1. The Medieval Period in England is classified as the time between the fall of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Renaissance, ranging from the years AD 449–1492.

2. The Middle Ages: The Myth We think of knights in shining armor, lavish banquets, wandering minstrels, kings, queens, bishops, monks, pilgrims, and glorious pageantry. In film and in literature, medieval life seems heroic, entertaining, and romantic.

3. The Reality In reality, life in the Middle Ages was harsh, uncertain, and dangerous.

4. The Lord of the Manor For safety and defense, people in the Middle Ages formed small communities around a central lord or master.

5. The Manor Most people lived on a manor, which consisted of the castle (or manor house), the church, the village, and the surrounding farm land. These manors were isolated, with occasional visits from peddlers, pilgrims on their way to the Crusades, or soldiers from other fiefdoms.

6. Medieval Women

7. Whether they were nobles or peasants, women held a difficult position in society. They were largely confined to household tasks such as cooking, baking bread, sewing, weaving, and spinning. Medieval society had a different outlook on children compared to today. Children from poor families would have worked from the earliest age possible and they were treated as adults from the age of ten or eleven.

8. The law, set by men, greatly limited the freedom of women. Women were 1. not allowed to marry without their parents' consent 2. Not allowed to own a business 3. not allowed to divorce their husbands 4. could not own property of any kind unless they were widows 5. could not inherit land from their parents' if they had any surviving brothers

9. Girls from rich families tended to marry earlier than girls from poor families. The poorer families needed as many workers as possible, so a daughter getting married at an early age would have deprived them of a worker. These girls wouldn’t get married until their 20s. This was not true for a rich family. These girls were married in their teens and had no choice over who they married. They were usually married to someone as a political gesture or because it was an advantage to the girl's family. Once married, the young lady came under the control of her husband.

10. Producing a male heir within a rich family was considered vital. So many women spent a great deal of their married life pregnant. However, childbirth was dangerous as medical care was so poor. It is thought that as many as 20% of all women died in childbirth and it was the most common cause of death among young women. Wives from a rich family usually did not look after their children. This was done by a wet nurse. Women from a poor family not only had to look after the children but had to continue doing her day-to-day work both in the home and on the land. Many women from poor families did not live past the age of forty.

11. Fashion

12. FABRIC Wool was the most popular fabric for all classes by far, followed by linen and hemp. Wool fabrics were available in a wide range of qualities, from rough undyed cloth to fine, dense broardcloth with a velvety nap. High-value broadcloth was a backbone of the English economy and was exported throughout Europe. Wool fabrics were dyed in rich colors, notably reds, greens, golds, and blues.

13. Woolen & Linen Clothing Most people in the Middles Ages wore woolen clothing, with undergarments made of linen. Brighter colors, better materials, and a longer jacket length were usually signs of greater wealth.

14. Clothing of the Wealthy The clothing of the aristocracy and wealthy merchants tended to be elaborate and changed according to the dictates of fashion. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, men of the wealthy classes sported hose and a jacket, often with pleating or skirting, or a tunic with a surcoat.

16. Women’s Clothing Women wore flowing gowns and elaborate headwear, ranging from headdresses shaped like hearts or butterflies to tall steeple caps and Italian turbans.

17. Peasant Clothing Peasant men wore stockings and tunics, while women wore long gowns with sleeveless tunics and wimples to cover their hair. Sheepskin cloaks and woolen hats and mittens were worn in winter for protection from the cold and rain. Leather boots were covered with wooden patens to keep the feet dry.

18. Outer and Under Garments The outer clothes were almost never laundered, but the linen underwear was regularly washed. The smell of wood smoke that permeated the clothing seemed to act as a deodorant. Peasant women spun wool into the threads that were woven into the cloth for these garments.

19. Fur and Jewelry Fur was often used to line the garments of the wealthy. Jewelry was lavish, much of it imported and often used as security against loans. Gem cutting was not invented until the fifteenth century, so most stones were not very lustrous. Rings and brooches were the most popular item from the twelfth century on.

20. Laws Governing Jewelry Diamonds became popular in Europe in the fourteenth century. By the mid-fourteenth century there were laws to control who wore what jewelry, and knights were not permitted to wear rings. Sometimes clothes were garnished with silver, but only the wealthy could wear such items. This late Medieval/Early Renaissance gold brooch dates to sometime between 1300 and 1400

21. Veils The well-bred lady wore a veil in public for the most of the medieval period. It was shocking for a grown woman to display the hair- which was seen as a lure to good men. Veils worn by the wealthier and more fashionable were pinned in many overlapping layers, as shown in this painting. It is unclear why such a fashion developed. It seems that veils could be made from a variety of fabrics in the middle ages- ranging from fine opaque linens to gauzy barely-there silks. For the poorer woman, thick wool was both a practical and warm option to provide protection from the elements.

22. gorget — square of fabric draped under the chin to cover neck (often accompanying the wimple) A gorget covers the neck alone and was usually draped upwards and tucked into either a head-dress or styled hair. Wimples And Gorgets

23. Wimples It appears there is no one standard size or shape to the wimple other than it passes under the chin and over the neck. It can be a rectangular piece which wraps around the head and neck or a circular piece with a hole cut for the face. There seems to be no one correct way. Some appear to be small and other quite voluminous depending on the time period. The most modest way to wear a wimple was over the chin, not under it. A wimple is a garment worn around the neck and chin, and which usually covers the head.

24. At right is a detail from a 1447 painting, showing women with a variety of veiling and wimpling. A law passed between 1162 and 1202, in the municipal of Arles, forbade prostitutes to cover their hair with a veil lest they should be mistaken for a woman of good virtue and encouraged good women to snatch the veils from the heads of women of suspected ill-repute. Many Middle Eastern countries of the world today require that a woman's hair remain covered in public.

25. Coneheads During the late Middle Ages, most unmarried girls wore their hair loose and long. Starting around1360ish European women began sporting some crazy headgear. In France women wore bourelets — wide, padded rolls on top of the hair, and hennins —a towering cone shaped headdresses, sometimes with draped veils.

26. Hennin a cone shaped hat, sometimes extremely high, with a flowing veil or piece of Starched Linen about the crown, worn by women in the 15th century. These were worn more in France and were rare in England.

27. When Isabelle of Bavaria married Charles VI of France in 1385, women began sporting egg- shaped wads of hair at each temple, adorned with a headpiece.

28. Women also plucked their brows and their hairlines to achieve a high forehead underneath this hilarious headgear. (You can clearly see it in the above two portraits.)

29. cotehardie a close-fitting outer garment with long sleeves hip-length for men and full-length for women, often laced or buttoned down the front or back.

30. kirtle A garment worn by men and women in the Middle Ages The kirtle was typically worn over a chemise (slip) and under the formal outer garment (surcoat). Kirtles began as loose garments without a waist seam, changing to tightly fitted supportive garments in the 14 th century. Later kirtles could be constructed by combining a fitted bodice with a skirt gathered or pleated into the waist seam. Kirtles could lace up the front, back or side-back, with some rare cases of side lacing, all depending on the fashion of the day/place and what kind of gown was to be worn over it.

31. Houppelande The houppelande was a thick, heavy outer gown, lined with fur, worn over a slim fitting tunic and chemise. By the early fifteenth century it had developed a long train, large turned-back collar and lavishly long sleeves.

32. Houppelande

33. Surcoat A surcoat was an outer garment commonly worn in the Middle Ages by both men and women. It can either refer to a coat worn over other garments or a loose dress usually of rich material

34. large, voluminous sleeves Dalmation sleeves

35. Dagged Edges a decorative edge that was commonly used to distinguish and beautify the clothing of the Medieval Period one of a series of decorative scallops or scallops foliations (leaf shapes) along the edge of a garment, cloth, etc.

36. Ruching A sewing technique. Ruching is a French term which means to gather, ruffle, or pleat. Ruching is the technique in which fabric or ribbon is gathered in a repeating pattern to form ruffles, scallops, or petals.

37. long tunic of fine linen with long sleeves tightly fitted at the wrists; always white and usually pleated. CHAINSE

38. Slashing Slashing is a decorative technique that involved making small cuts on the outer fabric of a garment in order to reveal the inner garment or lining. It was performed on all varieties of clothing both men's and women's. In this image you can see the CHAINSE at the sleeve under her rich outer garment.

39. This image is a painting called “The Arnolfini Portrait” from 1434 and is by Jan van Eyck. the fashions depicted in this famous painting are Medieval. The woman wears a wimple over her hair as well as a green, fur- lined, high-waisted gown with slashed sleeves over a blue cotehardie.

46. The lower placement of the belt definitely gives this outfit a more medieval feel, verses the typical modern around the waist look.