https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/821/Privy.png 0ed5335412adf5e47c64346a2ed6191f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from <em>Centering Spenser</em> Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <em>Centering Spenser,&nbsp;</em>Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <strong>Privy a.k.a garderobe or toilet</strong> Subject The topic of the resource Privy (garderobe) Description An account of the resource <p>Archaeological remains from Spenser’s privy indicate an ample and healthy diet enjoyed by his household, including various game and high-quality wheat.</p> <p>Moss could have served for wiping. Waste would have fallen down a two-story chute, exiting out the south side (or back) of the castle, where it would have been shoveled away and/or disinfected with a covering of lime.</p> <p>Two-seater privies were not uncommon. An example is found today in Barryscourt Castle, Co. Cork. Newman Johnson refers to modern-day Kilcolman’s missing “stone” privy seat although a wooden seat (as here) could also have been in place in Spenser’s time.</p> <p>Placed on the seat for reading is a treatise on the flush toilet, A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, called The Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596) by the inventor of the device, the courtier poet and epic translator Sir John Harington.</p> <p>Another privy lies on the east end of the Great Hall.</p> <p><em>Literary Connections</em></p> <p>In The Faerie Queene (1590), Spenser describes a castle, the House of Temperance, in figurative terms as like a human body. There is a privy attached by “conduit pipe” to the kitchen, which represents the stomach in Spenser’s allegory:</p> <blockquote>But all the liquour, which was fowle and waste, <br />Not good nor seruiceable elles for ought, <br />They in another great rownd vessell plaste, <br />Till by a conduit pipe it thence were brought:&nbsp;<br />And all the rest, that noyous was, and nought, <br />By secret wayes, that none might it espy, <br />Was close conuaid, and to the backgate brought, <br />That cleped was Port Esquiline, whereby <br />It was auoided quite, and throwne out priuily. (FQ II.ix.32)</blockquote> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Eric Klingelhofer, Castles and Colonists: an archaeology of Elizabethan Ireland (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2010): 121 [fig. 5.8 shows cross-section drawing of Kilcolman tower ruin with garderobe and garderobe shaft indicated.] —. “Edmund Spenser at Kilcolman Castle: the archaeological evidence.” Post-Medieval Archaeology 39.1 (2005), 133-54. David Newman Johnson, “Kilcolman Castle.” The Spenser Encyclopedia (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 416-22.