Were Medieval Castles Cold?

[Tokthr]

I heard since they were made of stone, Even Kings had to deal with the cold in the Medieval winter.

How much truth is there to this?

[RebelinSteel]

Short answer yes. They did use tapestries on the walls, furs, other people and large fire with heating within flues etc. the thing is they dissipated heat really quickly. They did not quite freeze but were not far off it in some places. Imagine a castle on Scottish border in winter or in mid wales in winter. The worst place was an oubliette, this is where prisoners were thrown in to a hole and left to die.

[purplepoppy]

Winter in the UK rarely gets very cold unless you're up a mountain but its a wet cold which is why it feels worse than a dry American cold even though the temperature is far lower.

Simply cutting out the wind (and the horizontal rain) by putting up a big high wall really helps lift the temp a few degrees. The important rooms also had big fireplaces in them.

So yes, compared to modern houses they were cold but they weren't too bad and no worse than most houses.

[NamerOfStars]

Well, they would've been designed to accommodate for that; it's not THAT difficult to set up a system to vent smoke, so you could build fires, but it still wouldn't've been nearly as comfortable as modern buildings.

[Anonymous]

They love it cold they run the AC outside airflow comes in

[laly520]

yes

very cold

[exitseven]

Ya think?