11/25/2023 0 Comments Medieval town hall interiorThe expenses on wooden walls as recorded in the Aalst city accounts of 1456 thus show a glimpse of the town halls functioning: as a place for meetings beyond sight and earshot, as well as more public spaces, both with people eager to acquire information close by. For example in Leiden, where a certain Pieter Ysbrantsz was caught by a guard when he stood outside the council chamber, listening to ‘what one did in the chamber’. Although unknown for late medieval Aalst, there are examples of prosecuted eavesdropping incidents in town halls of other cities. Thus on days of public hearings, for instance, legal parties and an audience were present in close proximity to the magistrates’ secluded deliberations. The magistrates’ chambers were located at the upper level of the building, which also contained the public courtroom ( vierschaar). The explanation in the city account suggests this was necessary people could possibly hear aldermen talking outside their chambers. In that year the accounts capture the activities of the carpenter Rubbine de Pleckere, who had built a double wooden wall ‘so one could not hear the arguments of the aldermen’.Īpparently the deliberation room was not soundproof by 1456, urging the aldermen to order two wooden walls as to facilitate more protection. Apparently the space still was not (or no longer was) sufficient for this use in 1456. The aldermen used this room for instance during public trial, in order to have a place for enclosed and confident discussions. In 1451 the city accounts of Aalst include a reference to a seemingly new addition to the town hall (the oldest in the Low Countries): a deliberation room, constructed by means of wooden walls with a door. Town halls were highly public buildings as well as places used for seclusion. Image 1: "Meeting of the Regensburg Council" (1536). I will use them as starting points to further explore how governments tried to keep town halls undisturbed places, which was far from self-evident. In this blog I will share some of my finds from the Aalst (BE) and Leiden city accounts. For many medieval scholars perhaps not the most attractive source material, the accounts helped me to further explore the uses of town halls as public buildings in my recently defended PhD research. These accounts are of course useful to study the town hall’s construction, but also contain other enriching details which shed light on daily life inside such buildings. But sometimes a specific type of sources suddenly surprises and opens up worlds, in this case city accounts. It is therefore not easy to step into these still prominent buildings. Town halls, however, are relatively infrequently or at least not consistently mentioned in such writings. Much of medieval city life is known through sources such as ordinances, statutes, law codes, chronicles, and cases brought to local courts.
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