Garderobe is a historic term for a room in a medieval castle. The ''

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...

'' gives as its first meaning a store-room for valuables, but also acknowledges "by extension, a private room, a bed-chamber; also a privy". The word derives from the French , meaning "robes (or clothing) protector". Its most common use now is as a term for a castle

toilet A toilet is a piece of sanitary hardware that collects human waste (urine and feces) and sometimes toilet paper, usually for disposal. Flush toilets use water, while dry or non-flush toilets do not. They can be designed for a sitting p ...

Store room

is the French word for " wardrobe", a lockable place where clothes and other items are stored. According to

medieval architecture Medieval architecture was the architecture, art and science of designing and constructing buildings in the Middle Ages. The major styles of the period included pre-Romanesque, Romanesque architecture, Romanesque, and Gothic architecture, Gothic. In ...

scholar Frank Bottomley, garderobes were "Properly, not a latrine or privy but a small room or large cupboard, usually adjoining the chamber edroomor solar iving roomand providing safe-keeping for valuable clothes and other possessions of price: cloth, jewels, spices, plate and money."

Toilet

The term ''garderobe'' is also used to refer to a

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

or a close stool. In a medieval castle, a garderobe was usually a simple hole discharging to the outside into a

cesspit Cesspit, cesspool and soak pit in some contexts are terms with various meanings: they are used to describe either an underground holding tank (sealed at the bottom) or a Dry well, soak pit (not sealed at the bottom). A cesspit can be used for ...

(akin to a pit latrine) or the

moat A moat is a deep, broad ditch dug around a castle, fortification, building, or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. Moats can be dry or filled with water. In some places, moats evolved into more extensive water d ...

(like a fish pond toilet), depending on the structure of the building. Such toilets were often placed inside a small chamber, leading by association to the use of the term garderobe to describe the rooms. Many can still be seen in Norman and medieval castles and fortifications, for example at Bürresheim Castle in Germany, where three garderobes are still visible. They became obsolete with the introduction of indoor plumbing. A description of the garderobe at Donegal Castle indicates that while it was in use, it was believed that

ammonia Ammonia is an inorganic chemical compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the chemical formula, formula . A Binary compounds of hydrogen, stable binary hydride and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinctive pu ...

—a byproduct of

excretion Excretion is elimination of metabolic waste, which is an essential process in all organisms. In vertebrates, this is primarily carried out by the lungs, Kidney (vertebrates), kidneys, and skin. This is in contrast with secretion, where the substa ...

—would protect visitors' coats and cloaks from moths or fleas.

Other languages

In European public places, a garderobe denotes a cloakroom, wardrobe, alcove, or armoire used to temporarily store the coats and other possessions of visitors. In Danish, Dutch, Estonian, German, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian, the word can mean a cloakroom. In Latvian, it means "checkroom".

References

{{Toilets Castle architecture Rooms Toilets

Store room

Toilet

Other languages

See also

References