent in Britain and expensive... But I know the Romans famously watered their wine down...so would imagine the same legacy would have lingered until the Renaissance when distillation methods etc were discovered.
@@bigcheese2128 you won't be able to brew beer without really good water and what you got from wells or the local creek would've been perfectly fine to drink (most likely better than most modern tab water)
storing water for a longer period in wooden barrels will ofc creating issues - either with micro-organisms or at least giving it a funky taste
Imagine the smells😂
So no quest board in medieval tavern !?
"Harboring persons for whom they can not answer.".
Around the 6+ minute mark, you mention lighting to be a central fire and candles. I suspect that rush lights, rather than candles would have been much more in popular use. Candles, I understand, were relatively out of the means of the average Ale House. At least for regular use. They had rushes on the floor, as you said. So, they were readily available.
I also take small issue with some of the images used in the video meant to go with the narrative. All of these men smoking pipes. I was of the understanding that tobacco was introduced to Europe via North America which didn't get colonized until well after the Middle Ages. So, while entertaining, these images don't appear to be historically accurate. I only bring it up because the subject purports to report an accurate, if entertaining, image of the subject matter.
Candles: the tavern would use tallow candles. Basically animal fat. Smokey and stinky, and not as bright as wax candles. But far cheaper. Why waste the best on punters, unless they’d pay for it?
Cheers!
No pool tables & pinball machines
Since they are smoking in some paintings, wouldn't that mean they are from the renaissance?
I didn't know only women were brewing.
8-16 pints EVERY DAY :D?! No wonder monks had big beer...eh...ale bellies!
Eight and sixteen pints of ale per day!
Honestly I’d take that world over this one. Being descended from British people I’m sure my ancestors experienced all of this
🤗💚💚💚🍀🍀🍀
No different from modern pubs then except you can get some pink gin and a basket of loaded fries.
Oh how lovely.. once again the Church is involved. So nice to allow the rich to come in but turn away the poor.
🙂👍
As a publican I can’t help coming away from this with the impression you don’t like pubs very much. Forgive me if I’m mistaken but given recent events pub lovers are somewhat on the defensive. All good pubs are community hubs regardless of your apparent disdain. Respect, and I hope nobody nasty managed to get into Glastonbury to interfere with your expensive exclusivity.
What are you on about!? What recent events? And how is this in anyway negative toward pubs?? Try being less vague in future.
@@thomp5347 Apologies, I may have been responding to a different post.
This video it reminds me of the Lord of the rings
In fairness, the ale was very weak and a whole lot safer than the water in places!
Nothing's changed then.
1:14 - God is testing me
What happened to Roger?😐
Thank you for doing this video. Please take care of yourself. You are more important than your videos. You are more important than your career.
Would a fire in the middle of a medieval inn be the forerunner to central heating!
Was that a question?
@@silver47official no it was a play on words.
@@Simon-1965 Oh…
@@Simon-1965 Tumbleweed…
Wait, the royals didn't live in London? Where did they live in the Middle ages?
At their estate. They have their own land to manage.
Stay drunk at the pubs 6 days a week, go to church on Sunday, and you would stay out of the dungeons.
I hope Roger got rogered.
Tumbleweed…
8 to 16 pints a day !?....
How much alcohol was in this ale ?...😊
2-4%
MM = 33. Proof of all CLAIMS are Required.
And what of it.❤
I need to find an ale wife
Weird you claim the origins of the word pub comes from the monestarys only to carry over and describe how ale-wifes often opend their house to sell of excess ale.
How did everyone not get fetal alcohol syndrome back then? I mean the women drank ale as much as men did, right?
Beer was not as strong also you drank different beer depending on the time of day. Small beer for example low in alcohol. Also beer was high in calories and used as a nutritional filler as well
They did. Infant and mother mortality were way higher than today.
@@spontaneousbootaybut not because of that.
The beer was much weaker.
High mortality was due to lack of healthcare and awareness of infection.
@@spontaneousbootay Yeah, I know. But even among the people that survived, I would think a ton of them had at least mild FAS if truly everyone was always drinking noting but ale all the time. I wonder if a lot of people had very mild cases of it, where it only affected their intelligence a little bit, but no one noticed because most people didn't know how to read or have to do anything that mentally complicated, anyway. If the majority of the people had mild FAS for such a long time, it's a wonder European society actually progressed as much and as fast as it did.
@@Melissa0774 People weren't marrying their cousins so often by that point, with the influence of the catholics iirc, so they were already slightly healthier. This of course came hand in hand with increased travel.
The background music is excruciating