# Did medieval Castles Stink? Medieval Bathroom Q... **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 27, 2005, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-medieval-castles-stink-medieval-bathroom-q/323701 "2005-09-27T17:07:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Soylent\_Gene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecae2f/32.png) [@Soylent\_Gene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soylent_Gene)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2005, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-medieval-castles-stink-medieval-bathroom-q/323701/21 "2005-09-28T05:50:31Z")
> [@Lissa](#): > > I’ve heard that astronauts returning to earth after breathing super-filtered air for a while are absolutely nauseated by the stench. Never heard that one before… And I doubt its true. Gemini and Apollo astronuats had to crap into plastic baggies. I dont care how good the air filters were, in cramped quarters it had to stink. ---
**Author:** ![One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/838e76/32.png) [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/One_And_Only_Wanderers)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2005, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-medieval-castles-stink-medieval-bathroom-q/323701/22 "2005-09-28T07:47:09Z")
> [@Fear Itself](#): > > Castle toilets were know as _[garderobes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garderobe)_, small rooms that projected out of the castle wall. A hole beneath the seat allowed waste to drop in a cess pit, or into the moat. Don’t know how true this is, because I got it from a Discworld novel (Lords and Ladies I believe), Pterry is ususally pretty good in his research tho, so I tend to trust him on this type of fact. I read that people used to hand their furs in their, because the smell discouraged moths. Can anyone corroborate this? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2005, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-medieval-castles-stink-medieval-bathroom-q/323701/23 "2005-09-28T11:37:25Z")
> [@](#): > > I read that people used to hand their furs in their, because the smell discouraged moths. Can anyone corroborate this? Somehow I doubt this. Moth and butterfly sensing of smells is very different from human sensing. I also doubt if what repels us wuld repel them. Finally, I just a read an article recently thaqt pointed out that, besides sipping delicately of the nectar of flowers, butterflies and moths also drink from stagnant pools and from waste. Apparently theu contain chemicals and nutrients they aren’t going to get from flowers. I don’t doubt that people _tried_ this. I just doubt that it worked. I also seem to recall that some seashore castles actually have slit latrines with an effective “flush” mechanism, due to the incoming tide.Don’t recall where – might have been the forts of San Cristobal or El Morro in San Juan, Puerto Rico. ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2005, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-medieval-castles-stink-medieval-bathroom-q/323701/24 "2005-09-28T12:09:41Z")
Here’s a site which includes [pictures](http://www.jamesmdeem.com/castlebath.htm) of castle latrines and garderobes… ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2005, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-medieval-castles-stink-medieval-bathroom-q/323701/25 "2005-09-28T12:21:46Z")
Let’s avoid broad generalizations. Sanitation differed from time to time and place to place, as did frequency of bathing. Medieval castle-builders didn’t want their castles to stink. Chateau Coucy, one of the greatest European castles, had privies with vertical shafts that went down to an underground stream. Some cesspits were just big holes; some were treated with lime and cleaned out regularly. A good medieval castle probably smelled a lot better than Versaille did in the Age of Enlightenment. Chateau Gaillard, the great castle Richard I built in France, is said to have been taken in 1204 (after the outermost of three concentric baileys was captured) by a soldier crawling up a latrine drain and opening the gate to the middle bailey. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2005, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-medieval-castles-stink-medieval-bathroom-q/323701/26 "2005-09-29T09:05:19Z")
It is important not to confuse popular myth with the hard documentary and archaeological evidence. Take the case of the Tudor royal palaces. It so happens that the leading expert on those palaces, Simon Thurley, has written at some length and with a certain eloquence on the sophistication of their sanitary arrangements. See in particular his _Royal Palaces of Tudor England_ (Yale University Press, 1993), esp. pp. 171-7, or, more tangentially, his _Hampton Court_ (Yale UP, 2003). It’s not that there wasn’t a problem. On the contrary, they had one on a huge scale. But Thurley’s point is that contemporaries were every bit as aware as we are of the dangers and that, in waging their constant battle against those dangers, the palace officials for most part succeeded. Nor were their efforts an afterthought. Rather, the measures taken - constant supplies of fresh running water, state-of-the-art drains, public toilets for visitors, flushing waterclosets (Henry VIII had one long before Sir John Harington), moats so clean they could be used as fishponds - were already being routinely built into the infrastructures of the palaces and their surroundings. Thurley actually sees the general lack of unpleasant smells as one of the Tudor court’s supreme achievements. And not for the first time I find myself having to point out that Versailles did have public toilets. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Kentzel-Griffin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ccd318/32.png) [@John\_Kentzel-Griffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Kentzel-Griffin)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2005, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-medieval-castles-stink-medieval-bathroom-q/323701/27 "2005-09-29T11:10:11Z")
> [@Meurglys](#): > > Here’s a site which includes [pictures](http://www.jamesmdeem.com/castlebath.htm) of castle latrines and garderobes… from the above link: > [@](#): > > The view looking down through the toilet seat is still breathtaking. Umm. . . yeah, I bet! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-medieval-castles-stink-medieval-bathroom-q/323701.md?page=1)