Eggloo

I've pinched this image from the previous day's trip to Tenby where our aim was to visit the Tudor Merchant's House, a National Trust property we've never been to in all the time we've lived in Pembrokeshire.

It is indeed what it says on the tin: a tall rambling old townhouse with a high chimney and a gull's eye view over to the harbour where the import/export trade made the owner rich. Wine, pottery, salt, sugar and spices came in, wool and cloth went out. The merchant would have negotiated, bargained and sold goods on the ground floor, lived and entertained on the two floors above.
With its low ceilings and narrow stairs the structure of the building is original but the contents have been skilfully reproduced (by local makers) as close to the original as possible: furnishings, decorations and all the items required for the resident family's daily life. Not being old, everything can be picked up and examined or played with.
 See extra for the groaning board of a Tudor banquet.

The "egg"? In one corner of the third-floor bedroom is a small closet - yes, an earth closet - and this is the seat. Looking through you can see the long drop all the way down to a pit dug below the level of the kitchen on the ground floor. The height of sanitation for 16thC. Wales! (Of course you'd need a lowly servant to empty the pit now and again but those weren't hard to come by.)

An information sheet told us that the excavated contents of the latrine pit has provided researchers with a wealth of information about the diet of the inhabitants of the house - and their parasites. I've added that as an extra - it really is fascinating especially the variety of plants, some of which are still foraged although then might have been grown intentionally.

Well worth visiting - and the volunteers who staff the place are enthusiastic and well-informed.  (With one of them we shared regrets that Hilary Mantel had never wrought her literary magic on the folk who once lived here.)

 https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/wales/tudor-merchants-house/visiting-the-tudor-merchants-house