December 24, 2024 • 60 mins
Hotels and their predecessors have been around for thousands of years. So what were they like back in the medieval period? Were they full of knights, adventurers, drunkards, bandits, and a wench or two? Turns out, just like today, you had a choice of accommodations based on the coin in your pocket, so where would you have stayed?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hotel history is created for adult audiences.
(00:03):
Content may not be suitable for all listeners.
Discretion is advised.
You're listening to Hotel History.
We take you with us through the sordid history and scandals
of some of the world's most famous and infamous hotels.
I'm D'Etta.
And I'm Yael.
(00:24):
Let's get started.
So for this episode, we wanted to do something a little bit
different, but also has Christmas vibes.
I don't know if it's...
I feel like it's a good mix.
Yeah.
Christmas and...
Yeah, it's not blatantly Christmassy, but I think we all have an idea of...
(00:47):
We went to Christmas origin story.
And that we are covering medieval inns.
So we're not doing one specific inn, but we are going to go over the different types of inns
of the medieval times in England.
We're specifically focusing on England, right?
For the most part, yes.
This kind of applies to other places as well, but yeah, the research primarily was done on
(01:11):
English inns.
Yeah.
So is it origin of Christmas?
Not really, but it is the...
It gives that vibe.
That idea of the medieval Christmas that I think everybody thinks about whenever they're
thinking of Christmas in England.
It's either medieval Christmas or like Dickensian Christmas are the two, like 1800s.
(01:33):
Oh, yeah.
No, when I think of Christmas, I think of obviously other than the story of Jesus,
but like the modern day version.
Yeah.
Like Santa and the lights is the Norwegian people.
Where did it...
Scandinavia.
Scandinavia, where they had their pagan.
(01:54):
So I think I read about it.
It was also Halloween, by the way.
A lot of holidays started with the pagans having their pagan rituals and then the
Christians coming and trying to take over and kill everyone.
And then they were like, you know what?
Let's make this easier by adopting this into our Christian religion.
And kind of blending into both.
(02:16):
They were cool with the pagans, but they weren't cool with the Jews.
Still don't get that one.
But anyway, but that's how like Santa Claus...
Santa Claus was not supposed to be a nice guy.
He was supposed to be like a creepy...
It depends on which Santa Claus you're originating from, because if Santa Claus
(02:37):
originates from St. Nicholas, then he was a nice guy.
No, I'm thinking about Krampus.
No.
Or whatever, like the evil...
He's not Santa.
Who is he?
He comes along, sometimes along with Santa or on a different night than Santa.
He's just like a fiendish monster that takes the naughty kids and Santa is for the good kids.
(03:01):
Oh, I thought you were going to be like...
He's like Santa's, like the team of Santa.
It's like only the really rich kids get Santa, but the poor kids get Krampus.
And he's like, oh, here's a gift.
It's made in China.
(03:22):
Okay.
Well, not that...
Well, whatever the origin of both of them, kind of like Santa wasn't...
He wasn't supposed to be this like fun loving...
The origin stories kind of...
Santa was kind of someone you wanted to avoid, I think.
I don't think that I've ever read that.
Listen, I grew up Jewish, so you know...
Okay.
Well, I feel like...
(03:42):
Maybe someone told me that lie.
I saw a TikTok of like a Jewish mom and someone asked the question, like,
do your kids know about Santa and would they tell other kids about Santa?
And all our kids go to private Jewish schools, so they're not like telling kids,
but some of them didn't know.
(04:02):
And then the older ones knew.
And one of them, she's like, who's Santa?
And she's like, a guy that doesn't exist.
And she's so extremely...
She's like, okay, but would you tell someone who is not Jewish that Santa's not real?
And her kids are like, no, that's not my place.
And I'm like, yeah, that's so true.
(04:23):
But yeah, I guess...
No, but Santa wasn't seen as like a bad guy growing up.
He was just...
I just thought he would not come to me.
I was like, I'm Jewish.
I was like, I'm Jewish, like he's not interested.
He's like, oh, I can...
I thank God.
This area is really easy to give out presents
because a lot of them just don't need it.
(04:43):
What would...
If Jews had Santa, what would they leave out for him instead of milk and cookies?
Latkes.
Latkes and apple cider or applesauce.
Little apple sauce, some sour cream.
Latkes and seltzer.
Little kugel.
A little kugel.
Oh no, no, no, jelly donuts.
(05:04):
Oh yeah, sufganiyot.
Soup ganiot with seltzer.
Dr. Browns.
Dr. Browns.
Diabetes.
I feel like he would want to come to the Jewish house.
For a little change.
Just for the diversity.
Yeah.
But yeah, like I love the story of Santa.
(05:25):
But I still think of medieval...
I feel like it's just that region.
How did they celebrate Christmas in medieval times?
It was a lot of feasting.
Like you got the whole 12 days of Christmas off.
So it was like a big holiday.
If you lived somewhere like on a country manor where there was an abundance,
(05:45):
then yeah, like you would get feasting and revelry and they would dance.
Oh, it's like a party.
Yeah, it was like a big time party.
It was like a holiday party.
Okay, so...
It was just like your office Christmas party.
It's exactly like that.
Yeah, and like the lord of the manor was expected to give some nice bonuses
to all of his tenants.
And if possible, invite them in and actually let them participate.
(06:11):
Nice for back of the day where people had no rights.
That's why you had to give them holidays.
I know.
See, Christmas is so nice.
When people go on about hating Christmas,
I'm like, you don't need to.
Like there's nice things about Christmas.
I think Christmas is a really nice...
You don't have to go crazy.
(06:33):
You don't have to get crazy presents.
Obviously I grew up with none of that.
But my family did not like...
We didn't hate on Christmas to make us feel better.
My mom's like, no, it's beautiful.
We enjoy Christmas and they do all the work.
We don't have to do...
This is lovely.
If you go during Christmas time in Brooklyn to an area called Diker Heights,
(06:56):
which is like probably the least Jewish area.
It's very Italian.
And...
Oh my God, it's insane.
See who's walking around.
All Jews, like religious Jews.
We're like, of course we're going to...
This is the only thing we can do.
And we're going to appreciate your hard work.
We're not going to be like, ew, Christmas.
(07:17):
I've never heard that come from Jewish people.
Like, oh gosh, you're celebrating Christmas?
Like no one says that.
No, we're like, we'll write you a song to sing.
Yeah.
We're like, listen, we wish.
But yeah, it's...
But I bet you now it's like that.
But back then, I don't think Christmas was so great for the Jews.
(07:39):
No.
No.
Christmas and Easter were perilous times.
Yeah.
But we're going to gloss over that ugly part of history and only talk about...
Well, this is medieval England, so Jews didn't live there.
Weren't allowed to live there yet.
We got kicked out.
Remember that other episode?
If you don't know what we're talking about, check out the beginning of the Burnmouth episode.
(08:00):
Bournemouth.
I keep calling it Burnmouth.
It's Bournemouth.
We're going to always screw up the names.
No one has called us out on it yet.
But one day...
Because no one is listening.
Is anyone listening?
Can you leave a comment?
No.
(08:27):
We are focusing on, of course, types of inns in medieval England.
And if you're anything like us, then probably you have a very specific
picture in your head of what that means.
Whether you're a LARP fan, a Lord of the Rings fan, you're thinking the fireplace
(08:50):
with the innkeeper and everyone sitting around and singing songs.
And there's the shadowy figure in the corner in a cloak.
I have a question.
Lord of the Rings, you think was taking place during the medieval times?
Yeah.
I think it was based off of...
Oh.
I mean, obviously it's fictional, but yeah.
Okay.
A lot of fantasy is very medieval.
(09:13):
Why is that?
Based.
People romanticize that time, I think.
Oh, right.
We were just talking about this, but why?
Horrible time in this story.
Well, I think that makes a lot of things maybe easier.
You don't have to deal with a lot of technology.
Your technology is pretty stagnant and people love the look of knights and kings.
(09:36):
That's the time of kings and a lot of fantasies have kings.
True.
Well, we were talking about...
Okay.
So the medieval times was a stretch of time between 500?
Yeah.
Like somewhere between like five to 800, depending on who you ask,
and up to the Renaissance in around 1450.
1450.
So this is before the Renaissance, before the Enlightenment, before logic,
(10:01):
before soap, before obvious things.
So the magic was like in the air because if something can't be explained, it's magic.
Right.
Religion.
I think the oppressive religion also was like kind of magical,
like where they believed in...
It was also the time of the witches.
Yeah.
Right.
If you healed someone through medicine, you were a witch,
(10:23):
because that's the only logical explanation.
So, okay, that tracks a little bit.
Yeah.
So there are actually, however, multiple types of accommodation during this period.
And of course, your top tier of society, you're not going to be finding like kings
(10:44):
and their relations in any of these places.
They're going to be staying in private homes owned by their equally rich friends.
They've got their own system worked out.
Yeah.
When you watch like shows based on that, they're like,
oh, the blue blobs are staying at the manor.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So whether you're in the city or the country, like, yeah,
(11:06):
you they have private homes to stay in.
But the men always make their themselves, they make their way to the local inns,
taverns, and ale houses, even if they're staying at the rich friend.
Yes, absolutely.
So there are three types of establishments for the most part,
(11:29):
ale houses, taverns, and inns.
And they did have they had legal differences, like licensing differences.
And they also did have kind of a social hierarchy difference to them.
Although these are all places where the social hierarchy blended quite a bit,
just because an ale house was somewhere where working class people could afford
(11:52):
didn't mean that your noble gentleman isn't going to find himself in an ale house.
Well, it's like a brothel, right?
No, no, no, no, not that ale houses are brothels, but it's like a brothel.
Well, you're all right.
You'll find you're going to find sorts from all classes, all men.
(12:13):
Yes.
So in all of these places were family owned establishments,
usually where the whole family is going to be working
and any additional servants are also probably going to be working there.
And we'll also talk about, you know, when these establishments could be run
by women, it was not unheard of.
So let's start with the most.
(12:36):
But let's highlight that a little bit, because we see this pattern
over and over again in hotels where hotels are the first places
women actually have any kind of rights, like in business
or just like to eat in public, like basic.
But hotels are the like the ground where this started.
(12:58):
And even in medieval times, that's wild.
Yeah.
So yeah, it's always been a place where women could actually assert
a little bit of take up a little bit of space.
Yeah.
So let's start with ale houses.
These are definitely the most abundant of the three types.
(13:19):
So if you're wondering what ale is in medieval England,
ale just meant a beverage that's been fermented without hops.
So it's going to be from a grain of some sort,
but you're not going to find any hops in it, which is different from its meaning today.
Today, ale does technically use some hops, just less than other beer types.
(13:42):
And it's fermented a little bit differently.
Yeah.
So ale houses started with ale because it was very cheap to make.
A woman of the house is going to be making ale for her family.
And then if she has ale leftover, which they usually did, then it's an easy way to make money.
(14:02):
She would just put like a little like branch or broom out of her door to say, to let everybody know.
Open for business.
Yep.
And people could come and drink around the table or buy the ale and take it home.
They also like, you can just have a room.
Yes.
Most of the time these were just houses.
(14:24):
It's just their house.
Yeah.
So of course, people had very small accommodations at the time.
So it would literally just be walking into someone's house and buying a drink.
So if they did have happen to have extra space, then these ale houses did have accommodations
for people to stay overnight for a cheap price.
(14:45):
But not all ale houses were like that.
But not all ale houses would have had accommodations.
This would have been very informal.
People sleeping on the floor.
If there's not an extra room sort of thing, like you're not going to be
having privacy in an ale house if that's where you're going to stay.
Yeah. And if you purchased ale there, you would have the right to use their hearth to cook food.
(15:07):
What? Their hearth?
Hearth.
What? Not hearth?
Hearth.
No, the professor that I was watching a video actually said hearth like five times.
And I was like, oh my, am I stupid?
Have I been mispronouncing this word my entire life?
Is it hearth?
And then I went and looked it up and it is hearth.
(15:28):
Okay. So if a professor makes this mistake, it makes sense why I would make this mistake.
Exactly.
So I'm just human, but a hearth, I'm assuming is like a fireplace.
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
So, um, cause some people didn't even have that in their home.
So if they went to the ale house, they can use, they can cook there.
Yes.
It's like an Airbnb.
Yeah. If you bought some ale, you had the right to use their hearth.
(15:51):
That's nice.
Yeah. Especially the, so if people were traveling, sometimes the,
the merchant is going to stay at the inn, but his servants,
he's not going to pay for them to stay at the inn.
So he sends them to an ale house with accommodations
and they can stay there, buy some ale, cook their dinner.
So we already know where the ale house ranks in the house.
(16:12):
Yes. Yes. And so ale houses, most of the time really wouldn't provide food.
It was just ale and you had to bring your own food and you could use their hearth to cook it.
Or yeah, or there was fast food during this time.
So you could stop at a cook shop, buy a pie or, you know, stop at a baker,
buy some bread and take it with you to the ale house.
So sometimes the accommodations could be used for unsavory things.
(16:36):
Soccer.
So that's why sometimes ale houses did also kind of become synonymous with brothel or whorehouse.
So the owners, it was up to the owners to police the bad behavior that was happening
in their ale house. So if people are becoming, you know, boisterously dancing or they're,
(16:58):
you know, getting hot and heavy in the corner, you know, it's,
it's up to the owner to take care of this. Cause otherwise if the constable comes in
and witnesses it going on, then people can be prosecuted. You're going to get a reputation
as that kind of ale house. And if you're a licensed ale house, you're going to get shut down.
Hi.
(17:18):
Now there were a ton of unlicensed ale houses because it's women trying to make money for their
families.
Also these constables, as you say, men, right?
Yes.
So we know why those lasted.
Yeah. So some, some places would actually have bouncers not to kick unruly guests out
(17:39):
necessarily, but to actually keep the constables from coming in because the constable had to
witness something himself to be able to call it out. So if he couldn't see it,
then he couldn't say anything about it.
I'm sure there's a lot of bribery going on.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
So of course now being a woman working in the ale house is going to be a tricky position,
(18:02):
just as it probably still is today for female bartenders. Obviously wives of the patrons
might accuse you of trying to ensnare their husbands to waste all of their money at the
ale house gambling and drinking. Or you could also be blamed for the patron's bad behavior.
You know, if, if they do something unacceptable, well, you know, what were you doing there?
(18:25):
What were you doing there to tempt them?
Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. Also, I feel like back in the day, they would try to
ensnare some of those husbands.
I mean, not saying it wouldn't. Yeah. By the 17th century beer actually did finally replace ale.
Once the use of hops kind of finally made its way over from Germany and they,
(18:47):
it finally replaced ale became more popular.
Uh, just a fun little, do you know, you know this, what IPA stands for, right?
India Pale Ale, right?
Okay. So a lot of people don't know this. I learned this when I worked at the brewery,
um, that the way that, that it was developed was that they were transporting beer from England to
(19:08):
India and they were like, okay, let's preserve it so it doesn't go bad. And they dumped a bunch of
hops in it and then they drank it and they're like, Ooh, okay, this can work. And then it became a
thing. And then in the West coast, they decided that was good. Uh, the rest of the world is not.
I'm sorry. I think IPA is disgusting. I'm not a fan. I am not a fan. Sorry. IPA lover.
(19:32):
All my friends are IPA lovers, but I just, I don't know if you can tell it's one of those things
that's a mistake. Like blue cheese, like blue cheese and IPA are in the same category of like
someone fucked up or well, we're going to have to make this work cause it's all we got and we're
going to die. Well, and the, once they were trying to brew in India, you know, the weather is much
warmer in India than it is in England. So they didn't have the cold nights that they needed
(19:56):
for the, for the beer to ferment in this slowly in the way that they're used to. So yeah, they,
they definitely did what they could with what they had, but it, it wasn't good guys. Like just
give it up. Why is it so popular on the West coast? I don't know. It's not as popular on the East
coast. No, I didn't really even taste it. I think until coming to the West coast. Yeah. The only
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people that I know that were ever like, yeah, I like that is exactly the type of person that you
think would that you're just like, okay, we get it. All of your friends said they liked it. So now
you have to feel like you're somehow cultured and like it too. Well, yeah, you know, hipsters.
I'm talking about hipsters. It's true. Growing up. No one liked it. They were like Heineken,
Corona. That's all we have. You ask for anything else, get your out. Like you get kicked out of the
(20:43):
bar. So I actually read the first time I learned about ale houses was when I was reading this book
called girly drinks, a world of history of women in alcohol by Mallory O'Meara. And so it's just a
fascinating look of all around the world of the history of women in alcohol. And it's really
(21:04):
fascinating because most of the time women were the ones to start whatever type of alcohol it is.
Women were the ones to start it, to initiate it in most areas of the world. And then women's are
the ones in control of it doing the brewing. It never failed. As soon as the women were able to
start having a little bit of financial independence, men immediately outlawed women being able to brew
(21:31):
and took over and created guilds and such and such to keep, and then made it like a man's industry.
But basically most alcohol brewing and consumption started as a women's industry.
Yeah. Yeah. This doesn't surprise me. I would like to say to all the Twitter misogynists out there
who are like literally tweeting, what have women done? And I'm like, sir, everything. We created
(21:57):
life. Like we literally birthed you, you stupid shit. I get very mad about this. And another thing
is that we didn't, we weren't allowed to take credit for anything. Hello Frankenstein, you know,
it was written by a woman, but she had to be like, no, JK. I did, my husband did this. It was
(22:19):
definitely my husband. F Scott Fitzgerald fucking plagiarizing. I was like, I'm not going to
plagiarizing Zelda's diary and letters constantly. Like huge chunks. Yeah. Huge chunks. I mean,
just this isn't fair. Like you are enjoying your alcoholic beverage because of women,
(22:40):
but we couldn't take the credit and you think we didn't contribute to anything. Yeah.
Cry harder.
Yeah.
So that brings us to the next type of taverns. And so there were about, to give you an example,
(23:03):
like if you were in like a, a city of, you know, moderate size, even there were, are going to be
probably hundreds of ale houses. There were, there were a lot, especially like per, like whenever
you break it down to the amount of people per ale house, it was like 200, 250 people per ale
house. Like there was a lot of ale houses. So taverns are going to be a little bit more upscale
(23:29):
from ale houses, but that makes sense because the, there's a low barrier barrier to entry, right?
Yes. So there's like, you can easily open an ale house cause you'd have a house. Yeah. Cause you
have a house and you're making ale anyway for your family. Yeah. Again, it's the Airbnb of the time.
I have a bed. I'm a hotel. Exactly. So taverns were actually introduced by the Romans
(23:56):
because tavern comes from the Latin word taverna, which means an inn, but it's not exactly an inn.
Like we think of it today. Tavern was specifically a place where you could go buy wine.
So this already has a little bit of a price barrier to it, because if you're going to be
buying wine, you've got to have a little bit of money to invest in that. Okay. This is so funny
(24:21):
because this makes sense. Like beer is the drink of the people. Wine is the drink of the snobs
and, and the people, but like, think about the wine snobs and you're like, think about the people
who are sommeliers. And so they have different locations that, yeah, this is just tracking.
(24:42):
I just want to say humans don't change. We haven't changed hundreds of years later. We're still
sorting ourselves into groups based on what we train. Yeah, exactly. You're going to find
you're going to find a, you know, one group of people at a sports bar. You're going to find another
group at a wine bar. So men at a sports bar, women at a wine bar. Don't forget about the gay men.
(25:07):
Never. They're included, obviously. So, so the tavern did cater to a little bit higher social
status for the most part, but once again, we're definitely blurring social lines here. So you
could get beer at a tavern, but most people went for wine. You could either just go buy
wine and take it to take home for your family, or you could stay there and drink a glass of wine.
(25:31):
Of course, grape wine was more expensive because it was imported from Spain and France for the
most part, England, I think in the south of England, they, they do grow some white wines,
but it really wasn't much of a thing there. But in England, wine was considered to be anything
fermented from a fruit. So they would also sell apple cider and Perry there, which I had never
(25:53):
heard of Perry before, but apparently in England, pear cider is called Perry. Oh, I didn't know that.
Well, that's cause we're not English. Yeah. So they were considered wine, but they were cheaper
because you could actually make apple cider and pear cider in England. So taverns also did offer
a degree of accommodations, not their primary purpose, but they've got it. If you need it,
(26:15):
it's going to be probably have a little bit more privacy, a little bit nicer than the ale house.
Yeah. Mid tier sleeping by the fireplace. Yeah. There are actually a few places that tried to kind
of revive the idea of the medieval tavern that I found online. I don't know if they're still open
(26:36):
because I haven't had a chance to look into them, but apparently the Longman and Eagle in Chicago
and the Holy Grail in Louisville, Kentucky are taverns that also have a room or two that you can
stay in. Really? Yeah. Well, we have to look this up. Can you legally, what's the licensing
(26:56):
of this is just probably. Yeah. I'm sure you'd just probably be licensed more like a bed and breakfast
than you would. Interesting. That's actually really cool. I would stay at a tavern. I would too. I
feel so cool. When I think of tavern, I think of medieval times tavern is everyone is sitting at
like these wooden long tables drinking whatever the fuck they're drinking in their cups of
(27:24):
fireplace in the middle or on the side. And then all of a sudden someone breaks out into song. And
it's like this old Scottish song. I don't know why I'm thinking of Outlander. Any scene from
Outlander. That's what it is. And if there's a modern day tavern, they should have a tradition
at one point in the night. They start just breaking out in song and then giving everyone free
(27:49):
those mugs of beer and wine and just be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And the English are all bad.
Yeah. You got to hate on someone. And I feel like it's an American establishment. You can
say the English are all bad. Absolutely. Yeah. We earned that right. Pretty much most of the world
(28:13):
has earned that right honestly after the empire that was. I feel like there's a loving hate
relationship with the English. We don't really hate the English, but we can bash the English.
It's like your older sibling. Yeah. It's been long enough. I think at the time they really did hate
them. Yes. We weren't there yet, but now it's kind of like, ha ha. Yeah. Not enough time has passed
(28:43):
for the Irish. I think they really do still hate them. But for us, we have a nice ocean distance now.
So inns really became a thing towards the kind of the later period of the middle ages because
(29:09):
trade economics are really picking up steam, especially the cloth trade. So an inn is going
to be a place that really caters to traveling merchants and people on that economic side of
things. So you're going to find them in towns and cities, of course. But you're also going to find
them on major roads spaced pretty reasonably apart about three quarters of a day's ride.
(29:35):
And this is like a comfortable ride, not a hard ride between towns. So you're looking at probably
15 to 20 miles. You did have access to private rooms and inns. So this is not just everybody
sleeping wherever they lie down. And you're probably going to definitely have a more well
(29:56):
to do crowd here because poor people cannot afford to be staying at an inn. Well, if they're, yeah,
if the merchant class, like people who have actual businesses. Yeah. If there are poor people there,
it's because they're the servants. And the merchant was nice. OK, so things haven't changed.
(30:16):
What's interesting about this place is that it was a location where people can gather and debate
and kind of have social conversations, I guess, about class and about society.
It was a third space for the locals, and it's where a lot of things happened or was the start
(30:42):
of revolutions. Like people would meet at the inn. Yeah. And maybe at the taverns too. And really
at all three, across all three of them. Yeah. Yeah. Because in fact, around the time that the
Puritans start to really take over, people are, the people in the government are starting to get a
little bit frustrated with people drinking in these establishments, because when working class
(31:08):
people go drink together, they also start talking politics together and start complaining. And
they're just like, oh, you guys don't need to be. You don't need to talk to be doing that.
Don't unionize. You don't need to talk to each other. You're happy how you are. Do you want another
day off? That's what I'm saying. It's where the revolution starts. It's where
(31:29):
I bet you, if you look into any historical, like significant moment in any country,
it's these people gathered for a drink. A lot can happen when you get drunk.
You can start overtaking governments and whatnot. But what's great is as we said before,
(31:50):
this is ground zero for change. And I just feel like now it's a little different.
Or maybe it's not, it doesn't need to be taken advantage of as much, but like,
these were really important places for the common man to come together and demand
first change from the actual ends and then slowly they grew and took over.
(32:13):
Yeah. And the social blurring that happened in all of these establishments was so important
because it's one of the few places where you could actually interact with people who weren't
in your social class and it wouldn't be seen as a weird thing or out of place or anything.
And so you could actually exchange information, exchange ideas, find out how each other feels
(32:37):
about things. And that's just not happening in a place where there's a clear hierarchy.
You're not going to be talking to the nobility unless you're saying, yes, sir, I will take your
horse. Yeah. Which by the way, you can leave your horse and your goods in the ends.
Yeah. A really big part of being licensed as an in is that because you're catering to
(33:00):
traveling merchants, you have to have stables. You have to be able to accommodate horses,
feed them, water them, give them what was called horse bread. So you're not just trying to make
sure you can feed and house the people, but their horses as well. And while the other places,
you probably just have to tie your horse up somewhere. If you even have a horse. That's true.
(33:22):
Horses were a luxury. Yeah. So yeah. So the other places definitely weren't going to have that.
So if you come into an in, they're probably going to, if it's a big one, especially,
they're probably going to have some gates that are left open during the day. And if you're
that are left open during the day and you're going to come into a central courtyard and from
(33:45):
there, the porter is going to meet you, ask you your business and tell you if there's space and
then what the fee is. And the fee for the ends actually seemed to be a fixed price. So it was
fixed by the guilds or fixed by law. It wasn't something that like they're all competing and
trying to lower, give the lowest price and et cetera, et cetera. Like people, you know,
(34:08):
communication was a lot slower back then. So people need to be able to know in advance what
they're going to be paying for different things. So I think prices were a lot slower. Exactly. I
think prices were a lot slower. There was, they're not going to be like, what deal can Travelocity get
me? You old Travelocity. You get good coins in your rebate. So of course they're going to take
(34:34):
your horses, you know, feed your horses while you go to the common room then and you can have a drink,
have some light fare. Those gates are going to be closed at night, of course, to keep thieves and
whatnot out, but also possibly to keep guests in to make sure that you get paid before they leave,
(34:55):
because they're probably going to be rising at the crack of dawn and getting ready to continue on
their journey. So you definitely want people to not be able to take their leave in the middle of
the night. Hold your horse hostage. Exactly. Smart. So inns were way more than just a place to stay.
They were really important places, like we said, to exchange information and talk, but also they,
(35:20):
there was a lot of trade that happened there. It was a marketplace. People could store their goods
there sometimes. It was occasionally used as a bank. So there is a lot of stuff going on at these
ends. Yeah. There's a, as we said, also a lot of social uprising that were kicked off in the ends.
(35:41):
I also saw, um, in, I want to say the 1500s, there were some ends that got in trouble for
buying all of the fish from the fish market and then selling it to everybody else for a higher
price. And so sometimes laws had to be enacted to keep that kept in keepers from being able to
(36:02):
purchase certain items and resell them because they were trying to check price couch.
Is that like antitrust laws? Oh my God. Humans have not changed. Yeah, exactly. So what a shitty
thing to do. I know. So yeah, it was really specific to it was like before, uh, if you bought the fish
(36:24):
straight from the fish market, you could get five for a penny, but they were selling it for, for a
penny. So it was like, yeah, a pretty, it was like a 20% increase. It was insane. Yeah. That's crazy.
You would have to go straight to the fish market before those guys got to it. Yeah. That was part
of the lie. It was like they, they had to buy their fish like after a certain time and they
(36:45):
couldn't buy all of it. They could only buy like a certain amount. Yeah. They had to get really
specific about it. Costco has that law too. So the ends could also be owned in multiple ways.
Sometimes they were privately owned by a local person, but they might also be owned by a Lord
and they could also be owned by an Abby, which is, um, a group of nuns or monks. Uh, they could,
(37:09):
it could also be owned by a guilt. So a group of people might own it. Uh, and about actually 10 to
20% of in owners were women. Of course this tended to happen after their husbands had died. So
conveniently. Yeah. Uh, occasionally the daughters did inherit the property from their fathers,
but most of the time it was because you were a widow, man, a widow really seemed like the thing
(37:34):
to be back in the day. Widows had, had more rights than any other women because they did. They're
like, they paid their dues. They're like, Oh, she's, she's not like an old hag. Yeah. Got married,
but her husband died. It's not her fault. Yeah. Supposedly. And then they're like, okay, what are
we going to do with this woman who no longer has a husband? And so they, but she's not like a pure
(37:57):
virgin who needs to be protected so she can go out without a chaperone, but she, she's, her impurity
happened in a kosher setting. So it's like they, they cut the widows a lot of slack. Yeah. And,
as yeah, you're right. It's like, ideally you want to be a widow.
(38:22):
And these ends could often be quite large enterprises with lots of employees and
infrastructure. Cause you know, you've got to have accountants, you've got to have people to take care
of the horses. You've got maids and cooks and some places even had live in entertainers like
troubadours to entertain the guests. So there's quite a, quite a bit going on. That's of course,
(38:46):
these are most likely to be found in your larger cities because larger cities would, could have
like 15, 20 ends in them. Your smaller cities and towns probably not. Yeah. And it seems like the
local ends really helped the economy just, and that's going to happen in larger cities in general.
Yes. So the ends had a lot of different areas, especially the bigger ones. Of course, you're
(39:10):
going to have the main hall. There's going to be a common room, like we mentioned, where people can,
you know, grab a drink and eat. The innkeeper's family is going to have its own private area.
If you've got a staff, they've got to have accommodations. And then if the inn itself
doesn't have its own tavern, then there might be one nearby that is associated with the inn.
And then of course, storage areas, because you're going to be storing people's goods.
(39:36):
And especially if the inn is acting as a marketplace, you're going to be storing things
for people. And then of course, what makes sets them apart from the other establishments is that
there are private chambers for guests. Some of these would have one to three beds a piece. Some
of the really large ends would have like up to 17 private rooms available. Some just had a couple.
(39:58):
And then of course, stables. And then if you had something really valuable that you wanted kept
safe, then the inn... You hide it under your pillow because you don't trust anyone. You can
hide it with your knife in your hand. Then you're actually going to give that to the innkeeper and
he's going to keep it in his private like lockbox safe in his living accommodation. So privacy there
(40:18):
back then was absolutely a luxury. So I feel like it's still... To some extent, yeah. But even in
ends, a lot of people who you couldn't afford one of the private rooms, you could still stay at the
inn, but you're going to be sleeping once again in the common room. In your clothes, no bathroom.
(40:38):
Yes. So there might be a palette in the corner if you're lucky. You're going to be sleeping around
the fire though, trying to stay warm. So this next part, of course, there's no shower. There's no
bathroom. There might be like a bath house nearby if you're in a big city, but otherwise you're just
washing your hands and your face. You're not getting fully washed. But there were toilets.
(41:04):
Like there was something to use the bathroom in and this is going to be a little gross. So if you
don't like it, then fast forward a little bit, but I thought this was really interesting. So solid waste
and liquid waste were collected separately. You would go, you would do one in like a barrel or
(41:26):
whatever and the other in something different. And once actually, once it left your body back then,
it no longer belonged to you. So it was actually then collected by different guilds because it
could be used in different industries. Ew, what industry? So solid waste, of course, farmers are
(41:48):
going to be using the solid waste for fertilizer. Human waste? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And I feel
like that is not sanitary. And then liquid waste is going to be used to help with like bleaching
fabric or tanning hides. So yeah, so once it leaves your body, it now belongs to whatever guild has
(42:08):
spoken for it and it will be sold to the guild. Okay. So we want to know why there was so much
disease in the Vivo time. Here's your answer. Cause no one washed their hands with soap. So they're
collecting your poopy and pee pee and eating a sandwich. Yeah. So, oh my God, I'm so gross that
(42:29):
way. My fiance and I were talking about this when I learned about it. And he goes, Deanna, this is
an example of something that you're not to say at the, at my work holiday party. And I was like,
but it's so interesting. This is exactly what I'd say. And then the next day he's like, I got fired.
(42:49):
So, um, because not everybody who stays, who is at the end is actually staying at the end,
because it is a marketplace and a bank and all of these other things, some people might actually
be there for nefarious purposes. There might be people that are trying to spy or gather information.
And of course, highwaymen would frequent ends because highwaymen, a robber. And so they are
(43:13):
trying to find their next mark. Basically they're picking who they're going to go after on the road,
but it's actually possible that at times the innkeepers were cut into these deals because
obviously you're going to start to figure out who the robbers are. Often they knew who the robbers
were. And so if you're letting them be at your end, then you're getting a cut. So there's a really
(43:36):
famous English highwayman whose name was Richard Turpin or Dick Turpin. And he was eventually
hanged for robbery, but he was like really romanticized after the fact. But he was one
who chose his marks at ends. Smart. So he must've gotten away with a lot if they hung him. He got
(43:59):
away with quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. And so he was like, he was like, he was like, he was like,
away with quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Some of them kind of violent sounding, like it was not good.
Yeah. Probably not the right. A person to romanticize, but you know, we do the same
thing with our Billy the Kids. So. We're doing it now. Yeah. Exactly. So innkeepers
(44:23):
themselves, weren't just there running day to day activities of the end, they engaged in
a lot of outside activities, which is another way they were making pretty decent money,
just from the rent from the rooms, but then they're able to take that money and invest it in other things.
So they are going to be they were entrepreneurs. Yeah, exactly.
(44:44):
So they're going to be, of course, brewing because they want to sell beer at their establishment.
They're importing wine for their guests. They're trading in cloth, which was really big at the time.
And I mean, that's a big reason the inn could be a marketplace is so that the innkeeper could also have his hand in all of these different industries.
They often came from elite families and you could find them on city councils, other forms of town governments.
(45:13):
There's this one example, Richard Kingsmill, who was a wealthy innkeeper between fourteen fifty five and fourteen seventy.
He was the royal council, the town bailiff. He acted as justice of the peace for a while.
He actually made it to be all the way up to be a member of parliament.
So he was a tax assessor. He was a proctor for the villagers of Mapledur, Mapledurwell.
(45:38):
I don't know what that is. But so he didn't sleep. No.
He marketed cloth. He imported wine, fruit and fish.
He did. He bought land and bought, you know, bought farmland.
So, yeah, he he absolutely was a mogul in this area.
So if the ins were profitable, local lords would want to invest in them, which makes sense.
(46:04):
Absolutely. They want their hand in that pie.
They it's again a big part of the economy.
It was the I think was it the only place, maybe not the only place,
but one of the major places people can gather and do business and network.
Yeah. I mean, other than like church, maybe. Yeah.
I mean, if they have if they have like a market, an actual like market, people are going to be doing it there as well.
(46:28):
But yeah, but the end was just such a convenient place to be able to do all of that stuff and also eat and drink while you're there.
It's indoors. So you're not outside in the elements.
I think most markets were, you know, open to the elements.
Yeah. Ins were a great way to increase a lord's revenue.
However, they were not without their own set of problems.
(46:51):
Ins would often go up in flames and all their money with it.
So they wouldn't invest that much into decorating and stuff because there was such a high chance of it to be.
Oh, no, they would. They would. Yeah.
Decor and upkeep were the most common avenues of investment, actually.
Oh, but then would they stop doing that because it would burn down so frequently?
(47:15):
No, they pretty much knew that the ins were still like they would just rebuild and do it all again because it's such a necessary thing that they know that they're going to get their money back.
Oh, OK. OK. But yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, like there was no fire safety codes. Yeah.
They had they had no indoor normal heating.
(47:36):
You had to use fireplaces and everything's made out of hay.
And they're all built so close together. One thing gets on fire.
Everything sets on fire. Yeah. Wood, hay, cloth.
You know, it was just and then the alcohol didn't take out the fire.
(47:58):
So it's definitely not putting it out.
So it wasn't it wasn't good.
And interesting, even though when there was an economic downturn, like they had a disruption in the Italian trade in the mid 15th century,
in spite of the economic woes or any like natural disasters, ins were constantly being rebuilt.
(48:18):
And they were they did pretty well.
They kind of withstood a lot of the the troubles because people they needed them.
Yeah. You know, and everyone had to drink their problems away.
So we're going to list a few places that were famous ins at the time and also some that still exist today.
(48:40):
The first is the Tabard Inn, which was mentioned in the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
So this was an end in Southwark established in 1307, and it was built for the abbot of Hyde in Winchester,
who purchased the land because he wanted a place for him and his brothers in Christ to stay when they were on business.
(49:04):
So the the Tabard was famous, though, for pilgrims staying there.
People who were on pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.
And that's what is mentioned in the Canterbury Tales is the pilgrims stay there.
This is actually the location where the pilgrims first meet on their journey to Canterbury in the 1380s.
(49:27):
So the end was located on the south bank of the Thames, just north of where two Roman roads merged.
Oh, my God. Is it close to the Savoy?
Right. So this actually this area, it lay outside the jurisdiction of the city of London.
So activities that you couldn't do in the city of London, you could do here in the county of Surrey and around this inn.
(49:56):
So that includes prostitution, animal baiting, cock fighting, gambling, all of that stuff.
So this kind of became London's entertainment district.
So this area would have been filled with pilgrims, people drinking, travelers, criminals, prostitutes,
(50:16):
coloquially known as the Winchester Geese. OK, cute nickname.
So I feel like this in because it was in an area outside of a city's laws.
I think this in probably had the vibe of what everybody considers when they're thinking about a medieval drinking.
Establishment. This sounds like it had everything going on.
(50:40):
Another one that no longer exists, the Tabard no longer exists, was the Bluebell in Hempstead.
I'm sorry. No, the Bluebell does still exist.
Now it's known as the Bluebell, but it was known for many years as the Rose and Crown.
And this is the inn where Dick Turpin was born.
His father was listed as the alehouse keeper, brewer and butcher.
(51:03):
So they think his family actually owned this inn where he was born.
And it still exists by a different name.
Yeah, now it's known as the Bluebell. Oh, that's so interesting.
Oh, my God. I want to look. Yeah.
The last picture I saw of it, I think, was from the 70s.
So it existed at least up until the 70s. Yeah.
And if anything exists now, I'm not looking like it did 400, 500 years ago.
(51:24):
For the most part.
Another famous inn was Hotel Weisse Taube in 1365 in Salzburg, Austria.
Undeniably ancient.
When this famous old inn was first built, it was known as Das Haus gegen der Tumber Spital.
Das Haus Gegendertumberspital.
(51:46):
Meaning? Blah, blah, blah.
No, it means the house next to the Cathedral's Hospital.
Ah, ah, yes.
Spital, hospital.
So what's this ye olde trip to Jerusalem?
These are some inns in England that are considered to be the oldest in the country.
(52:08):
So Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham.
I'm going to guess this one was probably for people on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
It claims to be the oldest inn in England and is said to have been established in 1189.
But there is no documentation to verify this.
(52:28):
So it's made up by the people who own it now.
Yeah, this was a popular stop for Crusader knights.
The problem with a lot of these places, because so many places in England claim to be the oldest this, the oldest that.
And the issue is that either they're flat out lying.
Sometimes they just made it up because they know it's good for tourism.
Sometimes like a stone in the building or like a group of stones is from that era.
(52:52):
But the building itself is something else and was.
And sometimes it's like, yeah, OK, maybe this this building or area is that old.
But it was not always that thing.
Like, if it's the oldest pub in England or something, it hasn't been a pub for a thousand years.
We called that out a couple of times. Yeah.
So take all of these with a grain of salt.
Yeah. Another one is the Porch House in Stow-on-the-Wold.
(53:17):
The Wold. Wold. Is that a place? Stow-on-the-Wold. Yeah. OK.
This inn is in Cotswolds claims to date back to 947.
That's old. That's quite a claim.
The Old Man and Scythe in Bolton is mentioned in a charter from 1251.
So it might actually be as old as it claims to be.
(53:38):
Another one is these are ridiculous.
The Skirrid Mountain Inn in Abergavenny.
It looks like the skrrrrrt.
Skrrr. I like that name Abergnavie.
Or Abergavenny? Abergaviny?
It's probably. Oh, I'm saying it wrong.
We're probably pronouncing too much of the word.
(53:59):
I feel like English words like to leave out a lot of.
So it's probably like Aberny.
So this inn in Monmounthshire dates back to 1110.
The Royal Standard of England in Beaconsfield claims to date back to 10
86. These are all lies.
OK. The Old Ferry Boat in in St. Ives, not the scrub.
(54:23):
This end claims to date back to five 560.
I call bullshit. There's no way.
Again, a few stones.
Yeah, they have like a cornerstone.
And thenYe Old Fighting Cocks in St. Albans claims to date back to 793.
Ye old fighting cocks.
(54:43):
Damn, that's a good one.
And I actually read or I learned that when we call things like ye old,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that Y on the ye?
That's actually the the letter that used to be the T-H sound.
So it actually is the old blah, blah, blah, blah.
But we just don't use that letter anymore.
And it looks like a Y. So we call it ye.
(55:05):
So that was interesting.
There's a little linguistic fact for everybody.
OK, so I know you're all thinking what I was thinking, which is,
where would I have stayed?
Where would the poor people stay?
So poor people really didn't get to travel that much.
Shocker. Really.
(55:26):
Most people did not go very far from where they were born.
Travel was hard. It was expensive.
If you didn't have a horse, then you didn't have a horse.
It was expensive if you didn't have a horse, then you had to walk
wherever you were going to go.
And so you're only going to make it, you know, 20 miles a day.
Yeah. And the hokas. Yeah.
(55:48):
Imagine their feet.
God, yeah. Yeah.
So and then while you're traveling, you're going to incur expenses.
So not just from, you know, trying to find food and water
if you didn't bring enough with you, but also because, you know,
you're going to be traveling along major thoroughfares like the Kings Highway
because you don't want to be on less well-kept roads.
(56:12):
Not only are they dangerous because they're not kept up, but also
that's where you're more likely to get robbed.
So but if you came to a bridge or you came to a city,
you're going to have to pay a toll to cross the bridge or to enter the city.
And it could be like a penny per person, which is a lot.
That's a lot. Yeah.
And if you have stuff, if you have horses or goods,
(56:35):
you have to pay for all of that stuff to cross.
So it's you're going to be trying to avoid that that sort of thing.
You're going to try. You can't really avoid a bridge, but
unless you're going to swim.
But but you can avoid cities.
So you try to avoid entering a city.
But sleeping outside, like camping, it really wasn't a thing
(56:56):
that was super common.
It wasn't something that people did to the thieves.
Yeah. And you're in England, so it's fricking freezing.
So the main reason that that most poor people might find themselves
on a trek like this is a pilgrimage to a holy site.
So that's that's where most of your poor people are going to be doing.
(57:17):
So if you didn't have enough money to stay at an inn or an ale house,
then you would stay at a monastery.
So part of the monk's mission in their taking care of the poor
in their charity included taking care of travelers. That's nice.
Yeah. So usually they would have like a little hostel or a guest house,
you know, for for travelers.
(57:38):
And they were going to feed you and give you something to drink
and give you a warm place to stay.
Well, warmish, depending on the monastery.
We do it for free, but yeah, you can donate. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So you don't have to pay for any of this.
But of course, they do.
They would like a donation to the church to and that it's going to help them
continue to take care of travelers.
(57:58):
Awesome. I wish we still had that. Yeah.
Instead we have couchsurfer.com.
Exactly. It's not the same.
And trust me, you pay a price.
Maybe not money, but you pay a price.
I've never done it, though, but I've heard.
No, I've never done it.
Yeah. But an interesting little thing is there is a hotel
(58:21):
that exists still today from 1342.
And the name is I'm going to mess this up.
Altstadthotel Kasererbraeu, Kasererbraeu.
Kasererbraeu.
Oh, yeah. And you guessed it. In
Salzburg, Austria.
It's been restored and remodeled and, you know, doesn't look anything
(58:43):
like it does now.
But its original
location is actually was a medieval monastery guesthouse.
That's so cool.
So this one really has like been hosting people since the 1300s.
Yeah.
I looked at the website, had to translate it from German to English.
(59:03):
But yeah, it looks like the outside looks it looks like a castle.
Yeah. The inside.
You can't tell this was from 1342.
Yeah, they've done some some substantial remodeling.
Anyway, that's that's our Christmas episode.
I hope it gives you good vibes and a good laugh.
Yes. And if you want more Christmas content, check out our episode
(59:25):
from last year where we talk about great hotels in New York
City to visit at Christmas time.
Yeah. Happy holidays.
Happy holidays.
Thanks for listening to Hotel History.
You can follow us on most social media platforms, Patreon and Substack
(59:46):
by searching for Hotel History or Hotel History Podcast.
If you like what you hear, please leave us a five star review on Apple
podcasts and Spotify so we can reach more listeners.
Hotel history is created for adult audiences.
(00:03):
Content may not be suitable for all listeners.
Discretion is advised.
You're listening to Hotel History.
We take you with us through the sordid history and scandals
of some of the world's most famous and infamous hotels.
I'm D'Etta.
And I'm Yael.
(00:24):
Let's get started.
So for this episode, we wanted to do something a little bit
different, but also has Christmas vibes.
I don't know if it's...
I feel like it's a good mix.
Yeah.
Christmas and...
Yeah, it's not blatantly Christmassy, but I think we all have an idea of...
(00:47):
We went to Christmas origin story.
And that we are covering medieval inns.
So we're not doing one specific inn, but we are going to go over the different types of inns
of the medieval times in England.
We're specifically focusing on England, right?
For the most part, yes.
This kind of applies to other places as well, but yeah, the research primarily was done on
(01:11):
English inns.
Yeah.
So is it origin of Christmas?
Not really, but it is the...
It gives that vibe.
That idea of the medieval Christmas that I think everybody thinks about whenever they're
thinking of Christmas in England.
It's either medieval Christmas or like Dickensian Christmas are the two, like 1800s.
(01:33):
Oh, yeah.
No, when I think of Christmas, I think of obviously other than the story of Jesus,
but like the modern day version.
Yeah.
Like Santa and the lights is the Norwegian people.
Where did it...
Scandinavia.
Scandinavia, where they had their pagan.
(01:54):
So I think I read about it.
It was also Halloween, by the way.
A lot of holidays started with the pagans having their pagan rituals and then the
Christians coming and trying to take over and kill everyone.
And then they were like, you know what?
Let's make this easier by adopting this into our Christian religion.
And kind of blending into both.
(02:16):
They were cool with the pagans, but they weren't cool with the Jews.
Still don't get that one.
But anyway, but that's how like Santa Claus...
Santa Claus was not supposed to be a nice guy.
He was supposed to be like a creepy...
It depends on which Santa Claus you're originating from, because if Santa Claus
(02:37):
originates from St. Nicholas, then he was a nice guy.
No, I'm thinking about Krampus.
No.
Or whatever, like the evil...
He's not Santa.
Who is he?
He comes along, sometimes along with Santa or on a different night than Santa.
He's just like a fiendish monster that takes the naughty kids and Santa is for the good kids.
(03:01):
Oh, I thought you were going to be like...
He's like Santa's, like the team of Santa.
It's like only the really rich kids get Santa, but the poor kids get Krampus.
And he's like, oh, here's a gift.
It's made in China.
(03:22):
Okay.
Well, not that...
Well, whatever the origin of both of them, kind of like Santa wasn't...
He wasn't supposed to be this like fun loving...
The origin stories kind of...
Santa was kind of someone you wanted to avoid, I think.
I don't think that I've ever read that.
Listen, I grew up Jewish, so you know...
Okay.
Well, I feel like...
(03:42):
Maybe someone told me that lie.
I saw a TikTok of like a Jewish mom and someone asked the question, like,
do your kids know about Santa and would they tell other kids about Santa?
And all our kids go to private Jewish schools, so they're not like telling kids,
but some of them didn't know.
(04:02):
And then the older ones knew.
And one of them, she's like, who's Santa?
And she's like, a guy that doesn't exist.
And she's so extremely...
She's like, okay, but would you tell someone who is not Jewish that Santa's not real?
And her kids are like, no, that's not my place.
And I'm like, yeah, that's so true.
(04:23):
But yeah, I guess...
No, but Santa wasn't seen as like a bad guy growing up.
He was just...
I just thought he would not come to me.
I was like, I'm Jewish.
I was like, I'm Jewish, like he's not interested.
He's like, oh, I can...
I thank God.
This area is really easy to give out presents
because a lot of them just don't need it.
(04:43):
What would...
If Jews had Santa, what would they leave out for him instead of milk and cookies?
Latkes.
Latkes and apple cider or applesauce.
Little apple sauce, some sour cream.
Latkes and seltzer.
Little kugel.
A little kugel.
Oh no, no, no, jelly donuts.
(05:04):
Oh yeah, sufganiyot.
Soup ganiot with seltzer.
Dr. Browns.
Dr. Browns.
Diabetes.
I feel like he would want to come to the Jewish house.
For a little change.
Just for the diversity.
Yeah.
But yeah, like I love the story of Santa.
(05:25):
But I still think of medieval...
I feel like it's just that region.
How did they celebrate Christmas in medieval times?
It was a lot of feasting.
Like you got the whole 12 days of Christmas off.
So it was like a big holiday.
If you lived somewhere like on a country manor where there was an abundance,
(05:45):
then yeah, like you would get feasting and revelry and they would dance.
Oh, it's like a party.
Yeah, it was like a big time party.
It was like a holiday party.
Okay, so...
It was just like your office Christmas party.
It's exactly like that.
Yeah, and like the lord of the manor was expected to give some nice bonuses
to all of his tenants.
And if possible, invite them in and actually let them participate.
(06:11):
Nice for back of the day where people had no rights.
That's why you had to give them holidays.
I know.
See, Christmas is so nice.
When people go on about hating Christmas,
I'm like, you don't need to.
Like there's nice things about Christmas.
I think Christmas is a really nice...
You don't have to go crazy.
(06:33):
You don't have to get crazy presents.
Obviously I grew up with none of that.
But my family did not like...
We didn't hate on Christmas to make us feel better.
My mom's like, no, it's beautiful.
We enjoy Christmas and they do all the work.
We don't have to do...
This is lovely.
If you go during Christmas time in Brooklyn to an area called Diker Heights,
(06:56):
which is like probably the least Jewish area.
It's very Italian.
And...
Oh my God, it's insane.
See who's walking around.
All Jews, like religious Jews.
We're like, of course we're going to...
This is the only thing we can do.
And we're going to appreciate your hard work.
We're not going to be like, ew, Christmas.
(07:17):
I've never heard that come from Jewish people.
Like, oh gosh, you're celebrating Christmas?
Like no one says that.
No, we're like, we'll write you a song to sing.
Yeah.
We're like, listen, we wish.
But yeah, it's...
But I bet you now it's like that.
But back then, I don't think Christmas was so great for the Jews.
(07:39):
No.
No.
Christmas and Easter were perilous times.
Yeah.
But we're going to gloss over that ugly part of history and only talk about...
Well, this is medieval England, so Jews didn't live there.
Weren't allowed to live there yet.
We got kicked out.
Remember that other episode?
If you don't know what we're talking about, check out the beginning of the Burnmouth episode.
(08:00):
Bournemouth.
I keep calling it Burnmouth.
It's Bournemouth.
We're going to always screw up the names.
No one has called us out on it yet.
But one day...
Because no one is listening.
Is anyone listening?
Can you leave a comment?
No.
(08:27):
We are focusing on, of course, types of inns in medieval England.
And if you're anything like us, then probably you have a very specific
picture in your head of what that means.
Whether you're a LARP fan, a Lord of the Rings fan, you're thinking the fireplace
(08:50):
with the innkeeper and everyone sitting around and singing songs.
And there's the shadowy figure in the corner in a cloak.
I have a question.
Lord of the Rings, you think was taking place during the medieval times?
Yeah.
I think it was based off of...
Oh.
I mean, obviously it's fictional, but yeah.
Okay.
A lot of fantasy is very medieval.
(09:13):
Why is that?
Based.
People romanticize that time, I think.
Oh, right.
We were just talking about this, but why?
Horrible time in this story.
Well, I think that makes a lot of things maybe easier.
You don't have to deal with a lot of technology.
Your technology is pretty stagnant and people love the look of knights and kings.
(09:36):
That's the time of kings and a lot of fantasies have kings.
True.
Well, we were talking about...
Okay.
So the medieval times was a stretch of time between 500?
Yeah.
Like somewhere between like five to 800, depending on who you ask,
and up to the Renaissance in around 1450.
1450.
So this is before the Renaissance, before the Enlightenment, before logic,
(10:01):
before soap, before obvious things.
So the magic was like in the air because if something can't be explained, it's magic.
Right.
Religion.
I think the oppressive religion also was like kind of magical,
like where they believed in...
It was also the time of the witches.
Yeah.
Right.
If you healed someone through medicine, you were a witch,
(10:23):
because that's the only logical explanation.
So, okay, that tracks a little bit.
Yeah.
So there are actually, however, multiple types of accommodation during this period.
And of course, your top tier of society, you're not going to be finding like kings
(10:44):
and their relations in any of these places.
They're going to be staying in private homes owned by their equally rich friends.
They've got their own system worked out.
Yeah.
When you watch like shows based on that, they're like,
oh, the blue blobs are staying at the manor.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So whether you're in the city or the country, like, yeah,
(11:06):
you they have private homes to stay in.
But the men always make their themselves, they make their way to the local inns,
taverns, and ale houses, even if they're staying at the rich friend.
Yes, absolutely.
So there are three types of establishments for the most part,
(11:29):
ale houses, taverns, and inns.
And they did have they had legal differences, like licensing differences.
And they also did have kind of a social hierarchy difference to them.
Although these are all places where the social hierarchy blended quite a bit,
just because an ale house was somewhere where working class people could afford
(11:52):
didn't mean that your noble gentleman isn't going to find himself in an ale house.
Well, it's like a brothel, right?
No, no, no, no, not that ale houses are brothels, but it's like a brothel.
Well, you're all right.
You'll find you're going to find sorts from all classes, all men.
(12:13):
Yes.
So in all of these places were family owned establishments,
usually where the whole family is going to be working
and any additional servants are also probably going to be working there.
And we'll also talk about, you know, when these establishments could be run
by women, it was not unheard of.
So let's start with the most.
(12:36):
But let's highlight that a little bit, because we see this pattern
over and over again in hotels where hotels are the first places
women actually have any kind of rights, like in business
or just like to eat in public, like basic.
But hotels are the like the ground where this started.
(12:58):
And even in medieval times, that's wild.
Yeah.
So yeah, it's always been a place where women could actually assert
a little bit of take up a little bit of space.
Yeah.
So let's start with ale houses.
These are definitely the most abundant of the three types.
(13:19):
So if you're wondering what ale is in medieval England,
ale just meant a beverage that's been fermented without hops.
So it's going to be from a grain of some sort,
but you're not going to find any hops in it, which is different from its meaning today.
Today, ale does technically use some hops, just less than other beer types.
(13:42):
And it's fermented a little bit differently.
Yeah.
So ale houses started with ale because it was very cheap to make.
A woman of the house is going to be making ale for her family.
And then if she has ale leftover, which they usually did, then it's an easy way to make money.
(14:02):
She would just put like a little like branch or broom out of her door to say, to let everybody know.
Open for business.
Yep.
And people could come and drink around the table or buy the ale and take it home.
They also like, you can just have a room.
Yes.
Most of the time these were just houses.
(14:24):
It's just their house.
Yeah.
So of course, people had very small accommodations at the time.
So it would literally just be walking into someone's house and buying a drink.
So if they did have happen to have extra space, then these ale houses did have accommodations
for people to stay overnight for a cheap price.
(14:45):
But not all ale houses were like that.
But not all ale houses would have had accommodations.
This would have been very informal.
People sleeping on the floor.
If there's not an extra room sort of thing, like you're not going to be
having privacy in an ale house if that's where you're going to stay.
Yeah. And if you purchased ale there, you would have the right to use their hearth to cook food.
(15:07):
What? Their hearth?
Hearth.
What? Not hearth?
Hearth.
No, the professor that I was watching a video actually said hearth like five times.
And I was like, oh my, am I stupid?
Have I been mispronouncing this word my entire life?
Is it hearth?
And then I went and looked it up and it is hearth.
(15:28):
Okay. So if a professor makes this mistake, it makes sense why I would make this mistake.
Exactly.
So I'm just human, but a hearth, I'm assuming is like a fireplace.
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
So, um, cause some people didn't even have that in their home.
So if they went to the ale house, they can use, they can cook there.
Yes.
It's like an Airbnb.
Yeah. If you bought some ale, you had the right to use their hearth.
(15:51):
That's nice.
Yeah. Especially the, so if people were traveling, sometimes the,
the merchant is going to stay at the inn, but his servants,
he's not going to pay for them to stay at the inn.
So he sends them to an ale house with accommodations
and they can stay there, buy some ale, cook their dinner.
So we already know where the ale house ranks in the house.
(16:12):
Yes. Yes. And so ale houses, most of the time really wouldn't provide food.
It was just ale and you had to bring your own food and you could use their hearth to cook it.
Or yeah, or there was fast food during this time.
So you could stop at a cook shop, buy a pie or, you know, stop at a baker,
buy some bread and take it with you to the ale house.
So sometimes the accommodations could be used for unsavory things.
(16:36):
Soccer.
So that's why sometimes ale houses did also kind of become synonymous with brothel or whorehouse.
So the owners, it was up to the owners to police the bad behavior that was happening
in their ale house. So if people are becoming, you know, boisterously dancing or they're,
(16:58):
you know, getting hot and heavy in the corner, you know, it's,
it's up to the owner to take care of this. Cause otherwise if the constable comes in
and witnesses it going on, then people can be prosecuted. You're going to get a reputation
as that kind of ale house. And if you're a licensed ale house, you're going to get shut down.
Hi.
(17:18):
Now there were a ton of unlicensed ale houses because it's women trying to make money for their
families.
Also these constables, as you say, men, right?
Yes.
So we know why those lasted.
Yeah. So some, some places would actually have bouncers not to kick unruly guests out
(17:39):
necessarily, but to actually keep the constables from coming in because the constable had to
witness something himself to be able to call it out. So if he couldn't see it,
then he couldn't say anything about it.
I'm sure there's a lot of bribery going on.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
So of course now being a woman working in the ale house is going to be a tricky position,
(18:02):
just as it probably still is today for female bartenders. Obviously wives of the patrons
might accuse you of trying to ensnare their husbands to waste all of their money at the
ale house gambling and drinking. Or you could also be blamed for the patron's bad behavior.
You know, if, if they do something unacceptable, well, you know, what were you doing there?
(18:25):
What were you doing there to tempt them?
Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. Also, I feel like back in the day, they would try to
ensnare some of those husbands.
I mean, not saying it wouldn't. Yeah. By the 17th century beer actually did finally replace ale.
Once the use of hops kind of finally made its way over from Germany and they,
(18:47):
it finally replaced ale became more popular.
Uh, just a fun little, do you know, you know this, what IPA stands for, right?
India Pale Ale, right?
Okay. So a lot of people don't know this. I learned this when I worked at the brewery,
um, that the way that, that it was developed was that they were transporting beer from England to
(19:08):
India and they were like, okay, let's preserve it so it doesn't go bad. And they dumped a bunch of
hops in it and then they drank it and they're like, Ooh, okay, this can work. And then it became a
thing. And then in the West coast, they decided that was good. Uh, the rest of the world is not.
I'm sorry. I think IPA is disgusting. I'm not a fan. I am not a fan. Sorry. IPA lover.
(19:32):
All my friends are IPA lovers, but I just, I don't know if you can tell it's one of those things
that's a mistake. Like blue cheese, like blue cheese and IPA are in the same category of like
someone fucked up or well, we're going to have to make this work cause it's all we got and we're
going to die. Well, and the, once they were trying to brew in India, you know, the weather is much
warmer in India than it is in England. So they didn't have the cold nights that they needed
(19:56):
for the, for the beer to ferment in this slowly in the way that they're used to. So yeah, they,
they definitely did what they could with what they had, but it, it wasn't good guys. Like just
give it up. Why is it so popular on the West coast? I don't know. It's not as popular on the East
coast. No, I didn't really even taste it. I think until coming to the West coast. Yeah. The only
(20:18):
people that I know that were ever like, yeah, I like that is exactly the type of person that you
think would that you're just like, okay, we get it. All of your friends said they liked it. So now
you have to feel like you're somehow cultured and like it too. Well, yeah, you know, hipsters.
I'm talking about hipsters. It's true. Growing up. No one liked it. They were like Heineken,
Corona. That's all we have. You ask for anything else, get your out. Like you get kicked out of the
(20:43):
bar. So I actually read the first time I learned about ale houses was when I was reading this book
called girly drinks, a world of history of women in alcohol by Mallory O'Meara. And so it's just a
fascinating look of all around the world of the history of women in alcohol. And it's really
(21:04):
fascinating because most of the time women were the ones to start whatever type of alcohol it is.
Women were the ones to start it, to initiate it in most areas of the world. And then women's are
the ones in control of it doing the brewing. It never failed. As soon as the women were able to
start having a little bit of financial independence, men immediately outlawed women being able to brew
(21:31):
and took over and created guilds and such and such to keep, and then made it like a man's industry.
But basically most alcohol brewing and consumption started as a women's industry.
Yeah. Yeah. This doesn't surprise me. I would like to say to all the Twitter misogynists out there
who are like literally tweeting, what have women done? And I'm like, sir, everything. We created
(21:57):
life. Like we literally birthed you, you stupid shit. I get very mad about this. And another thing
is that we didn't, we weren't allowed to take credit for anything. Hello Frankenstein, you know,
it was written by a woman, but she had to be like, no, JK. I did, my husband did this. It was
(22:19):
definitely my husband. F Scott Fitzgerald fucking plagiarizing. I was like, I'm not going to
plagiarizing Zelda's diary and letters constantly. Like huge chunks. Yeah. Huge chunks. I mean,
just this isn't fair. Like you are enjoying your alcoholic beverage because of women,
(22:40):
but we couldn't take the credit and you think we didn't contribute to anything. Yeah.
Cry harder.
Yeah.
So that brings us to the next type of taverns. And so there were about, to give you an example,
(23:03):
like if you were in like a, a city of, you know, moderate size, even there were, are going to be
probably hundreds of ale houses. There were, there were a lot, especially like per, like whenever
you break it down to the amount of people per ale house, it was like 200, 250 people per ale
house. Like there was a lot of ale houses. So taverns are going to be a little bit more upscale
(23:29):
from ale houses, but that makes sense because the, there's a low barrier barrier to entry, right?
Yes. So there's like, you can easily open an ale house cause you'd have a house. Yeah. Cause you
have a house and you're making ale anyway for your family. Yeah. Again, it's the Airbnb of the time.
I have a bed. I'm a hotel. Exactly. So taverns were actually introduced by the Romans
(23:56):
because tavern comes from the Latin word taverna, which means an inn, but it's not exactly an inn.
Like we think of it today. Tavern was specifically a place where you could go buy wine.
So this already has a little bit of a price barrier to it, because if you're going to be
buying wine, you've got to have a little bit of money to invest in that. Okay. This is so funny
(24:21):
because this makes sense. Like beer is the drink of the people. Wine is the drink of the snobs
and, and the people, but like, think about the wine snobs and you're like, think about the people
who are sommeliers. And so they have different locations that, yeah, this is just tracking.
(24:42):
I just want to say humans don't change. We haven't changed hundreds of years later. We're still
sorting ourselves into groups based on what we train. Yeah, exactly. You're going to find
you're going to find a, you know, one group of people at a sports bar. You're going to find another
group at a wine bar. So men at a sports bar, women at a wine bar. Don't forget about the gay men.
(25:07):
Never. They're included, obviously. So, so the tavern did cater to a little bit higher social
status for the most part, but once again, we're definitely blurring social lines here. So you
could get beer at a tavern, but most people went for wine. You could either just go buy
wine and take it to take home for your family, or you could stay there and drink a glass of wine.
(25:31):
Of course, grape wine was more expensive because it was imported from Spain and France for the
most part, England, I think in the south of England, they, they do grow some white wines,
but it really wasn't much of a thing there. But in England, wine was considered to be anything
fermented from a fruit. So they would also sell apple cider and Perry there, which I had never
(25:53):
heard of Perry before, but apparently in England, pear cider is called Perry. Oh, I didn't know that.
Well, that's cause we're not English. Yeah. So they were considered wine, but they were cheaper
because you could actually make apple cider and pear cider in England. So taverns also did offer
a degree of accommodations, not their primary purpose, but they've got it. If you need it,
(26:15):
it's going to be probably have a little bit more privacy, a little bit nicer than the ale house.
Yeah. Mid tier sleeping by the fireplace. Yeah. There are actually a few places that tried to kind
of revive the idea of the medieval tavern that I found online. I don't know if they're still open
(26:36):
because I haven't had a chance to look into them, but apparently the Longman and Eagle in Chicago
and the Holy Grail in Louisville, Kentucky are taverns that also have a room or two that you can
stay in. Really? Yeah. Well, we have to look this up. Can you legally, what's the licensing
(26:56):
of this is just probably. Yeah. I'm sure you'd just probably be licensed more like a bed and breakfast
than you would. Interesting. That's actually really cool. I would stay at a tavern. I would too. I
feel so cool. When I think of tavern, I think of medieval times tavern is everyone is sitting at
like these wooden long tables drinking whatever the fuck they're drinking in their cups of
(27:24):
fireplace in the middle or on the side. And then all of a sudden someone breaks out into song. And
it's like this old Scottish song. I don't know why I'm thinking of Outlander. Any scene from
Outlander. That's what it is. And if there's a modern day tavern, they should have a tradition
at one point in the night. They start just breaking out in song and then giving everyone free
(27:49):
those mugs of beer and wine and just be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And the English are all bad.
Yeah. You got to hate on someone. And I feel like it's an American establishment. You can
say the English are all bad. Absolutely. Yeah. We earned that right. Pretty much most of the world
(28:13):
has earned that right honestly after the empire that was. I feel like there's a loving hate
relationship with the English. We don't really hate the English, but we can bash the English.
It's like your older sibling. Yeah. It's been long enough. I think at the time they really did hate
them. Yes. We weren't there yet, but now it's kind of like, ha ha. Yeah. Not enough time has passed
(28:43):
for the Irish. I think they really do still hate them. But for us, we have a nice ocean distance now.
So inns really became a thing towards the kind of the later period of the middle ages because
(29:09):
trade economics are really picking up steam, especially the cloth trade. So an inn is going
to be a place that really caters to traveling merchants and people on that economic side of
things. So you're going to find them in towns and cities, of course. But you're also going to find
them on major roads spaced pretty reasonably apart about three quarters of a day's ride.
(29:35):
And this is like a comfortable ride, not a hard ride between towns. So you're looking at probably
15 to 20 miles. You did have access to private rooms and inns. So this is not just everybody
sleeping wherever they lie down. And you're probably going to definitely have a more well
(29:56):
to do crowd here because poor people cannot afford to be staying at an inn. Well, if they're, yeah,
if the merchant class, like people who have actual businesses. Yeah. If there are poor people there,
it's because they're the servants. And the merchant was nice. OK, so things haven't changed.
(30:16):
What's interesting about this place is that it was a location where people can gather and debate
and kind of have social conversations, I guess, about class and about society.
It was a third space for the locals, and it's where a lot of things happened or was the start
(30:42):
of revolutions. Like people would meet at the inn. Yeah. And maybe at the taverns too. And really
at all three, across all three of them. Yeah. Yeah. Because in fact, around the time that the
Puritans start to really take over, people are, the people in the government are starting to get a
little bit frustrated with people drinking in these establishments, because when working class
(31:08):
people go drink together, they also start talking politics together and start complaining. And
they're just like, oh, you guys don't need to be. You don't need to talk to be doing that.
Don't unionize. You don't need to talk to each other. You're happy how you are. Do you want another
day off? That's what I'm saying. It's where the revolution starts. It's where
(31:29):
I bet you, if you look into any historical, like significant moment in any country,
it's these people gathered for a drink. A lot can happen when you get drunk.
You can start overtaking governments and whatnot. But what's great is as we said before,
(31:50):
this is ground zero for change. And I just feel like now it's a little different.
Or maybe it's not, it doesn't need to be taken advantage of as much, but like,
these were really important places for the common man to come together and demand
first change from the actual ends and then slowly they grew and took over.
(32:13):
Yeah. And the social blurring that happened in all of these establishments was so important
because it's one of the few places where you could actually interact with people who weren't
in your social class and it wouldn't be seen as a weird thing or out of place or anything.
And so you could actually exchange information, exchange ideas, find out how each other feels
(32:37):
about things. And that's just not happening in a place where there's a clear hierarchy.
You're not going to be talking to the nobility unless you're saying, yes, sir, I will take your
horse. Yeah. Which by the way, you can leave your horse and your goods in the ends.
Yeah. A really big part of being licensed as an in is that because you're catering to
(33:00):
traveling merchants, you have to have stables. You have to be able to accommodate horses,
feed them, water them, give them what was called horse bread. So you're not just trying to make
sure you can feed and house the people, but their horses as well. And while the other places,
you probably just have to tie your horse up somewhere. If you even have a horse. That's true.
(33:22):
Horses were a luxury. Yeah. So yeah. So the other places definitely weren't going to have that.
So if you come into an in, they're probably going to, if it's a big one, especially,
they're probably going to have some gates that are left open during the day. And if you're
that are left open during the day and you're going to come into a central courtyard and from
(33:45):
there, the porter is going to meet you, ask you your business and tell you if there's space and
then what the fee is. And the fee for the ends actually seemed to be a fixed price. So it was
fixed by the guilds or fixed by law. It wasn't something that like they're all competing and
trying to lower, give the lowest price and et cetera, et cetera. Like people, you know,
(34:08):
communication was a lot slower back then. So people need to be able to know in advance what
they're going to be paying for different things. So I think prices were a lot slower. Exactly. I
think prices were a lot slower. There was, they're not going to be like, what deal can Travelocity get
me? You old Travelocity. You get good coins in your rebate. So of course they're going to take
(34:34):
your horses, you know, feed your horses while you go to the common room then and you can have a drink,
have some light fare. Those gates are going to be closed at night, of course, to keep thieves and
whatnot out, but also possibly to keep guests in to make sure that you get paid before they leave,
(34:55):
because they're probably going to be rising at the crack of dawn and getting ready to continue on
their journey. So you definitely want people to not be able to take their leave in the middle of
the night. Hold your horse hostage. Exactly. Smart. So inns were way more than just a place to stay.
They were really important places, like we said, to exchange information and talk, but also they,
(35:20):
there was a lot of trade that happened there. It was a marketplace. People could store their goods
there sometimes. It was occasionally used as a bank. So there is a lot of stuff going on at these
ends. Yeah. There's a, as we said, also a lot of social uprising that were kicked off in the ends.
(35:41):
I also saw, um, in, I want to say the 1500s, there were some ends that got in trouble for
buying all of the fish from the fish market and then selling it to everybody else for a higher
price. And so sometimes laws had to be enacted to keep that kept in keepers from being able to
(36:02):
purchase certain items and resell them because they were trying to check price couch.
Is that like antitrust laws? Oh my God. Humans have not changed. Yeah, exactly. So what a shitty
thing to do. I know. So yeah, it was really specific to it was like before, uh, if you bought the fish
(36:24):
straight from the fish market, you could get five for a penny, but they were selling it for, for a
penny. So it was like, yeah, a pretty, it was like a 20% increase. It was insane. Yeah. That's crazy.
You would have to go straight to the fish market before those guys got to it. Yeah. That was part
of the lie. It was like they, they had to buy their fish like after a certain time and they
(36:45):
couldn't buy all of it. They could only buy like a certain amount. Yeah. They had to get really
specific about it. Costco has that law too. So the ends could also be owned in multiple ways.
Sometimes they were privately owned by a local person, but they might also be owned by a Lord
and they could also be owned by an Abby, which is, um, a group of nuns or monks. Uh, they could,
(37:09):
it could also be owned by a guilt. So a group of people might own it. Uh, and about actually 10 to
20% of in owners were women. Of course this tended to happen after their husbands had died. So
conveniently. Yeah. Uh, occasionally the daughters did inherit the property from their fathers,
but most of the time it was because you were a widow, man, a widow really seemed like the thing
(37:34):
to be back in the day. Widows had, had more rights than any other women because they did. They're
like, they paid their dues. They're like, Oh, she's, she's not like an old hag. Yeah. Got married,
but her husband died. It's not her fault. Yeah. Supposedly. And then they're like, okay, what are
we going to do with this woman who no longer has a husband? And so they, but she's not like a pure
(37:57):
virgin who needs to be protected so she can go out without a chaperone, but she, she's, her impurity
happened in a kosher setting. So it's like they, they cut the widows a lot of slack. Yeah. And,
as yeah, you're right. It's like, ideally you want to be a widow.
(38:22):
And these ends could often be quite large enterprises with lots of employees and
infrastructure. Cause you know, you've got to have accountants, you've got to have people to take care
of the horses. You've got maids and cooks and some places even had live in entertainers like
troubadours to entertain the guests. So there's quite a, quite a bit going on. That's of course,
(38:46):
these are most likely to be found in your larger cities because larger cities would, could have
like 15, 20 ends in them. Your smaller cities and towns probably not. Yeah. And it seems like the
local ends really helped the economy just, and that's going to happen in larger cities in general.
Yes. So the ends had a lot of different areas, especially the bigger ones. Of course, you're
(39:10):
going to have the main hall. There's going to be a common room, like we mentioned, where people can,
you know, grab a drink and eat. The innkeeper's family is going to have its own private area.
If you've got a staff, they've got to have accommodations. And then if the inn itself
doesn't have its own tavern, then there might be one nearby that is associated with the inn.
And then of course, storage areas, because you're going to be storing people's goods.
(39:36):
And especially if the inn is acting as a marketplace, you're going to be storing things
for people. And then of course, what makes sets them apart from the other establishments is that
there are private chambers for guests. Some of these would have one to three beds a piece. Some
of the really large ends would have like up to 17 private rooms available. Some just had a couple.
(39:58):
And then of course, stables. And then if you had something really valuable that you wanted kept
safe, then the inn... You hide it under your pillow because you don't trust anyone. You can
hide it with your knife in your hand. Then you're actually going to give that to the innkeeper and
he's going to keep it in his private like lockbox safe in his living accommodation. So privacy there
(40:18):
back then was absolutely a luxury. So I feel like it's still... To some extent, yeah. But even in
ends, a lot of people who you couldn't afford one of the private rooms, you could still stay at the
inn, but you're going to be sleeping once again in the common room. In your clothes, no bathroom.
(40:38):
Yes. So there might be a palette in the corner if you're lucky. You're going to be sleeping around
the fire though, trying to stay warm. So this next part, of course, there's no shower. There's no
bathroom. There might be like a bath house nearby if you're in a big city, but otherwise you're just
washing your hands and your face. You're not getting fully washed. But there were toilets.
(41:04):
Like there was something to use the bathroom in and this is going to be a little gross. So if you
don't like it, then fast forward a little bit, but I thought this was really interesting. So solid waste
and liquid waste were collected separately. You would go, you would do one in like a barrel or
(41:26):
whatever and the other in something different. And once actually, once it left your body back then,
it no longer belonged to you. So it was actually then collected by different guilds because it
could be used in different industries. Ew, what industry? So solid waste, of course, farmers are
(41:48):
going to be using the solid waste for fertilizer. Human waste? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And I feel
like that is not sanitary. And then liquid waste is going to be used to help with like bleaching
fabric or tanning hides. So yeah, so once it leaves your body, it now belongs to whatever guild has
(42:08):
spoken for it and it will be sold to the guild. Okay. So we want to know why there was so much
disease in the Vivo time. Here's your answer. Cause no one washed their hands with soap. So they're
collecting your poopy and pee pee and eating a sandwich. Yeah. So, oh my God, I'm so gross that
(42:29):
way. My fiance and I were talking about this when I learned about it. And he goes, Deanna, this is
an example of something that you're not to say at the, at my work holiday party. And I was like,
but it's so interesting. This is exactly what I'd say. And then the next day he's like, I got fired.
(42:49):
So, um, because not everybody who stays, who is at the end is actually staying at the end,
because it is a marketplace and a bank and all of these other things, some people might actually
be there for nefarious purposes. There might be people that are trying to spy or gather information.
And of course, highwaymen would frequent ends because highwaymen, a robber. And so they are
(43:13):
trying to find their next mark. Basically they're picking who they're going to go after on the road,
but it's actually possible that at times the innkeepers were cut into these deals because
obviously you're going to start to figure out who the robbers are. Often they knew who the robbers
were. And so if you're letting them be at your end, then you're getting a cut. So there's a really
(43:36):
famous English highwayman whose name was Richard Turpin or Dick Turpin. And he was eventually
hanged for robbery, but he was like really romanticized after the fact. But he was one
who chose his marks at ends. Smart. So he must've gotten away with a lot if they hung him. He got
(43:59):
away with quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. And so he was like, he was like, he was like, he was like,
away with quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Some of them kind of violent sounding, like it was not good.
Yeah. Probably not the right. A person to romanticize, but you know, we do the same
thing with our Billy the Kids. So. We're doing it now. Yeah. Exactly. So innkeepers
(44:23):
themselves, weren't just there running day to day activities of the end, they engaged in
a lot of outside activities, which is another way they were making pretty decent money,
just from the rent from the rooms, but then they're able to take that money and invest it in other things.
So they are going to be they were entrepreneurs. Yeah, exactly.
(44:44):
So they're going to be, of course, brewing because they want to sell beer at their establishment.
They're importing wine for their guests. They're trading in cloth, which was really big at the time.
And I mean, that's a big reason the inn could be a marketplace is so that the innkeeper could also have his hand in all of these different industries.
They often came from elite families and you could find them on city councils, other forms of town governments.
(45:13):
There's this one example, Richard Kingsmill, who was a wealthy innkeeper between fourteen fifty five and fourteen seventy.
He was the royal council, the town bailiff. He acted as justice of the peace for a while.
He actually made it to be all the way up to be a member of parliament.
So he was a tax assessor. He was a proctor for the villagers of Mapledur, Mapledurwell.
(45:38):
I don't know what that is. But so he didn't sleep. No.
He marketed cloth. He imported wine, fruit and fish.
He did. He bought land and bought, you know, bought farmland.
So, yeah, he he absolutely was a mogul in this area.
So if the ins were profitable, local lords would want to invest in them, which makes sense.
(46:04):
Absolutely. They want their hand in that pie.
They it's again a big part of the economy.
It was the I think was it the only place, maybe not the only place,
but one of the major places people can gather and do business and network.
Yeah. I mean, other than like church, maybe. Yeah.
I mean, if they have if they have like a market, an actual like market, people are going to be doing it there as well.
(46:28):
But yeah, but the end was just such a convenient place to be able to do all of that stuff and also eat and drink while you're there.
It's indoors. So you're not outside in the elements.
I think most markets were, you know, open to the elements.
Yeah. Ins were a great way to increase a lord's revenue.
However, they were not without their own set of problems.
(46:51):
Ins would often go up in flames and all their money with it.
So they wouldn't invest that much into decorating and stuff because there was such a high chance of it to be.
Oh, no, they would. They would. Yeah.
Decor and upkeep were the most common avenues of investment, actually.
Oh, but then would they stop doing that because it would burn down so frequently?
(47:15):
No, they pretty much knew that the ins were still like they would just rebuild and do it all again because it's such a necessary thing that they know that they're going to get their money back.
Oh, OK. OK. But yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, like there was no fire safety codes. Yeah.
They had they had no indoor normal heating.
(47:36):
You had to use fireplaces and everything's made out of hay.
And they're all built so close together. One thing gets on fire.
Everything sets on fire. Yeah. Wood, hay, cloth.
You know, it was just and then the alcohol didn't take out the fire.
(47:58):
So it's definitely not putting it out.
So it wasn't it wasn't good.
And interesting, even though when there was an economic downturn, like they had a disruption in the Italian trade in the mid 15th century,
in spite of the economic woes or any like natural disasters, ins were constantly being rebuilt.
(48:18):
And they were they did pretty well.
They kind of withstood a lot of the the troubles because people they needed them.
Yeah. You know, and everyone had to drink their problems away.
So we're going to list a few places that were famous ins at the time and also some that still exist today.
(48:40):
The first is the Tabard Inn, which was mentioned in the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
So this was an end in Southwark established in 1307, and it was built for the abbot of Hyde in Winchester,
who purchased the land because he wanted a place for him and his brothers in Christ to stay when they were on business.
(49:04):
So the the Tabard was famous, though, for pilgrims staying there.
People who were on pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.
And that's what is mentioned in the Canterbury Tales is the pilgrims stay there.
This is actually the location where the pilgrims first meet on their journey to Canterbury in the 1380s.
(49:27):
So the end was located on the south bank of the Thames, just north of where two Roman roads merged.
Oh, my God. Is it close to the Savoy?
Right. So this actually this area, it lay outside the jurisdiction of the city of London.
So activities that you couldn't do in the city of London, you could do here in the county of Surrey and around this inn.
(49:56):
So that includes prostitution, animal baiting, cock fighting, gambling, all of that stuff.
So this kind of became London's entertainment district.
So this area would have been filled with pilgrims, people drinking, travelers, criminals, prostitutes,
(50:16):
coloquially known as the Winchester Geese. OK, cute nickname.
So I feel like this in because it was in an area outside of a city's laws.
I think this in probably had the vibe of what everybody considers when they're thinking about a medieval drinking.
Establishment. This sounds like it had everything going on.
(50:40):
Another one that no longer exists, the Tabard no longer exists, was the Bluebell in Hempstead.
I'm sorry. No, the Bluebell does still exist.
Now it's known as the Bluebell, but it was known for many years as the Rose and Crown.
And this is the inn where Dick Turpin was born.
His father was listed as the alehouse keeper, brewer and butcher.
(51:03):
So they think his family actually owned this inn where he was born.
And it still exists by a different name.
Yeah, now it's known as the Bluebell. Oh, that's so interesting.
Oh, my God. I want to look. Yeah.
The last picture I saw of it, I think, was from the 70s.
So it existed at least up until the 70s. Yeah.
And if anything exists now, I'm not looking like it did 400, 500 years ago.
(51:24):
For the most part.
Another famous inn was Hotel Weisse Taube in 1365 in Salzburg, Austria.
Undeniably ancient.
When this famous old inn was first built, it was known as Das Haus gegen der Tumber Spital.
Das Haus Gegendertumberspital.
(51:46):
Meaning? Blah, blah, blah.
No, it means the house next to the Cathedral's Hospital.
Ah, ah, yes.
Spital, hospital.
So what's this ye olde trip to Jerusalem?
These are some inns in England that are considered to be the oldest in the country.
(52:08):
So Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham.
I'm going to guess this one was probably for people on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
It claims to be the oldest inn in England and is said to have been established in 1189.
But there is no documentation to verify this.
(52:28):
So it's made up by the people who own it now.
Yeah, this was a popular stop for Crusader knights.
The problem with a lot of these places, because so many places in England claim to be the oldest this, the oldest that.
And the issue is that either they're flat out lying.
Sometimes they just made it up because they know it's good for tourism.
Sometimes like a stone in the building or like a group of stones is from that era.
(52:52):
But the building itself is something else and was.
And sometimes it's like, yeah, OK, maybe this this building or area is that old.
But it was not always that thing.
Like, if it's the oldest pub in England or something, it hasn't been a pub for a thousand years.
We called that out a couple of times. Yeah.
So take all of these with a grain of salt.
Yeah. Another one is the Porch House in Stow-on-the-Wold.
(53:17):
The Wold. Wold. Is that a place? Stow-on-the-Wold. Yeah. OK.
This inn is in Cotswolds claims to date back to 947.
That's old. That's quite a claim.
The Old Man and Scythe in Bolton is mentioned in a charter from 1251.
So it might actually be as old as it claims to be.
(53:38):
Another one is these are ridiculous.
The Skirrid Mountain Inn in Abergavenny.
It looks like the skrrrrrt.
Skrrr. I like that name Abergnavie.
Or Abergavenny? Abergaviny?
It's probably. Oh, I'm saying it wrong.
We're probably pronouncing too much of the word.
(53:59):
I feel like English words like to leave out a lot of.
So it's probably like Aberny.
So this inn in Monmounthshire dates back to 1110.
The Royal Standard of England in Beaconsfield claims to date back to 10
86. These are all lies.
OK. The Old Ferry Boat in in St. Ives, not the scrub.
(54:23):
This end claims to date back to five 560.
I call bullshit. There's no way.
Again, a few stones.
Yeah, they have like a cornerstone.
And thenYe Old Fighting Cocks in St. Albans claims to date back to 793.
Ye old fighting cocks.
(54:43):
Damn, that's a good one.
And I actually read or I learned that when we call things like ye old,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that Y on the ye?
That's actually the the letter that used to be the T-H sound.
So it actually is the old blah, blah, blah, blah.
But we just don't use that letter anymore.
And it looks like a Y. So we call it ye.
(55:05):
So that was interesting.
There's a little linguistic fact for everybody.
OK, so I know you're all thinking what I was thinking, which is,
where would I have stayed?
Where would the poor people stay?
So poor people really didn't get to travel that much.
Shocker. Really.
(55:26):
Most people did not go very far from where they were born.
Travel was hard. It was expensive.
If you didn't have a horse, then you didn't have a horse.
It was expensive if you didn't have a horse, then you had to walk
wherever you were going to go.
And so you're only going to make it, you know, 20 miles a day.
Yeah. And the hokas. Yeah.
(55:48):
Imagine their feet.
God, yeah. Yeah.
So and then while you're traveling, you're going to incur expenses.
So not just from, you know, trying to find food and water
if you didn't bring enough with you, but also because, you know,
you're going to be traveling along major thoroughfares like the Kings Highway
because you don't want to be on less well-kept roads.
(56:12):
Not only are they dangerous because they're not kept up, but also
that's where you're more likely to get robbed.
So but if you came to a bridge or you came to a city,
you're going to have to pay a toll to cross the bridge or to enter the city.
And it could be like a penny per person, which is a lot.
That's a lot. Yeah.
And if you have stuff, if you have horses or goods,
(56:35):
you have to pay for all of that stuff to cross.
So it's you're going to be trying to avoid that that sort of thing.
You're going to try. You can't really avoid a bridge, but
unless you're going to swim.
But but you can avoid cities.
So you try to avoid entering a city.
But sleeping outside, like camping, it really wasn't a thing
(56:56):
that was super common.
It wasn't something that people did to the thieves.
Yeah. And you're in England, so it's fricking freezing.
So the main reason that that most poor people might find themselves
on a trek like this is a pilgrimage to a holy site.
So that's that's where most of your poor people are going to be doing.
(57:17):
So if you didn't have enough money to stay at an inn or an ale house,
then you would stay at a monastery.
So part of the monk's mission in their taking care of the poor
in their charity included taking care of travelers. That's nice.
Yeah. So usually they would have like a little hostel or a guest house,
you know, for for travelers.
(57:38):
And they were going to feed you and give you something to drink
and give you a warm place to stay.
Well, warmish, depending on the monastery.
We do it for free, but yeah, you can donate. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So you don't have to pay for any of this.
But of course, they do.
They would like a donation to the church to and that it's going to help them
continue to take care of travelers.
(57:58):
Awesome. I wish we still had that. Yeah.
Instead we have couchsurfer.com.
Exactly. It's not the same.
And trust me, you pay a price.
Maybe not money, but you pay a price.
I've never done it, though, but I've heard.
No, I've never done it.
Yeah. But an interesting little thing is there is a hotel
(58:21):
that exists still today from 1342.
And the name is I'm going to mess this up.
Altstadthotel Kasererbraeu, Kasererbraeu.
Kasererbraeu.
Oh, yeah. And you guessed it. In
Salzburg, Austria.
It's been restored and remodeled and, you know, doesn't look anything
(58:43):
like it does now.
But its original
location is actually was a medieval monastery guesthouse.
That's so cool.
So this one really has like been hosting people since the 1300s.
Yeah.
I looked at the website, had to translate it from German to English.
(59:03):
But yeah, it looks like the outside looks it looks like a castle.
Yeah. The inside.
You can't tell this was from 1342.
Yeah, they've done some some substantial remodeling.
Anyway, that's that's our Christmas episode.
I hope it gives you good vibes and a good laugh.
Yes. And if you want more Christmas content, check out our episode
(59:25):
from last year where we talk about great hotels in New York
City to visit at Christmas time.
Yeah. Happy holidays.
Happy holidays.
Thanks for listening to Hotel History.
You can follow us on most social media platforms, Patreon and Substack
(59:46):
by searching for Hotel History or Hotel History Podcast.
If you like what you hear, please leave us a five star review on Apple
podcasts and Spotify so we can reach more listeners.
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