The Door in the Wall

The England of 1350 was something of a polyglot nation. Hundreds of years of invasions made it a grab bag of peoples, from the original Celtic Britons to the Angles—who gave England its name—and the Saxons, Danes, and Norwegians of Northern Europe. French-Viking Normans conquered the country in 1066; at the time of The Door in the Wall, their descendants, the House of Plantagenet, ruled England under the well-liked King Edward III and his equally popular wife, Queen Philippa. The king and queen make an appearance late in the novel.

Much of the story’s action takes place in western England near the border with Wales, a Celtic nation struggling to break free of England’s domination. In the book, Welsh soldiers capture a border town, hoping to control its castle.

Most English citizens were extremely impoverished and relied mainly on farming and sheep ranching for survival. Many of them worked for feudal lords, sometimes as indentured servants. Their diet consisted largely of bread, mutton, and ale but included apples and other occasional fruits and vegetables in season. Sometimes deer or hog meat was available, especially on feast days.

Walking was the chief method of transport. Horses and donkeys were also available, but they were costly to maintain. Often, they were used to haul gear or let members of a traveling party rest in the saddle while the others walked.

Houses were made of timber frames filled in with woven wooden strips covered in plaster; this method is called wattle and daub. This technique would later evolve into the basic Tudor style of exposed half timbers and whitewashed walls that remains a symbol of English architecture.

Nearly everyone in 14th-century England was Catholic; Britain wouldn’t break with the pope for another 180 years. The country contained roughly 9,500 churches in that era. (Orme, Nicholas. Going to Church in Medieval England. Yale University Press, 2021). At the time, England had about two million residents; thus, there was nearly one church for every 200 souls. This pervasive Catholicism is evident in the novel; for example, after the plague strikes his home, the protagonist falls ill and recovers at a monastery in central London. Friars and other priests were common figures in most communities, where they not only served the locals’ spiritual needs but also sometimes tended to their physical infirmities and provided food and shelter to the indigent.