England History : Village Life in Middle Ages

by Monique Barb - The Village was usually small with only a handful of cottages. A village was large if it had as many as two dozen cottages containing about 100 people. Besides the cottages and the manor house or castle there was usually a mill and a church. There were no shops in the village, although several villagers were part-time carpenters, smiths or wheelwrights. In some villages there ...

Date added: 08 October '07

England History : Farming in the Later Middle Ages

by Monique Barb - In time life on the manor changed. As the centuries passed, the distinctions between villeins, cottars, bordars and others disappeared. Men were either free or they were villeins owing labour services to the lord of the manor. But as the towns grew and developed, many villeins fled from the villages and sought freedom in the towns. To gain their freedom they had to live for mo ...

Date added: 08 October '07

The Growth of Towns during Middle Ages in England

by Monique Barb - Towns are necessary in all countries because it is essential to have places where goods can be bought and sold. The buying and selling can take place in shops or in a market place. As you saw on page 75, the villages did not usually have shops and, although they had parttime craftsmen, they did not normally have people whose main livelihood came from anything other than the op ...

Date added: 15 October '07

England History : Entertainment and Sport in Middle Ages

by Monique Barb - Although life was hard in the Middle Ages, there were opportunities for games, sports and entertainments. When the Thames froze over, Londoners skated on the ice and sometimes they made sledges of ice and slid the ice blocks across the frozen river. It was the custom on Shrove Tuesday in the twelfth century for all the young men of London to 'go out into the fields to play at ...

Date added: 17 October '07

Travel in the Middle Ages Britain

by Monique Barb - Travel in the Middle Ages was either on land or by water. Rich people sometimes travelled in covered wagons. They must have been very uncomfortable as they did not have suspension and roads were bumpy and rutted. Others travelled on a box between two poles. Two horses, one in front and one behind carried it. They were trained to walk at the same pace. On land the travel ...

Date added: 31 July '08