A calendar page for June from a thirteenth-century English psalter, with small painted roundels down the side
Manuscript Leaf with June Calendar, from a Royal Psalter, 13th century
Marked Wharram Percy, Yorkshire

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Life in a medieval village

Most people in medieval Europe lived in villages and worked the land, owing labour and rent to a lord. Excavations, court rolls and pictures show their houses, food, games and quarrels.

Place
Wharram Percy, Yorkshire · Laxton, Nottinghamshire · Montaillou, FranceEurope
Laid out as
A civilisationA society seen from the inside: its rulers, places, work, beliefs and daily life, laid out like the rooms of a house.
Lessons
7 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IThe manor and the lord
  2. IIA year of work
  3. IIIHouses and food
  4. IVThe parish church
  5. VThe manor court
  6. VIGames and festivals
  7. VIIThe Peasants’ Revolt

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Wat Tyler
  • John Ball
  • Margery Kempe

Objects

  • The Luttrell Psalter
  • Manor court rolls

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1000 to 1450. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?