19378 - If Walls Could Talk: It’s the Middle Ages and You Think You Need A Castle

Course Overview

In the modern mind a castle is an impressive structure of high walls and towers.  A moat and a drawbridge complete the picture. Not so. Castles began as a single stone tower with a rope ladder.  Not much better than the peasants’ huts which surrounded it. As castles became larger and more imposing, they were cold, damp, and reeked of human waste. People relieved themselves in convenient corners or sat on a board suspended over the moat below. Wait! How did a moat enter the picture?  By the time of Henry VIII, the royal posterior made a deposit through a hole in a velvet-covered chair called “the throne.”  Sound familiar? Join us for the transition in housing from primitive castles clustered by serfs’ huts to urban homes filled with newfangled ideas such as private bedrooms, mattresses, bureau drawers, and the first flush toilet. You just might decide against owning a castle - even today.