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

Wherein we bid farewell to the Castle Fee with a final brief flurry of gloriously gratuitous grossness and get back to actually learning stuff.

To add piquancy to the olfactory horrors of the Great Cockey valley, up at the top of the Norman marketplace, along what is now the delightful Memorial Garden was sited the Norman fish market.

Barrels of herring from Great Yarmouth had to be shipped upriver to be taxed at Norwich before being shipped downstream again and on to London and beyond for sale.

However, daily boatloads of wet fish were landed, carted up the hill to the fish market to be gutted, cleaned and sold to the public. The reeking guts and carcasses were washed down the marketplace, through the fruit, veg and other food stalls, through the tanners' yards and straight into the Great Cockey.

Rotting offal, for your olfactory delight. Interweb again. 

 

With no refrigeration the day's leftover piles of fish and shellfish would add their pungent aroma to the mélange of rotting fruit, decomposing cabbage, rancid fat and offal assailing your nostrils. Mobs of gulls, feral dogs, cats, rats and flies would feast on the filth of the marketplace … like mediæval road-sweepers.

At last, the promised market map, courtesy of Old Dive. To orient yourself (as my north point appears to have disappeared) north is to the right and the castle is off the bottom of the map.

Here's a plan of the Norman marketplace showing what was going on where. The most disgusting trades are coloured - inevitably - brown. Memorise this for the next time you visit the market or stroll along Gentleman's Walk.

So that concludes our fragrant mosey around the Castle Fee and the Great Cockey valley in the twelfth century. Who'd want to be a time-traveller?

Considering that the good folk of Norman Norwich would have had hideously bad breath from poor diet and rotting teeth, unwashed, lice and flea-ridden hair, filthy bodies and clothes and a rancid body odour that these days would fell an ox at ten paces, it is pretty certain that their olfactory glands would have been blasted into insensitivity within days of their being born.

To them, it would all be perfectly normal …

In my next talk, less pee and poo, but Norwich Castle is attacked by King Louis (not the ape) and his cheese-eating surrender-monkeys.

First up, however: who wants to make a longbow arrow? Nobody? Ah, well … If you feel so inclined my next post will tell you how.

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