At Barley Hall William Snawsell would have sat down to meals in the great hall with his family, guests and servants. William would have sat at the centre of the high table with important male guests, family members and his right hand man, Robert Simpson to his right and the more important females to his left. At the other tables would have sat other members of the household, again, males to William’s right and females to his left.

Towards the end of the fifteenth century William would have seemed rather old fashioned for having the whole household eating together. Rich people in Tudor times liked to eat separately from their servants but it seems likely that at Barley Hall meals were eaten altogether in the great hall throughout William’s lifetime.

Food was eaten from trenchers made from pewter for people of high status, wood or stale bread (bottom crust) for the lower status. Forks were not used at table. Instead people carried their own knives which they used to chop their food on their trencher, food was taken to the mouth with the fingers or a spoon.

Throughout the medieval and Tudor period we know generally that the rich ate mostly meat and fish and the poor mostly vegetables and grains however at somewhere like barley Hall where the household ate together it is likely not to have been so extreme. A typical meal might have been beef and herb pottage (like thick soup), brawn (pickled pork) in mustard sauce, a dish of thrushes in salt and cinnamon and apple fritters, lamb and ginger, curlew in a sauce of salt, sugar and river water with creamed almonds. Wafers, sweet wine or spiced hippocras (a kind of wine), figs and cheese may have followed.

In many well off households and this may have been the case at Barley Hall, the high table was served with a meal as above then the lower tables would have the leftovers served with bread.

Food for the Poor

Poorer people living in the countryside were usually subsistence farmers, growing enough beans, grains and vegetables to feed their families with a small surplus to sell. Some families kept a cow or pig. Except in years of very poor harvests everybody had enough to eat although today we would think it lacked variety. The main meal of the day usually consisted of bread, vegetable and bean stew with perhaps a little bacon fat to give some flavour.

In the towns there was much more variety, small shops and markets sold fish, birds (in 1378 thrushes were three for 2d and finches ten for 1d) and meat, vegetables, grains, mainly wheat and barley, fruit and dairy produce. There were cookshops where you could take your food to be cooked, piebakers and ale houses and taverns where food could be bought. Bread was still very much part of the diet; a standard loaf cost a penny and varied in size depending on the cost and quality of the grain.

Food for the Rich

Rich households bought huge quantities of food, wine and ale. It took a considerable amount of careful planning to buy the correct amount of fresh food for a big household when there were no easy methods of storage such as refrigerators or freezers. Contrary to popular belief, meat that was off, was rarely eaten, great pains were taken to serve fresh meat at its best, if it was served with lots of spices this was to enjoy the flavour or reap the supposed health benefits not to mask the flavour of tainted meat.

Spices were bought, often several pounds at a time. In 1452-3 the Duke of Buckingham bought 316 pounds of pepper and 194 pounds of ginger. Dried fruit (raisins and dates), oranges, lemons and sugar were also imported. Sugar was first seen in England in the eleventh century; by 1319 in London it cost two shillings a pound so it was very expensive and did not become common, even in rich households, before the Tudor period. Sugar was regarded as a spice and added to savoury dishes with salt and other spices.

Feasts

In super rich households feasts were held to show off ones wealth and maintain ones social ranking, to entertain guests at religious or other festivals or to celebrate an event such as a wedding or coronation. They were not a common occurrence due to the expense, logistics and planning involved in organising one.

An important part of a feast as well as the food and drink was music, this often accompanied the arrival of the food as well as entertainment during and after eating. The hall would have been decorated with paintings and tapestries. Theatrical pageants were popular as well as entertainment by jugglers, jesters, acrobats, conjurers and dancers.

Food at feasts was usually served in four courses but each course might have up to twenty dishes in it. A typical feast would start with soup, followed by a course of meat and fish dishes such as pies, roast meats including heron, larks, peacock, swan and seagull; these were often cooked in strongly flavoured sauces made from ale, vinegar or verjuice (juice from crab-apples) combined with assorted herbs and spices. Dyes were often added to colour the food. As time went on the dishes became more and more elaborate, sweeter and spicier.

The next course was often known as entremets, a mixture of side dishes and dishes mainly prepared for their entertainment value such as peacock carefully skinned, keeping the feathers intact, cooked, then redressed in its skin and feathers or chicks covered in gold or silver foil. There might also be fritters and other fried dishes. Finally there was dessert, cheeses, tartlets, fruit, wafers which were served with spiced, sweetened wines.

Between courses subtelties were brought to the table these were often made from marchpane (marzipan) or sugar formed into decorations sometimes on a theme or even with a political message.

The quantities served at some feasts seem excessive; a feast to celebrate the marriage of Margaret, daughter of Henry the third in York included 1003 deer, 7000 hens, 170 boar, 60000 herring, 10000 haddock, 68500 loaves of bread and 100 tuns (about 1136500 litres) of wine.