A Close Stool, a piece of early Loo History
27th September 2011
Close Stools
A Close Stool at Havard & Havard. Circa 1680-1720 £925.00
Only the very grandest people used a close stool – a padded seat placed over a chamber pot – and the Groom of the Stool became the king’s most intimate and therefore most powerful servant. Quite an odd concept for us today.
For example the close stool used by William III remains in the King’s Apartments at Hampton Court Palace today. With the passage of the centuries, the court became more formal, both in terms of the variety of spaces it required and its personnel. William III’s Groom of the Stool was his favourite Hans Willem Bentinck, Earl of Portland. The Groom of the Stool, with access to the bedchamber, closet and close stool room, was inevitably the person closest to the monarch and consequently wielded enormous power. He kept the key to the bedchamber on a blue ribbon round his neck.
Henry VIII’s courtiers at Hampton Court shared a ‘great house of easement’ with 28 seats on two different levels. It emptied into brick-lined drains, which carried the waste into the River Thames.
A team of ‘gong scourers’ cleaned these royal loos. Gong scourers were boys small enough to crawl along the drains. It was probably not a very popular job! The unlucky candidates were the King's Gong Scourers, appointed by Henry VIII to clean the sewers and the garde- robes of all royal palaces within a 20-mile radius of London.
"After the court had been here for four weeks, the brick chambers would fill head-high. It was the gong scourers who had to clean them when the court had left,"
Henry VIII’s "close-stool" was lavishly covered in black velvet and its lid opened to reveal a padded and beribboned interior covered in the same material. It had a hole in the centre with a pewter bowl placed underneath. The programme reveals that it was a privilege to be the Groom of the Stool with the duty of attending the King when he relieved himself, and the position often went to a high-ranking courtier.
In 1539, one groom recorded how Henry VIII had taken laxative pills and an enema, sleeping until 2am "when His Grace rose to go upon his stool which, with the working of the pills and the enema, His Highness had taken before, had a very fair siege.”
Tudor people would happily ‘pluck a rose’ (have a wee) anywhere – in chimneys, corners of rooms or in the street. In Edinburgh, you could hire a portable toilet, which was a bucket with a tent-like cloak. Poor people would wipe themselves with leaves, moss or stones. Better off people used bits of old clothes. They called the loo 'the jakes'.
In 1596, Sir John Harrington invented the first water closet with a proper flush. He built one in his house. His godmother, Queen Elizabeth I, used it, and she was so impressed that she had 'a john' built at Richmond Palace. Unfortunately, it was knocked down after John Harrington died and it was almost 200 years until the WC was re-invented.
A copy of a Close Stool made for Plas Mawr in Conwy
