Heating in Medieval Inns

Factual Questions
21

In a tour of Hampton Court, the part built in the 1500’s (and given by Wolsley to Henry VIII), the guide mentioned that the fancy dining hall doubled as a sleeping room at night. Unless you were really important, you did not get a private roon, you grabbed your blanket and bunked down with the rest of the crew. If you were important enough, you got a private room and a bed (possibly with fireplace) and your trused servant slept at the foot of the bed on the floor, or possibly across the door so it could not be opened surreptitiously. The rest of the entourage and bodyguards slept outside that door.

A side note, too, as discussed in an earlier thread, it’s only about 1600 to 17000 that actual corridors appear. Until then, construction was too expensive to waste on space just for walking; one room had a door that lead to the next and so on. You can see this floorplan even with Anne Hatheway’s cottage or the multi-story old tenement building on the Royal Mile(?) in Edinburgh.

Typical manor house had a giant eating hall and a selection of rooms leading off this. Fancier, the hall was tall enough that a stair and gallery ran along one side (so you could jump from it to swing from the rough wooden chandelier during swordfights). Off this gallery might be a buch of smaller private rooms or suites, but unless you were rich enough to travel with an entourage of guards (to prevent your riches from being stolen) you slept in the big room.

As mansions became fancier, the rooms did too and so possibly acquired private fireplaces; but then (see thread on what happens if there were no oil or coal) the volume of wood needed to keep the place toasty warm would have been enormous. Generally, the fire roarded until it became embers, and hopefuilly the heat of the stone hearth helped until morning.

I too remember staying at a relative’s in a very old dutch house; no heating other than the main fireplace, and few strategically placed electric heaters downstairs and in the bathroom. Under a cozy down comforter upstairs in the old part of the house, with no heat, it probably got close to freezing - but it was remarkably comfortable and cozy warm.

A lot of medieval travellers were pilgrims, had very little money. If they had none, they tended to stay in charity places - monasteries were noted for having a meeting hall or kitchen where travellers could bunk down, and if the monks fcould afford it, a small free meal. Gentlemen adventurers also fell into this category - if you had/showed any decent money, you would be accosted by 4 or 5 robbers in the woods (in green, with bows) on the way to the next town. Oh, and all that metal you were carrying as weapons or armour was extremely valuable too. You don’t wander on your own like that without a fast horse (more expense, more booty to steal); you travel in groups of 3 or more. And a good fallen tree or trip-rope would negate the flee-with-horse advantage.

22

It will cause a draft to go up the chimney and out of the house. Being replaced by air from the other rooms, which will be replaced by cold air from outside, which is now slightly windier to boot.

23

To keep the smoke going up the chimney, fresh air has to come in from somewhere, thorugh the rest of the house into the main room. With chimneys had to come dampers; but put the damper too closed and the room smoked up, too open and all the hot air goes up the chimney.

The main value of a big fireplace is that when the fire goes out, that big rock hearth is still hot for quite a while. Anyone who’s stood around a campfire in the fall knows that the good heat at your front is negated by the extreme cold at your back, unless you have some serious blankets.

24

There are the remains of an old inn here in Massachusetts. Sadly, most of it burned down only a couple of decades ago, but what remains is interesting – it’s the cebntral chimey, which is enormous, broad, and fullt capable of standing on its own. IOt’s a humongous core with fireplaces leadin into it on al sides over several stories. I imagine a well-to-do inn catering to upper-class clientele would have been constrcted in this way, with all the rooms clustering around the central chimey complex so they could have fires in them.

as for vyour typoical inn, I suspect, as noted, that people multipled up in rooms, and that not all had their own fireplace. Heck, if you visit places like Sturbridge Village you can see that not every family member’s room had its own fireplace, and it gets cold in Massachusetts.

25

Sure, if the bedrooms had wide open windows.

Have you ever been in a cold climate with a big fire in one room? It’s not like getting 10 feet away from the fireplace makes it cold. Unless the fireplace is ROARING (thus, pulling in a lot of air) and the bedrooms are really drafty, it’s gonna be just fine.

Remember at night the fireplace is probably banked, so it’s not pulling in tons and tons of air.

That said, if said Inn is in a REALLY cold climate, replace “fireplace” with “wood stove” and the whole fookin’ building will be crazy warm. Wood stoves are amazingly good at heating; we have one at our cabin, and no other source of heat, and unless you’re careful even in the depths of winter the cabin gets too warm for comfort.

26

No, this is not exatcly true. This only occurs in modern homes which are nearly sealed- thus a fireplace draws cold air , heats it and it goes up the chimney, this cold air in a modern house comes from the other rooms, drawn in from outside. Having been in a house heated ONLY by a fireplace, that room is toasty, and the next rooms aren’t so bad. But the outlying rooms are cold. However, medieval houses and roofs were’t so sealed. It’s a war between the heat generated by the fire vs cold air coming in.

And of course, today in the modern world we often use fireplaces ineffienctly, for show, not for heat. This is where that factoid comes in, esp since the central heating in such houses isn;t usually turned off and another problem is then the thermostats are off.

27

I am not old enough to have stayed in a medieval inn, so I have no special expertise to share in that regard, but when I was a kid (in the 1970s) we lived for a few years with my grandfather in a 1790s farmhouse that had no plumbing, electricity or central heat.

There was a wood stove in the kitchen, and a fireplace in the parlor, but no other heating sources in the house. The bedrooms above the parlor and kitchen had vents in the floor, covered by wrought iron grates, that let air flow from the first floor to the second floor.

At night you’d bank the fire(s) and go to bed. The heated air coming through the vents from the first floor would warm those 2 bedrooms fairly well (around 60F when there was an active fire downstairs) and it would be plenty warm enough to change for bed, though by morning there was sometimes a skin of ice in the water pitcher on colder nights.

It was plenty warm under the covers, especially if you wore a cap, and almost no one slept alone in the winter, except my grandfather who snored. The other bedrooms were also not used much during the winter. We’d move beds around so most people slept in the warmest rooms above the kitchen & parlor.