I visited a place called the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum on Saturday - this is a 50 acre site in West Sussex (England) where they’ve relocated and reconstructed a number of old buildings dating from the 15th century or so onwards.
One such building was a Wealden House called ‘Bayleaf’. Wealden houses consisted of a large, tall central hall with smaller rooms opening off it at either end. At this point in history, the concept of a chimney seems to have completely escaped them, so the fireplace is just a cobbled pit in the middle of the floor.
As you can see from the photo I took - on this page - the room is thick with smoke, even when the fire is just a small one - OK maybe a larger fire would have driven more of the smoke upwards in the room, but even so, the walls, furnishings, fabrics and, obviously, the people too - would have been steeped in smoke so as to resemble kippers.
So I’m not surprised they didn’t notice each others’ stink* - I was only in there ten minutes and I reeked of smoke for the rest of the day.
*(Actually, I expect hygiene might have been better than the common conception of it, and wearing lots of undergarments, and washing them frequently would be somewhat equivalent to washing the body anyway)
That’s a freaking awesome photograph! Thanks for sharing it.
People sure did notice each other’s stink. While I have to go stir the sauce and can’t come up with a cite, there are plenty of extant records where historians talk about the filth and stench of Ye Goode Olde Days, especially in city living. The Egyptians didn’t invent perfume for nothin’, ya know! They wore it on their heads, allowing it to melt into their wigs and overpower their personal odor.
I’ve been in two old smokehouse rooms, and I can imagine the strength of the smell. I don’t think you could smell anything beyond the smoke smell ever.
Isn’t there a big hint on that page? “smoke would be vented through the windows (which were not glazed).”
I remember seeing a TV programme where they built a reconstruction of a Saxon roundhouse, and rather than saying “idiots, no chimney!” they tried lighting a fire inside. To everyone’s surprise, despite the mass of dense wooden roof material, all the smoke worked its way out without a problem. With the added benefit of helping stop bugs from eating the wood.
I’m certain that whether you ended up with a clean fire and all the smoke going out the smoke hole or a roomfull of smoke depended upon a number of factors – the amount and type of wood being burned, the weather that day (especially the wind), other sources of ventilation, and so on. I’ve been in an American Indianb longhouse with a lit fire in it, and there wasn’t a lot of noticeable smoke inside (and there wre no windows to let out smoke). Certainly the indoors gets a lot of smoke smell, but it didn’t obliterate other odors (or sight).
Yeah, but even so, the place was thick with it, and I came out stinking like a kipper. The windows were unglazed - closing with shutters, so in the depths of winter, the occupants would have had to strike a balance somewhere between cold or dark and smoky.
The separation of the sleeping and kitchen quarters by partitions was an innovation - in part, just to try to keep all the smoke in the main hall - previously, it would have been one big open-plan room - perhaps with multiple floors at the ends, but open to the main hall space.