What a medieval village looked like. Types and varieties

The overwhelming majority of the medieval population lived in villages. In European countries, such settlements were, as it were, stereotyped, and if there were any differences between them (depending on countries and cities), they were quite insignificant. Medieval village - this is a special memo for historians, which allows you to restore the picture of the past life, traditions and features of life of those people. Because now we will consider what elements it consisted from and what was characterized.

General description of the object

The plan of a medieval village always depended on the locality in which it was located. If it is a plain with fertile lands and spacious meadows, the number of peasant households could reach fifty. The less useful the land, the fewer households there were in the village. Some of them consisted of only 10-15 units. In the mountains, people did not settle at all this way. There were sent to 15-20 people, who formed a small farm, where they led their small economy, autonomous from everything else. A notable feature was that the house in the Middle Ages was considered property moving. It could be transported on a special cart, for example, closer to the church or completely transported to another settlement. Therefore, the medieval village was constantly changing, moving slightly in space, in connection with which it could not have a clear cartographic plan fixed in the state to which it belonged.

Cumulus village

This type of medieval settlement is (even for those times) a relic of the past, but a relic that has long existed in society. In such a settlement, houses, sheds, peasant lands and the estate of the feudal lord were located "just as long as." I mean, there was no center, no main streets, no separate zones. The medieval cumulus village consisted of randomly located streets, many of which ended in dead endings. Those that had a continuation were taken out into the field or into the forest. The type of farming in such settlements was, accordingly, also erratic.

Cross-shaped settlement

This type of medieval settlement consisted of two streets. They intersected each other at right angles, thus forming a cross. At the intersection of the roads there was always the main square, where either a small chapel (if the village had a large number of inhabitants) or a feudal estate owned by all the peasants living there. The medieval village of the cross type consisted of houses that were facing their facades to the street on which they were located. Thanks to this the terrain looked very neat and beautiful, all the buildings were almost identical, and against their backdrop there was only one that was on the central square.

Village-road

This type of settlement in the Middle Ages was typical for the areas where large rivers or mountain slopes met. The bottom line was that all the houses where the peasants and the feudal lords lived gathered in one street. It stretched along the valley or river, on the shore of which they were located. The very road from which, in general, the whole village consisted, could not be too direct, but it exactly repeated the natural forms that surrounded it. The plan of the terrain of a medieval village of this type included, in addition to the peasant land, the feudal house, which was located either at the very beginning of the street or in its center. He was against the background of other houses always the tallest and chic.

Beam villages

This type of settlement was the most popular in all cities of medieval Europe, so very often his plan is used in the cinema and in modern novels about those times. So, in the center of the village was the main square, which was occupied by a chapel, a small temple or other religious structure. Nearby to it was the house of the feudal lord and adjoining courtyards. From the central square, all the streets dispersed to different ends of the settlement, like the rays of the sun, and between them houses were built for the peasants, to which were attached plots of land. In such villages lived the maximum number of residents, they were common in the north, and in the south, and in the west of Europe. Also, there was much more room for different types of farming.

Urban situation

In the medieval society of the city began to form around the 10th century, and this process was completed already in the 16th. During this time, new urban settlements appeared on the territory of Europe, however their type did not change at all, only the sizes increased. Well, the medieval town and village had a lot in common. They had a similar structure, they were built, so to speak, typical houses in which ordinary people lived. The city was different in that there was more than a village, its roads were often cobbled, and in the center a very beautiful and big church (and not a small chapel) was towering. Such settlements, in turn, were divided into two types. Some had a direct location of streets, which could have been written into a square. This type of construction was borrowed from the Romans. Other cities were distinguished by the radiocentric arrangement of the buildings. This type was characteristic of the barbarian tribes who inhabited Europe before the arrival of the Romans.

Conclusion

We examined what settlements were in Europe in the darkest historical era. And to understand their essence was easier, the article has a map of a medieval village. In conclusion, it can be noted that for each individual region was characterized by its own type of construction of houses. Somewhere used clay, somewhere - a stone, in other places erected skeleton dwellings. Thanks to this, historians can identify which people belonged to this or that settlement.