Exchanging Medieval Material Culture Studies on archaeology and ...

52 Sabine 1934, 315-316.
53 Ibid., 316.
54 Ibid., 316.
55 Salzman 1952, 284.
A good riddance of bad rubbish? 273
Table 1
Two diff erent ways of characterising the range of privies and the types of cesspits which were associated with them. Th e fi rst column
relates mainly to structures which survive above-ground, whilst the second column deals predominantly with the remains of below-ground
structures. As the two columns present very diff erent classes of evidence, no attempt has been made to equate these.
Documented types of privy (as defi ned in Sabine
1934, 305 and Salzman 1952, 280-5)
Set within the thickness of castle walls
(e.g. London Tower)
plan; whilst larger double pits indicate the former existence of
a double privy, or a twin-seated structure above, and so on.
Some excavated examples still contain the arches of vaults
which once supported an above-ground chute from one of the
upper stories of a building; whilst, yet others are fed at groundfl
oor level by drains fl owing into them, or may have adits or
leats at their base, through which running water may have
helped to carry some of the fi lth away. A selection of pits is
shown (fi g. 1), whilst some of the rich variety of examples
known from documentary accounts and from excavated sites
are tabulated in table 1.
Whilst in use, such pits would be emptied periodically, but
some of the larger pits might take more than a year to fi ll. Th e
waste was carted away in pipes (see above) or tuns (a cask which
held 252 gallons). Hence, in 1411-12 payments to Henry Ivory,
a London privy cleaner, included 41s 8d for 23 pipes (or 2,415
gallons), and 23s 4d for 5 tuns (or 1,260 gallons). In all, he was
paid for moving the equivalent in volume of 10,710 gallons (or
48,688 litres) of human waste in a year52. His prices ranged
from 3s 4d a tun for the larger privies, to 4s 8d for the smaller
ones – perhaps because of the more awkward task of digging
out some of the smaller privy pits. In 1466 another London
privy cleaner, John Lovegold, asked the city authorities to give
him the monopoly of clearing all the privies within the city for
a period of 10 years, claiming that it had previously been done
Examples of diff erent types of cesspit encountered in excavations
Unlined pits
Set within towers Lined pits
Set within turrets Housing a cask or barrel
Set within chimneys Detached from houses
Set within chambers corbelled out over the water of
the moats
Inside houses
Set within chambers on arches over the water Attached to the exterior of houses, and entered from ground-fl oor level
With pipe drains to the moats Attached to the exterior of houses, but fed by a chute from the upper fl oors
With cesspits to receive their fi lth Incorporated into a yard boundary
Public or communal latrines Lined cesspits with arches
With ventilation shaft s Lined cesspits connected with drains; these may either be fed by a drain or gully at
surface level, or have some form of fl ushing system running through their base
Lined pits with multiple chambers
Very large deep pits which may have served a number of households
imperfectly, and at an exorbitant charge; he was awarded the
contract at the rate of 2s 2d a tun53. Two centuries earlier, the
Exchequer Accounts for 1281-2 record that 13 men were paid for
5 nights, at the rate of 6d each per night, to empty the privy at
Newgate Prison54; the pay was approximately three times as
much as an ordinary unskilled worker could earn at that date55,
and refl ects both the diffi culty of doing this at night and the
unpleasantness of the task.
Some of the larger cesspits on the London Bridge Estate tenements
had cesspits which held the equivalent of between 100
and 120 barrels each (i.e. between 3,600 and 4,320 gallons;
16,336 - 19,639 litres56). An account of repairs to some houses
in London in 1450 includes the digging out and carting away
of 6 tons of dounge [dung] from a privy in the tenement of John
Boyd; whilst the churchwardens of St. Mary-at-Hill paid 5s 4d
for clearing 2 tons out of one privy, and 5 tons out of another,
at the rate of 2s per ton57.
What is not usually appreciated is that it was much easier to
clear out many of the larger lined pits by taking down, or making
a breach in one of their side walls, than to try digging it out
from the top; this would particularly be the case with pits
which were fed by overhead chutes. Hence, the 1281-2 costs for
the cleaning of the cloaca at Newgate Prison include the cost of
the masons repairing the breach made in the stone wall to
56 Sabine 1934, 317.
57 Salzman 1952, 284-285.