Middle-class Tudors lived in timber framed houses, filled with wickerwork and plaster. With oak furniture designed to last for generations, flock stuffed mattresses, lattice windows, adorned with tapestries and - for the super rich - luxurious carpets.

  The poor lived in simple huts, usually with only a couple of rooms. The floors were hard earth and furniture was very basic; benches, stools, a table and wooden chests. They slept on mattresses stuffed with straw or thistledown, which lay on ropes strung across a wooden frame.

  During 16C, tiles replaced thatching on Tudor roof’s (in London particularly, all houses had tiles because of the fear of fire) and glass became more common, but expensive. If moving house, one took their glass windows with them!

  Homes were lit at night by beeswax candles, tallow for the middle class and rushlights (also dipped in tallow) for the poor. But the animal fat was odorous and floors were covered with rushes and reeds to absorb the fat and sweet-smelling herbs to hide the odour.

  The landed gentry feasted on vast amounts of meat and not many vegetables. By law, they were required to eat fish instead on certain days, for religious reasons, but masked as support for the fishing industry. 

  If one lived near the sea or a river, one could eat fresh fish, herring or mackerel. Otherwise it was  dried or salted.

  The necessitous had a dreary diet. In the morning, they had bread and cheese with onions. At night, their one cooked meal a day, they mixed grain with water and added vegetables and (if they could afford it) strips of meat.

  The rich ate bread made from fine white flour. Those in penury ate coarse bread of barley or rye.

  Sugar was very costly, so most people used honey to sweeten their food.

  New foods were introduced from the Americas. Turkeys were introduced into England around 1525. Potatoes were brought in during the 1580s, but at first, few English people ate them.

  The Tudors drank wines, cider and perry.  Commoners drank ale or beer.

  The upper-class liked to show off their gold and silver plates. The middle classes had dishes and bowls made of pewter. The pauperised made do with wooden plates and bowls. 

  Rich or poor, there were no forks. Persons ate with knives and their fingers, or with spoons. Silver, pewter or wooden ones.

  Ordinary folk. A farmer’s wife made much of the family food. She cured bacon and salted meat to preserve it, baked bread, brewed beer, made pickles, conserves and preserved vegetables. Many farms kept bees for honey.

  Games and pastimes were big during Tudor times. The rich still favoured a form of jousting, with lances and swords. They also partook in deer hunting and hawking. Billiards, bowls, skittles, tennis (with a leather ball stuffed with hair), chess, backgammon and playing card games.

  The poor gambled with dice and played games like shuffleboard (shove ha’penny) and nine men’s morris.

  Ordinary folk played a rough version of football, with a pigs bladder. There were no rules and the ‘pitch’ was often a large area including woods and even streams! It was very rough. Broken limbs were common.

  Cruel ‘sports’ like cockfighting and bear-baiting were also popular in the 16C. A bear was chained to a post and dogs were trained to attack it.

  Some farmers kept sheep for their wool, milk and meat. Cattle (oxen) were kept as working animals to pull ploughs and carts - they were stronger than horses which were kept for gentry to ride. Cows were also kept for milk.

  But pigs were the most popular animal, with almost every family keeping one. Pigs did not need much looking after. They ate pretty much anything and in autumn they were let out onto the fallow field or into the woods to feed themselves.

  Pigs were killed at the beginning of winter and nothing was wasted. To preserve it, the meat was salted in a barrel or hung in the rafters to smoke. The offal was made into faggots, brawn, haslet and black pudding, the intestines were used to make sausages and the trotters used to make jelly.

  The bristles could be used for brushes, the skin for leather. Glue was made from the bones and the fat was made into soap.

  Here is a detailed look (courtesy Mid-Tudor Manor; Life in the 1550’s website) at the work load of the Tudor farm labourer, broken down into seasons;

  

Spring – April and May

 

  The Tudor New Year was Lady Day, March 25, which marked the time when work began in earnest after the winter lull.

  In the three field agricultural system, teams began the first ploughing of the fallow field in April when the soil was still soft enough to turn easily. By the beginning of the 16th century horses were becoming more common, replacing oxen in pulling wagons and ploughs. 

  Spring crops would then be planted in the land which had last been used for winter crops, including barley, oats and beans, the first two by being thrown in short arcs as the planter walked, and beans placed individually into small holes made by poking a stick into the ground. Children with slings would protect the seeds from birds, before the fields were harrowed to cover the seed with soil.

  In the gardens vegetables were planted – salsify, cabbage, onions, cucumber, leeks, lettuce, spinach, turnips, and carrots (which were yellow, not orange). Annual herbs such as parsley, basil, and mustard needed to be planted, and perennials such as mint, camomile, rosemary, sage, lavender and thyme would start to grow again. 

  Some gardens included flax or hemp as cash crops, and dye-plants such as madder (red), woad (blue), dyer’s greenweed (green) and weld (yellow) – both for cash and home use. Those who kept bees to produce honey would remove winter wrapping and clean the hives, and might split a strong hive into two to double production.

  Cows would need to be milked and the dairy would start producing cheese and butter. Between May and Michaelmas (September 29), each cow was expected to produce seven stones (98lb) of cheese and a stone (14lb) of butter.

  Any time left over was spent on maintenance work – hedging, ditching, repairing fences and buildings.

 

Summer – June, July and August

 

  The hay crop was the first to be ready for harvest, usually in June. It was vitally important to the village economy, as it provided the main winter fodder for animals. If the crop was bad fewer animals could be kept over winter; a good crop could mean a relatively steady supply of fresh meat over winter, a good supply of breeding stock or a surplus for sale. 

  It was a labour intensive activity, with men using long-handled scythes to cut the grass close to the ground and each expected to mow about an acre per day. Women and children followed to turn the hay behind them to ensure it dried evenly. Finally the hay was gathered into large stacks.

  Lambs were weaned as early as possible and the sheep then milked for human consumption. The bulk of the sheep shearing started after the haymaking, and a good shearer could shear seven or eight sheep per hour. 

  One man would sit on the ewe’s tail, and shearing began on the stomach, and then from the head down all over and round the stomach. Very few adjustments to the ewe’s position were needed.

  Fleeces taken earlier were often finer and more valuable than those taken later in the year, so some were sheared before the main flock. Medieval sheep did not start to produce decently-sized fleeces until their third or fourth year, with lambswool having a premium for its softness. 

  The second ploughing of the fallow field also took place, with as much manure as possible being spread on the ground first.

  Between the hectic days of haymaking and the summer harvest the loathsome task of weeding the crop-bearing fields was the most important task. Thistles were among the most common weeds, and tradition held that thistles cut down before St John’s Day (June 24) would multiply threefold before the main harvest. 

  Other common weeds were dock, dead-nettle, charlock and corn cockle. Corn marigolds grew among spring-sown barley, and cornflower was associated with rye. Weeding called for special tools. The most common were a pair of long-handled sticks, one with a Y-fork at the end and the other with a small sickle blade: they were used together to cut the stem of the weed at ground level.

  In July flax and hemp matured in the gardens, and required careful preparation to extract the fibres. Both plants were pulled up, roots and all, rather than cut. They were laid in the sun to dry before being retted: placed in a stream to rot away the fleshy parts of the plant. Once the fibres were clean they were beaten to separated them and hung up in strikes to dry thoroughly. Hemp was then ready to be wound into rope or cord, and flax to be placed on a distaff and spun into yarn.

  The main grain harvest began in early August if the weather allowed – it needed weeks of warm sun and gentle rain needed for a good crop to grow, but several dry, sunny days were required to bring the harvest in – and would usually be completed by the end of the month. The winter crops (wheat and rye) ripened and were harvested first, followed by the spring grains (barley and oats).

  Wheat was harvested with a sickle, cutting a couple of hands-breadths below the ear of corn, leaving the long stubble standing in the field. The other grains were cut closer to the ground with a long-handled scythe. 

  A team of five people – four reapers and a binder – could harvest two acres of crops a day. After the harvest was brought in the poor were allowed to ‘glean’ the fallen grains before livestock was released to graze the stubble. 

  According to a study of the Winchester data between 1209 and 1350, bad harvests (where the yield was 15 per cent or more below the average) occurred about one year in eight and good harvests (where the yields were 15 per cent or more above the average) about one year in 20.

 

Autumn – September, October and November

 

  If poor weather delayed the start of the grain harvest, it would be finished in early September before the peas, beans and vetches were harvested. After harvesting the grain required processing. First it was threshed with a flail to separate the individual grains from the ear. 

  The grain-flail consisted of two lengths of wood, the handstaff and beater, joined by a leather thong. A worker could thresh about seven bushels of wheat in a day, or eight bushels of rye, 15 of barley or 18 bushels of oats. 

  After threshing the grain was winnowed to remove the chaff and straw. This could be done by throwing the grains on a winnowing sheet and letting the wind blow the lighter chaff and straw away, or by using a special winnowing fan. 

  The chaff and straw was not wasted but carefully collected to use as animal fodder. Finally the grain was sieved to remove the smaller weed seeds. It was then ready to be stored. It would last several years if kept dry and free from vermin, but this was not always easy. 

  Flour had a much shorter shelf-life, and milling the grain was done as and when necessary.

  Beans and pease-cods were carefully dried as a source of both food and animal fodder over winter. A substantial portion of the grain processing had to be completed by Michaelmas (September 29), which marked the start of the new financial year and was the day for settling debts, rents and dues.

  The third and final ploughing of the fallow field was carried out prior to the sowing of winter crops of wheat and rye. Wheat was sown at about two bushels per acre. By mid-September beechnuts and acorns were ripening and falling, and swineherds drove their charges into the woods to forage for them, a process known as pannaging. 

  Pannaging generally lasted for six weeks, ending in mid-November. Whatever garden and wild fruits and nuts were available were also collected for human consumption. Wheat stubble, which had been left standing in the fields, was gathered in to mix with hay as winter fodder.

  Martinmas (November 11) was the traditional day for slaughtering and salting old stock and swine to provide a supply of meat, however meagre, for the coming winter. 

  By mid-November preparations for the hardships of winter were well underway. Firewood was collected from the woods, and in some areas turves and peat were cut and stacked to dry for the winter fire. 

  Reeds and sedges were cut to be dried for thatching, and bracken was gathered to use as winter bedding for cattle. Threshing and winnowing continued whenever the weather was too wet to do outside work.

  Honey was collected in autumn and stored for use for the rest of the year, leaving enough to feed the hive through winter. Beehives were prepared for winter by reducing the hive entrance and providing whatever shelter was available from the wind and the wet.

 

Winter – December, January, February and March

 

  By now almost all the outdoor work was complete, and little grain processing remained unfinished. Cold and rain largely confined people indoors, where tasks included spinning and handicrafts that could be sold. 

  Whatever maintenance could be done was carried out, and animals cared for. Dung from the barns was carefully stockpiled to be spread upon the fields. Lambing and calving began in late February and in March, the plough teams went out to prepare the fields for the spring sowing.