The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

by Ian Mortimer

The high circling walls, the statue of the king, the great round towers, and—above it all—the immense cathedral collectively impress you with their sheer strength. And then you notice the smell. Four hundred yards from the city gate, the muddy road you are following crosses a brook. As you look along the banks you see piles of refuse, broken crockery, animal bones, entrails, human feces, and rotting meat strewn in and around the bushes. In some places the muddy banks slide into thick quagmires where townsmen have hauled out their refuse and pitched it into the stream. In others, rich green grasses, reeds, and undergrowth spring from the highly fertilized earth. As you watch, two seminaked men lift another barrel of excrement from the back of a cart and empty it into the water. A small brown pig roots around in the garbage.