I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world.	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he's experimenting with federated platforms . He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance, and can found on the PlusPora diaspora pod. He hates cell-phones.

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Walking Tour of York Fifth Stop, Barley Hall As explained here, as part of my teaching this year, I gave my students a walking tour of York. This is the fifth stop on the tour. Caveat Lector - I do not vouch for the complete accuracy of all of these bits and bobs. Do not quote me. Some of this is myth and legend. The picture for Barley Hall is a bit awkward looking. That's because it's in a bit of an awkward place. You see, Barley Hall is a medieval townhouse and has, at the moment, no street frontage. You get to it via a snickelway, which is, despite its old-timey sound, a word of recent (1980s) vintage made by mashing together 'snicket,' meaning a passage between walls or buildings, 'ginnel,' a fine old Yorkshire word for a passage through a building (for example, under a building with an overhead cross-passage), and 'alleyway,' which has a meaning with which I hope you are all familiar. The long and short of which is that it is impossible to pull back and get shot of Barley Hall with a standard camera, since there is no back to which to pull. This shot was taken with my back to the wall, quite literally. So, Barley Hall ... Bits of it date to the mid-1300s, with more bits added in the early-1400s. After that point, it was the home of prominent York goldsmith who served as an alderman and mayor of the city. It was in use more-or-less consistently, in one way or another, until the 1980s. At that time, they were about to demolish this derelict office, knocked down the outer wall, and realized there was a medieval building underneath. At some point, a sort of shell had been built around the outside of the medieval townhouse, and no one remembered it. It was purchased and restored by the York Archaeological Trust and opened in 1993 as a museum and living history site. It has what might be the only extant and functioning horn window in England, which is pretty cool. The museum is aimed mostly at the younger set, but if you have an interest in medieval urban housing, archaeology, living, and cooking, it is a valuable resource no matter what your age. Some of the particularly interesting bits to me and those who, like me, are interested in medieval foodways, is the layout of the hall and service areas. The hall, which is beautiful, has a hearth in the middle, which was probably not used for cooking. There is a ginnel which was originally the cross passage at the low end of the hall, and on the other side of the ginnel are the service rooms - pantry and buttery. Access now is via stairs up and over the ginnel, but originally was probably through the ground level. This suggests that there was a kitchen, either completely detached or, at the very least, away from the hall. This layout - hall, cross- or screens-passage, with service rooms below - is bog standard across a lot of medieval housing, regardless of urbanity, and to some extent wealth. You can find it, for instance, in the layout of most castle ruins. There's quite a bit of scholarship about the subject, and it's fascinating for those of us who are interested in such things. Luddite'sLog, 23 January 2015 © 2014 Jeff Berry

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