In which we mosey on back along Gentleman's Walk to Mister Tanner's yard, carrying our newly purchased stinking drinking horn and catch up with Mister Tanner and his boy.
Mister Tanner at work, courtesy the interweb.
Mister Horner will be accompanying us as he wants to sell all the stinky paste (weirdly, stinky paste is an anagram of Patsy Kensit; don't say you never learn anything useful in these talks) of his horn cores back to Mister Tanner, who will boil the paste up with his hooves and scrap leather to make glue (and another awful stench … are you seeing a pattern developing here?).
In the meantime, Mister Tanner's boy has been sprinkling his cowhides with lime and stale human urine (no need for a urinal at the tannery) and folding them hair-side inward to encourage the rotting of the hair follicles.
This process takes many weeks so the yard would be stacked with rotting, reeking, pee-soaked piles of cowhide, crusted with flies. Once each hide was sufficiently rotted, Mister Tanner would remove the hair with a blunt knife, turn the hide over and scrape off any remaining putrid fat and flesh with a sharper knife.
The hides were then re-washed (in the Great Cockey of course, which was not exactly running clean and clear as the rotted hair, putrid fat and flesh had just been tipped into it). Mister Tanner now had two choices of fragrant methods for de-liming and softening his hides.
The first method was lengthy immersion in an alkali-rich solution of warm dung (dog and human). The second method was an equally lengthy drenching in a solution of stale beer and human urine. Pee and poo both carted down the hill from the castle's poop chutes and sold by the barrowload.
Whichever method he chose, the Great Cockey valley was possibly not the best place for a romantic stroll back in the twelfth century.
Mister Tanner's boy washed the hides again and then agitated them in a solution of crushed oak bark. After being layered one atop t'other with ground bark between, the hides were laid in a pit filled with weak tanning solution followed by transfer to another pit containing strong tannins. This part of the process would take between twelve and eighteen months.
After this long soaking the tanned hides were rinsed (in lovely fresh Cockey water), smoothed, using a two-handled setting pin, which was like a giant, blunt-triangular-section rolling pin, and hung up to dry slowly in a shed. Mister Tanner and his boy would then load the dried, tanned hides onto their cart and trundle them along the banks of the Cockey to Mister Currier's yard, where Mister Currier's lads would stretch and shave the hides and soften them with grease (often cow-brains).
The leather was then ready for sale to saddlers, clothiers, armourers, cobblers, bookbinders and whatever passed for the fetish-wear community back then.
Next time you don your leather jacket, tighten your leather belt, slip on your leather shoes and slide into your leather car seat (or gimp suit), you'll know just where it's come from and how much pee and poo it got soaked in.
Of course these days in the west, modern tanning methods are marginally less fæcal than of old, substituting sodium sulphide for human urine with their lime, though they are still chemically stinky and disgusting.
On the other hand, your iPhone case is likely to have come from rural China.
Just saying …
More grossness in the next post, together with the promised map of the Norman Marketplace.
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
8 comments:
As I read your posts, Dive, it seems amazing that people lived past their own conception, let alone became old enough to reproduce another generation of Tanners. Bleh! I wonder how visitors would react to a "re-creation" of the smells of the era the next time they visit a Renaissance Faire? "Poo-pee-rie candle, anyone? Anyone?"
When I was researching the history of steamboats, I was not too surprised to learn just how much drinking was done by crew and passengers. When poop was freely discharged into the streams, as well as other pollutants, you could trace the sources of outbreaks of cholera in cities along the rivers and the boats that used them. I think the population drank hard cider rather than risk becoming ill from the water. I don't recall reading any accounts of how drunk the captain, pilots, and crew may have been, but I've wondered how many accidents were due to "drunk driving"? What about your folk in and around Norwich Castle - hard cider, mead, and beer for everyone?
It has been a long uphill struggle in this country to get legislation passed that seeks to prevent the pollution of our air and waterways. The successes have been tangible, but *current* admin has sought ways to roll back those efforts. They fail to realize that, ultimately, we all drink from the same tap.
Poo-pee-rie … Hee hee! At Yorvic, the Viking Centre in York, they've infamously had poo smells for decades, and Norfolk Museums Service promise me the garderobes will smell authentic once we re-open. Which, if nothing else, means that there'll be somewhere in the museum that one can drop a fart should one need.
Drunken steamboats. Horrors! William the Bastard's son the Adelin got his crew drunk and lost three hundred lives in the White Ship.
Before we knew where cholera came from everyone drank "small beer" rather than water, as it had to be boiled. The rich drank wine and port and got gout, sailors got their rum ration and the rest of us had small beer for the women and children and strong beer for the men.
As for He Who Shall Not Be Named and his war against the planet, we can only pray that the Senate goes to the Dems and Biden can reverse the apocalypse.
Coincidentally, as I was reading this post the MITM found an exceptionally pungent container of leftover turkey guts that had been forgotten in the back of the fridge! It certainly brought an olfactory element to my reading. xoxo
p.s. Hopefully, the end of the Trumpito madness is close at hand! I'm looking forward to the unsealing of the NY AG's indictments on January 21!
This one had me laughing (Patsy Kensit, the interwebs, iphone cases...). Thank you, Dive, I love these.
As for the current occupant of the peoples' house, I think we're on the right track.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/529660-biden-will-have-white-house-disinfected-after
If you've got a spare dollar (or pound), send it to the Georgia Democrats.
Hahahahaha! Thank you for that, Savannah. xoxo
Thanks, Petrea. I simply couldn't resist the Patsy Kensit one.
Loving the continuing good news from across the Pond, though my fingers are tightly crossed for the Senate.
Occupations for the anosmic eh Dive? Smells like these aren't normal for us and we find them disgusting. Obviously the smell itself would have been just the same, but I wonder how much of our disgust response is learned, and whether these smells being part of life would have been more accepted and less retchworthy then.
All I know is that I can sit next to a farting dog and not notice until everybody else runs retching from the room, but I cannot smell burning or gas. I'm pretty sure dog farts won't kill me but the others might.
I don't know. Don't underestimate the potency of a dog fart.God knows what goes into those tins of dogmeat. Hope you keep your smoke detectors well-maintained.
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