Castles

When I was little I wanted to live in a castle. I wanted to be a princess, and be whisked away by prince charming. Blah, blah, blah...

Now that I'm older, if I had to live in the past, this would not be my chosen time period. People have a romantic ideal of the castles of the past, especially medieval ones, and they tend not to see past that. Not the incredible amount of filth that people lived in on a daily basis, the lack of indoor plumbing. Seriously, the Roman's had indoor plumbing, what happened?

Well the technology was lost with the fall of the Roman empire. And castles had, for lack of a better word, outhouses. Except that they could be inside (gross), but same idea, or a chamber pot (also gross). The middle ages were seriously dirty, leading to disease, the most notorious of which was the black plague. People dumped their chamber pots directly into the street. This lead to the practice of men walking on the left of women. It was polite for the man to take the hit and spare the woman.

Don't get me wrong, castles are amazing and fascinating structures. But they grew out of a time of great strife. Where huge divisions between rich and poor caused a need for protection against both you neighbors, and your own people. Nothing like Cinderella, or Sleeping Beauty, but places where Henry the 8th sentenced his wives to death.

I'll be visiting a castle to day, pictures to follow.
-Cheers