Flooring In Medieval Times

The top treads would be buried in rushes in one passage.

Flooring in medieval times.

The history of wood flooring begins in colonial america when the first floors were wide thick planks cut from the continent s abundant old growth forests. The earliest known wood floors came into use during the middle ages. Mosaics on the floor of the torcello cathedral in venice italy. They required someone to dig the clay which had to be cleaned and homogenised until it could be worked.

Fragrant often medicinal herbs were sprinkled among the rushes partly to sweeten aging rushes and partly to discourage bugs and molds. Tiles provided a far more upmarket floor surface. Like everything else in medieval times their production was very labour intensive. Because of the trees age and massive diameter the desirable heartwood was extremely tight grained making the lumber harder and more durable than the relatively immature wood of the same species that is harvested today.

Fresh rushes were sometimes spread on top of the old rushes and at other times the entire floor was swept clean of old rushes and debris and scrubbed first. In medieval times bundles of these plants were gathered up and spread across some castle floors and the dirt floors of many medieval churches and cathedrals. Concrete plywood osb mohawk flooring. In the case of tile which was likely to be the most slippery straw was seldom used to cover it because it was usually designed to impress guests in the castles of more powerful nobles and in abbeys and churches.

Then it would be pressed into square wooden moulds. Though the middle ages neither begin nor end neatly at any particular date art historians generally classify medieval art into the following periods. Early medieval art romanesque art and gothic art. Obviously this cannot be the proper interpretation of how rushes were used on the floors of castles.

Then these were sanded or smoothed by rubbing them with stone or metal. Herbs we know were strewn in handfuls over the rushes and expected to stay underfoot to scent the air when trod upon.