Do you think that you might have liked to live during the Tudor age? Well read on and find out!
Rich and Poor
The rich and poor people lived very differently and there was certainly a big gap between them. From eating and drinking to clothes and housing, if you were rich you lived well, but if you were poor you made do.
Food & Drink
Before the introduction of "trenchers" the poor would often use stale bread. Trenchers were a wooden square used to hold food. There were no forks just knives and spoons and rough pottery bowls were introduced, silver for the wealthy of course!
The rich ate well, lots of meat made up their diet and they loved nothing more than a good feast! Any leftovers would be given to the servants or beggars that would wait outside for scraps.
Henry VIII held many banquets or feasts, the Tudors loved to eat. As most food was served from bowls where everyone helped himself or herself, it was important that you had clean hands and didn't scratch yourself anywhere as this was seen as bad manners! If you left the table at which Henry was dining you couldn't turn your back on him, you had to back out of the room carefully and pray you didn't hit something!
Vegetables were not as popular as they are now - some of you might like that idea! Fruit was saved for the rich, as it was very expensive. Where the rich ate out of silver bowls and golden goblets and ate lots of different meats such as pork, lamb and venison, the poor ate out of wooden bowls and would have to settle for the smaller animals they caught such as rabbits.
There was a difference in the way things were cooked too. Henry's meals would have been cooked in the palace kitchens and served in the feasting room, while the poor would have to cook, eat and sleep all in the same room! I bet they didn't cook cabbage very often - yuck!
Housing
Poor people lived in mud-walled cottages made of wattle and daub. The main structure of the cottage was wooden, filled with sticks and then plastered with clay. There were no chimneys for the poor, you lived with the smoke of the fire and its only escape was through a window or door. The poor can't afford candles to light their homes; instead they burn rushes soaked in animal fat, very smoky and very smelly! Even being outdoors in Tudor streets wasn't all that pleasant. People threw their rubbish into the streets. Imagine the rotting rubbish and how it must have stunk!
