In order to make sense of the information that is available on the medieval London environment, I adapted current environmental reporting models to start with pressures on the environment and apparent responses to environmental issues and work back to what the issues were and what the state of the environment may have been, using a modification of a Driver-Pressure-State-Impact Response (DPSIR) model. These models are usually used to monitor the effectiveness of responses such as environmental levies or stringent environmental conditions on activities, through monitoring the state of the environment. After considering a model proposed by Boyden and adapted by Hoffmann, I have inverted the model to provide a framework for understanding the medieval environment, and as far as I am aware, nobody has looked at DPISR models in the context of the medieval environment.
In examining models for assessing the overall state of the medieval London environment and the way it was managed, it became quickly apparent that models used for assessing current environmental issues require far more information than could ever be discovered for the medieval environment. It was necessary to design a model that best utilised the information available. Documentary sources focus on responses, that is the regulation of activities with potential environmental or human health impacts. In particular, the Assize of Nuisance, a documentary record of the special court hearing private nuisance complaints about neighbours, is a rich source of information on neighbourhood relations and local environmental issues. The set of ordinances that establish the court and govern the type of complaints brought to it, the Assize of Buildings and Nuisance, also suggest the type of issues that regularly caused strife.
Court records can also give an indication of which activities were carried out regularly. For example, frequent mention in the primary sources on restrictions on the activities of “fripperers” (dealers in second hand clothing, furs and other goods) suggest that reuse and recycling of everyday items was common. Lilley suggests that the surviving
documents, relate to the activities of elites and is therefore “socially uneven”.23 However, this is not entirely true, as many of those appearing at the Assize of Nuisance were ordinary landowners, and the wardmote records indict ordinary inhabitants of the wards for antisocial behaviour, as do other court records for minor offences, and in particular the prosecution of the fripperers who were ordinary Londoners.
The documentary evidence is supplemented with archaeological evidence, for example excavations have shown that large areas adjacent to the Thames and wetland areas were “reclaimed” by infilling with general waste, and that building materials were frequently re-used in new buildings. Archaeological excavations of tenements can also provide information on land use, on how crowded living conditions were, and the sanitary arrangements such as number and location of privies.
While the documentary and archaeological sources can give some idea of living conditions and how the authorities dealt with problems that had an environmental component, any assessment of the actual state of the environment requires a great deal of extrapolation and reading between the lines. In order to examine the medieval environment, an analytical framework needs to take account of the information available. As stated above, models used for assessing the current state of the environment require a great deal of information on pressures on the environment, the state of the environment itself, and the responses. For medieval environments, we have some information on pressures, from the concentration of people in a small area, the total number of people, and their likely activities. We have information on how those activities were controlled, and responses that we assume were intended to address environmental issues, although this may have been an unintended consequence of measures imposed for other reasons such as city defence or civic pride.
The paucity of information on the environment rules out using a traditional pressure- state-response model, or adaption taking account of feedback and the effectiveness of responses. There is too much guesswork involved in assessing the actual state of the environment to provide any meaningful assessment of either the state or the effectiveness of responses. Also, these frameworks are best suited to assessing the
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changes over time in a selection of environmental indicators that can be measured, and determining if this is in response to changes in pressures on the environment or effective abatement measures. In addition, the pressure-state-response model leaves out a very important contribution to the state of the environment. Environmental attitudes are much more important that technologies in determining the state of the environment.
It is inevitable that any human activity will have an effect on the environment, from depletion of resources, effects of extraction and use of those resources, and discharges from people and their activities. The more concentrated those activities, the more concentrated the effects. Although by modern standards medieval cities were small, they were relatively densely populated. Medieval technologies were sufficient to supply not only the necessities of life, but also luxury items. However, pollution abatement technologies were primitive, generally comprising disposal of waste to the nearest water course, unregulated burial within the city or use as fill. Recycling of building materials, clothing and other items was common, judging by the regulations made governing these activities.
The modified environmental framework uses indicators of the drivers that result in environmental pressures, the resulting activities that impact on the environment, and the responses either to environmental impacts or to other factors, but which have an environmental outcome. These factors can be used to give an indication of the state of the environment. The key drivers in medieval London were economic, social, cultural and political. Political drivers usually resulted directly in a response such as a clean-up to persuade the king that the city was being well managed by its citizens. Economic activity in combination with population resulted in pressures on the environment from a demand for resources, and disposal of waste, particularly from livestock and industry. Total population resulted in problems of disposal of human waste, and population density created environmental and social problems as a result of crowding.
As discussed in Chapter 4, complaints about private nuisance were heard at the Assize of Nuisance court, and an analysis showed that complaints were largely about building- related matters, particularly disputes about ownership and responsibility for walls and encroachments. There were very few complaints about waste, and these mainly related
to cesspits too close to the boundary, stinking privies or blocking of gutters carrying away wastewater. Taken together they do not indicate a widespread problem, and do not show any correlation with plague years. Stormwater complaints do not show any correlation with known wet periods, and while complaints decrease from the mid- fourteenth century, they do not show a dramatic drop after the first plague episode.
Complaints from the only surviving wardmote returns of 1421-22 and 1422-233 give an indication of the range of local problems, mixing public nuisance complaints relating to waste with those relating to undesirable inhabitants and undesirable behaviours. The handful of complaints from each ward, which on average would have each had around 2,000 inhabitants, do not represent a major local problem. These complaints are probably the tip of the iceberg of the more recalcitrant infringements, as it is likely that most of these issues would be dealt with informally by the aldermen and ward officials. That there are so few from each ward suggests that local problem resolution was mostly successful.
The key drivers were used to determine pressures on the environment. Some of the pressures could be quantified, such as the likely quantities of human and animal waste, and by assessing the technology available to deal with this waste it can be determined that it is likely that on-site disposal could have put groundwater at risk of polluting wells. Discharge directly onto the streets would have resulted in a clean-up problem, at first the responsibility of the householders and later of the rakers, but even if the streets were cleaned regularly there would be a residue of filth on the cobbled streets. This would be unpleasant in wet weather, and in dry weather or if poorly maintained waste would probably build up in the kennels designed to carry the waste to the river. It is clear that medieval Londoners’ regarded flowing water as a convenient medium for disposing of waste.
Streams and streets were both regarded as a part of the liquid waste disposal system, and there were frequent directives to keep them clean. If solid waste had been allowed to accumulate, it is likely that flow would be blocked and malodorous waste would have built up very quickly. Smaller rivers like the Fleet and the Walbrook streams may have
become foul, particularly at summer low flows.24 It is not clear the extent to which the Thames would have been polluted, because it is a large fast-flowing river, probably able to assimilate both ongoing discharges and the highly polluted first-flush stormwater arising from rainstorms after a dry spell. Whilst the pollutant loading would be high, there would also be high flows to dilute it, and the system relied on frequent flushing with stormwater.
The activities most likely to impact on environmental quality were slaughtering by butchers, and the construction of privies over watercourses. The privies over the Thames do not seem to have caused a problem, as the river was large and fast-flowing. However those on smaller streams would have caused problems with direct discharge of contaminants, blocking of the flow, and in combination with the waste discharged into the kennels in the streets, would have created a stench. Those over the Walbrook were allowed, then banned, then allowed under licence, and finally banned altogether. Finding a place to dispose of butchers’ waste was problematic, and it would have caused serious water quality and odour problems if not disposed of carefully. The location selected soon caused complaints, linked to concern for the health of the prisoners in the Fleet prison. The butchers were eventually banned from the city, but this caused the price of meat to rise, and they were finally allocated a place on the banks of the Thames where they could cut up their waste and dispose of it in the centre of the river at ebb tide. This seems to have resolved the problem.
Having an environmental management system in place would increase the chances of the environment being reasonably health, and of responses directed at the cause of the problem. While there was no formal environmental management system in place, there were clearly aspirational goals for clean streets and stream, as well as controlling odour, and retaining self-governance. The sporadic survival of the records makes it difficult to assess whether there was a co-ordinated plan in place to achieve these goals. If there was anything that could be called a plan it was the combination of making ordinances, enforcing them through officials, providing access to courts for complaints, from citizens,
24 During summer low flows, not only would dilution of discharges be less than at high flows, the solubility
of oxygen in water is lower at warmer temperatures, and the combination of these factors mean that oxygen-depleting organic wastes would produce anaerobic conditions quicker.
a hierarchical structure starting at the informal wardmote level through civic courts and the ultimate authority of the king, who intervened on several occasions.
Analysis of the matters covered in the Assize of Buildings suggests that the reasons for establishing it, and the later special court, were to protect property values and people’s rights to freely enjoy their property, as well as to provide an avenue for addressing social conflict. Property rights were threatened by not only the activities of neighbours, prohibiting their neighbours from building, encroaching onto their land, allowing party walls to fall into disrepair, but also diverting stormwater onto neighbours’ land and, discharging waste onto their land, and building cess-pits too close to the boundary. It is likely that prior to the establishment of the special Assize of Nuisance court, these cases were heard in the Mayor’s court or the Husting, however by 1300 the workload of these courts may have increased to the point where a special overflow court was required to speedily deal with such cases. Judging by some of the other cases brought to the Mayor’s court, a delay in dealing with conflict between neighbours could result in people taking the law into their own hands, with potentially tragic results. The ordinance governing the Assize requires that complainants be given a hearing within a week of making their complaint at the Husting.
A second priority was keeping the streets clean and passable. This involved either collecting waste and removing it to land disposal, or flushing it into streams. Householders were responsible for the streets outside their tenements and the wardmotes appointed officials to make sure the streets were clean, and from the latter part of the fourteenth century, officials undertook the streetcleaning. A third priority was the need to keep streams clean and flowing. This required a trade-off with the need to dispose of waste, as and fast flowing streams could carry waste away without the expense of carting it away.
There were undoubtedly times when the streets of London were unbearably filthy, but these were the times when extraordinary external pressures were operating. They were running with muck, as suggested in Dan Snow’s television programme “Filthy Cities”. There are several times, in the fourteenth century, when there were no complaints heard by the Assize of Nuisance court and there was known to be pestilence in the city. In
discussing the plague, Kelly states that medieval cities were “drowning in filth” and quotes Petrarch as describing Avignon as “a sink overflowing with all the gathered filth of the world”.25 Francois Villon described the streets of Paris as a foul smelling slime with garbage, sewage and offal discharged into the street.26 However, the main issues reported as shown in Chapter 5 are at times of plague, and the remainder of the time, it seems that the level of waste and pollution was reasonable, given the low level of technology available to deal with it, and deviations from this were not well tolerated.