Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Third - Life in the Mediæval Castle Fee - Chapter IV

Norwich Castle from the steps of City Hall. Photo: courtesy Old Dive.

The archæological record shows that prior to the Norman Conquest there were no wells in the valley of the Great Cockey. After the Conquest, however, wells got dug left, right and centre. As you're about to find out, once the Normans got settled in nobody wanted beer or laundry from Cockey water any more.

The west elevation of Norwich Castle directly overlooks the Norman marketplace across the Great Cockey valley. Stand on the steps of City Hall today (or last winter, as the photo above) and you're looking straight at the castle's eight great poop chutes, down which poured the effluent from the sixteen communal garderobe toilets. Using those toilets would be the earl and his household and staff, any visiting nobles and their retinues, plus the three-hundred-or-so soldiers garrisoned there and any artisans working in the castle. Pretty much a constant flow … ew.

The eight great poop chutes of Norwich Castle.

Photo: courtesy Old Dive. The rubble you can see is archæological spoil awaiting sieving for artifacts.

We're talking a section of the castle wall around ten yards wide by five yards tall, which would have been permanently covered in a vaguely fan-shaped shit-stain with fæcal effluvia shooting from the chutes, slopping and splashing into a wet pond of pee and poo underneath; all ready to be collected up by some poor sod with a barrow, sieved for dropped valuables and then wheeled down the hill for sale to the tanners.

The stench from this, however, would not be noticed in the marketplace as between it and the castle lay the Great Cockey valley and this stretch of it, from the gloriously-named Rampant Horse Street to the back of Jarrold's [see later map], was used almost exclusively for slaughtering, skinning and tanning. The castle's poop chutes would have been a breath of fresh air by comparison.

When I were a lad you could stand at the Haymarket end of Gentleman's Walk and inhale the piquant mingling of aromas from the fish market on your right and the chocolate factory on your left. It appears that this part of Norwich has been stinking fit to gag a rat for nigh on a thousand years. If you know anyone in Norwich named Tanner, you're about to find out just what their ancestors were up to along the Great Cockey.

Tanners were the only trade allowed to buy the skins of cattle from the skinners for leatherworking. The skinners, however, didn't just skin cattle; they skinned horses, donkeys, sheep, pigs, goat, deer, rabbits, dogs, cats and rats for the tawyers, who dealt in the lower end leathers and the fur trade.

Norwich Haymarket around 1825 looking north toward Gentleman's Walk with St.Peter Mancroft on the left and the Haymarket hill in front of it. The Great Cockey ran under the back of the buildings on the right, most of which are still there today. Pic: courtesy the interweb.

Cattle, old horses, sheep, pigs and goats were herded into the marketplace, driven down to the Great Cockey and slaughtered in heaps. Some blood was kept for making puddings but most of it, together with the more disgusting bodily fluids, went bubbling and steaming straight into the Great Cockey and flowed downhill to the River Wensum.

The meat and offal went a few yards uphill to be sold at the butchers' stalls on the marketplace and the bones went in pits or were boiled for glue-making.

The good folk of Norman Norwich took sacks of dogs, rabbits, cats and rats to the slaughterer and skinner who sold the meat on to the butchers while the tawyers then scraped the skins clean of blood, dirt and manure and any remaining fat and meat before soaking them in a mix of potash alum and salt, adding egg yolks and flour to improve the fur.

This was called 'tawing' and produced a furred hide rather than a leather, which was still putrescible when wet. Furs in Norman times smelled pretty rank.

Jon Snow's putrescible direwolf cloak … Stinky when wet. Pic: courtesy the interweb.

Jon Snow must have stunk to high heaven when it rained on that direwolf cloak.

The tawyers' waste products of blood, dirt, manure, rancid fat and rotting meat got tipped straight into the Great Cockey and washed downstream. Are you gagging yet? If not, this'll help …

During the archæological dig for the Rose Lane multi-storey car park, as reported in the Eastern Daily Press, a "13th century cat and goat hide shop" was excavated.

They found in particular, among the pits of cat bones, a great proliferation of "cut juvenile bone" which suggests that kittens (KITTENS!) were skinned to make fur trims for leather gloves and hats ;

Kitten mittens, anyone?

Kitten Mittens.

You know you want them.

Photo courtesy (where else) the interweb.

Less creepily, they found evidence that the tawyery was of high quality, producing goat and kid skin for vellum, which was sold to the adjacent friaries of Franciscans and Augustinians.

The one thing that was absolutely essential for tanning and tawing (as well as slaughtering and skinning) was a good source of running water, so the tanneries followed the course of the Great Cockey inside the city and also the banks of the Wensum on Oak Street to the north and Mountergate to the east, where the tawyery above was discovered.

If you think that was gross, just wait for the next post …

Sources:

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part 1: Anglo-Saxon to c.1345: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009

The Norman Connections - Castle: Part 1: Norwich Castle: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2010

Mediæval Norwich: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004

Eastern Daily Press website: "13th century cat and goat hide shop excavated."

A Brief History of Arrowmaking: Veronica-Mae Soar; Clerk to the Craft Guild of Traditional Bowyers and Fletchers: The Worshipful Company of Fletchers: online resource

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 112: Dragon Hall, King Street, Norwich: Excavation and Survey of a Late Mediæval Merchant's Trading Complex: Norfolk and Norwich Heritage Trust

East Anglian Archæology Vol 28: Excavations Within the North-East Bailey of Norwich Castle: 1979

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775 

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday to Magna Carta: Austin L. Poole (ed): 1951

The Pipe Roll Society: Archive Editions (various): online resource