Five weird and freaky facts about medieval Britain

When we think about life in the Middle Ages we mostly think about the things we have today that they didn’t have back then. You now, things like the internet, TV, public transport, fast food outlets, underwear.

But life back then wasn’t just like life today with most of the good bits taken out. It was radically different and much, much stranger than we can imagine. Here are just a handful of downright weird facts of medieval life.

Animals could be arrested, charged with crimes and tried in court!

The religious authorities in medieval Britain hadn’t come to any solid conclusions about whether or not animals had moral agency. So to be on the safe side they often prosecuted them for antisocial acts like biting people, damage to property or making a public nuisance. One poor rooster was tried for laying an egg, and a donkey was arrested for lechery. Pigs tended to get the worst rap, though. And that donkey was found not guilty after numerous witnesses testified to her good character.

Football was so dangerous it often left players wounded or dead.

The game seems to have become popular in the ninth century, but nobody bothered to invent any rules for the first few hundred years. Teams could be of any size, up to and including the entire population of a village. The aim wasn’t usually to score a goal but to land the ball in a particular spot before the other team did, and whatever you did to get it there was fair game. And the matches tended to take place on public holidays when everyone was already drunk and/or over-excited. King Edward II finally banned the game because of the damage and human carnage it caused.

Everyone wore clown shoes.

Well that’s a bit of an exaggeration, to be honest, but there was a very popular fashion for men that lasted for almost two centuries. It was called the Cracow shoe or the poulaine, and it was characterised by very long, pointed toe-pieces that extended waaaaay beyond the end of your feet. Sometimes the toes were so long that they had to be tied or pinned up to a man’s ankles so he could walk.

Surnames weren’t a thing in Britain until after the Norman conquest.

Everyone was just known by their given name or by a nickname they acquired in the course of their life. The idea of having a second name that identified a person or a family group was a radical innovation and it took a while to catch on. And by a while I mean the next two centuries.

Urine was a valuable resource.

It was used in tanning leather and in cloth-dyeing. You could also extract the ammonia from it to make bleach. So it was fairly common for poor households to save up their urine and sell it on. You’d pee into a chamber pot when you were indoors, especially at night. Then in the morning you’d decant the chamber pots into a larger storage pot behind your house. When you had enough you could go looking for a buyer . . .

For more freaky goings on in medieval Britain, check out M. R. Carey’s new novel Once Was Willem, an enthrallingly dark medieval fantasy of twisted folklore, macabre magic and the strangest of found families.

M. R. Carey has been making up stories for most of his life. His novel The Girl With All the Gifts has sold over a million copies and became a major motion picture, based on his own BAFTA Award-nominated screenplay. Under the name Mike Carey he has written for both DC and Marvel, including critically acclaimed runs on Lucifer, Hellblazerand X-Men. His creator-owned books regularly appear in the New York Times bestseller list. He also has several previous novels including the Felix Castor series (written as Mike Carey), two radio plays and a number of TV and movie screenplays to his credit.