How Did Medieval Peasants Survive Winter?

No heating. No chimney. No glass in the windows. So how did a medieval family survive a winter on Dartmoor in 1315? The answer was standing in the living room. And it was chewing. Tim's watch drops him into a medieval longhouse in the winter of 1315, the start of the Great Famine. In one night he learns how ordinary people fought the cold, the dark and hunger: a cow that works like a heater, a fire that must never go out, a whole family in one bed, and pottage that has been on the fire since Tuesday. And then the real killer arrives: spring. 0:00 Waking up next to a cow 0:50 Winter's three enemies 1:16 Enemy #1: the cold 1:47 Inside a medieval longhouse 2:32 A cow is a 950-watt heater 3:15 The fire with no chimney 3:55 Peat, furze and old commoners' rights 4:26 Curfew: "cover the fire" 5:16 Enemy #2: the dark 5:56 One bed for the whole family 6:41 Enemy #3: hunger 7:42 1315: the summer without sun 8:42 Enemy #4: spring 9:21 Who helped, and who didn't 9:53 The fire survived the night Sources: English Heritage, "History of Hound Tor Deserted Medieval Village" Dartmoor National Park Authority, "The Dartmoor Longhouse" William Chester Jordan, The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century (1996) Ian Kershaw, "The Great Famine and Agrarian Crisis in England 1315–1322", Past & Present (1973) Vita Edwardi Secundi (ed. Wendy R. Childs) Bede, De temporum ratione (The Reckoning of Time) A. Roger Ekirch, At Day's Close: Night in Times Past (2005) Purdue Extension AE-96 (animal heat production) Famous Frosts and Frost Fairs in Great Britain (19th-century compilation of chronicle records) Would you sleep next to a cow for a warm house? Tell me in the comments. Subscribe to see where Tim's watch throws him next. #MedievalHistory #MiddleAges #History