The strangest jobs from medieval times

When you hear “medieval jobs,” you probably think of knights & a blacksmith hammering away. Yet there were some pretty odd jobs back then that sound absolutely bizarre today. Here are ten of the strangest jobs from medieval times. Which of these would you have hated to do?

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Gong farmer

Being a gong farmer meant heading out at night with a shovel & bucket, but not to garden. Nope. You were there to scoop human waste from cesspits. They worked after dark, so smells didn’t bother the townsfolk during the day & they hauled everything to dumping sites. It was as unpleasant as it was necessary. Medieval towns wouldn’t have worked without them.

Ale taster

Some people were actually paid to taste beer. These ale tasters, or “ale-conners,” walked around checking batches for strength, flavor & fairness in pricing. They’d hand out fines to anyone who made a brew that didn’t measure up. Records show towns swore them in every year because quality control for your pint was an actual job back then.

Alnager (cloth inspector)

Textiles were a pretty huge business back then & the alnager kept everyone making them honest. They were armed with a measuring stick called an ell, which they’d use to check each piece of cloth for width & quality. Any pieces that passed received an official seal. Any that didn’t couldn’t be sold.

Fuller (cloth scourer)

It wasn’t always easy to make your clothes soft & cozy. To do this in medieval times, someone had to stomp on them in tubs of water & clay, sometimes even stale urine. Yeah. This job was known as being a “fuller,” and they pounded fabric until it thickened. They used their feet before mills with big wooden hammers replaced them.

Treadwheel crane operator

Treadwheel cranes worked by having a grown man walking inside what was practically a giant, wooden hamster wheel. Why did they do this? To lift stones for cathedrals & castles. Many medieval building accounts mention people using these machines for huge construction projects all across Europe.

Bridge hermit

Not every hermit sat in a cave. During medieval times, some of them lived beside bridges and actually had the job of keeping chapels tidy & collecting alms. They also helped travelers cross. Essentially, they were part caretaker, part toll collector, and a few of these tiny stone bridge-chapels still survive.

Conduit keeper (town water guard)

Clean water used to appear in medieval towns through pipes & public fountains called conduits. And to stop people from stealing or tampering with them, cities hired conduit keepers, who guarded waterhouses & fined cheats. They made sure brewers or cooks paid for what they used. They were effectively security guards…for plumbing.

Royal swanherd

Swans were royal property, and someone had to manage them in the past. Enter the royal swanherd. Their job was to round up flocks & mark their beaks with notches, then keep records in official “swan rolls.” This job was particularly important around the Thames in London. Disputes over who owned which bird were rather common over there.

Garbler of spices

London once had an official garbler. Their job? Sorting imported spices and cleaning pepper & ginger to make sure no dust or fillers were mixed in. Merchants had to pay him for the service. Like with other jobs, if the garbler found fraud, merchants could be fined. City ordinances show that the role existed as far back as the 1300s.

Leech collector

Doctors wanted leeches for bloodletting. So, someone had to pull them out of ponds & marshes, and that job fell to leech collectors. Some would wade in barefoot & let the creatures attach themselves. Others dangled bits of meat in the water. Either way, they’d get jars of wriggling leeches sent to apothecaries and barber-surgeons’ shops across medieval Europe. Yuck.

The following sources were consulted in the preparation of this article: