Every day started with prayers in the chapel for the lords and ladies of the castle then they would have breakfast. The church was a very simple building but had all the important features to it. Breakfast could have been bread and water and maybe some cold meat or fish.

Life for the Children

The children would then have started their lessons. The priest would have taught them to read and write and they would have learned a form of Latin, an ancient language. The girls would also have been taught to sew and the boys would have been taught to use a bow and arrow. They might have played games like skittles and stoolball a game like cricket where you bowl underarm.

Life for the Lord

The lord of the castle would have gone hunting with knights.They would have hunted for wild boar or deer with dogs or hunted for birds and small animals with hawks. Only the very important people in the castle were allowed to hunt. If any of the peasants (poor people) were caught hunting they were severely punished. They may have had a hand cut off or sometimes even worse they could have been killed.

Life for the Knights

The knights spent their free time playing card games, board games and games with dice. Chess was a very popular game and nobles often held chess competitions with prizes for the winner.

Dinner time

Dinner time meant eating fish and meat and drinking wine in the great hall. The people in the castle would have sat at long tables called banqueting tables. The lord and lady would have had one that was slightly better than all the others and could have had a table cloth too. They used their fingers to eat as they didn't have cutlery. Whilst they were eating they would have been entertained by the jesters doing silly tricks to try to make them laugh, minstrels who sang and played musical instruments, other performers and even dancing bears.

Bedtime

Once bedtime came the lord and lady, with their children, would go to the top floor of the keep to sleep. This was the best room in the keep as it had lots of sunlight coming in to it during the daylight hours. They all slept together in one large bed which had curtains all around it to keep the draughts out. This bedroom would not have had wardrobes, instead the people of the castle folded their clothes and put them into large wooden chests.

Most of the other people slept on the floor in the great hall of the castle where the fire would probably still be burning from the evening meal earlier on. Other not so important people would have slept any where on the floor that they could have found room.

Furniture in the Castle

There was very little furniture in the castle and no carpets. Dried rush leaves were often placed on the floors and sometimes the walls had tapestries on them that the ladies in the castle had sewn. The windows had no glass in them they had oiled linen instead which kept out the cold wind but this made the rooms very dark. The only heat in the castle would have been from huge fires that were alight in every room. They would have a bath in a large wooden tub in front of one of these fires to keep warm. Small tables would have been used for counting money and doing paper work on.

The toilets, or garderobes as they were called, were just holes in the floor. This would have lead to a chute which went down to a pit outside which someone had the horrible job of cleaning out or straight into the moat. Another reason why attacking armies would not have wanted to go into the moat!

Life for the Prisoners

The dungeon was definately the most frightening place in the whole castle. It was dark, damp and smelly. Prisoners could have been kept down there for years chained to walls and tortured in lots of horrible ways.

Animals in the Castle

Horses and carts would have been the main form of transport for getting from one place to another and horses and oxen would have been used to plough fields and other farm type work.