Medieval toilets weren't all stinky pits

Sanitation was a major concern in Europe in the Middle Ages - and the solutions, whether in castles or monasteries, came in various forms

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Walk through a busy European town on a summer's day in the 14th century, and numerous powerful smells would assail your nostrils: horse dung, tanning leather, rapidly spoiling fish and meat on market stalls.

But one thing you wouldn't necessarily smell would be human waste. Medieval towns were governed by councils or guild authorities that issued local bylaws, including regulations on waste disposal, drainage and street cleaning. Across cities such as London, Paris and York, civic authorities specifically banned residents from throwing waste into public roads.

“We tend to think of the Middle Ages as being filthy, but people were cognisant that faeces and urine needed to be somewhere else,” says historian Katherine Weikert of the University of Winchester. “In general, [a medieval toilet would] probably have had some kind of seat over a pit or a cess,” she adds. “It may have been not too dissimilar to what we think of as an outhouse.”