How was household waste disposed of in landlocked mediaeval cities? I know I’m Edinburgh, people would dump things into alleyways and it would flow down to the loch, and in London they had the Thames, but what would happen in landlocked cities with an underground water source - like a well?

by TheDragonTemeraire
BRIStoneman

Completely landlocked towns, especially in the medieval period, are actually quite rare, although it could be the case in smaller villages. In these situations, it was relatively common to dig pits for midden heaps, and then level these off and bury them when they grew too large.

In England at least, the water table has changed considerably since the medieval period, and there were considerably more marshy areas. Modern Stafford was founded as a prominent productive site specialising in pottery, butchery and baking for 10th Century Mercia and is an interesting example of urban waste disposal. The area of the the burh dedicated to pottery production is littered with vast numbers of pottery sherds, which indicates that wasters and mis-fires were simply discarded in piles next to the kilns. The area to the immediate north-east of the Anglo-Settlement used to be swamp, however, and excavations there in the 1970s found enormous quantities of animal bones, mostly cattle but also game, where refuse from the butchers had simply been chucked in the marshes.

gak001

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