Medieval Millennials
When does a boy become a man? Medieval millennials were just as hard to define as those of today.
We have a tendency to associate youth culture with modernity, but medieval people were as anxious about youths as are today’s headline writers worrying about the rise of the ‘millennial’. As the poet John Lydgate (c.1370-c.1451) warned: ‘O lusty gallants in your adolescence, / . When you are stirred to wanton insolence, / Restrain yourselves.’ We might also assume that extending youth beyond the teenage years is a luxury of a modern society, where life expectancy stretches into the eighties. But even in the late Middle Ages, when life expectancy was considerably lower, youth was a flexible category that could expand well into the late twenties and even thirties. So what were the defining characteristics of ‘medieval millennials’ and when did they stop being youths and start being adults?
FAMILIES made the most of the relaxation of lockdown rules to explore a new £25,000 adventure playground in the grounds of an historic country house. The Tumblestone Hollow adventure playground, at Stonor Park, in the Chilterns near Nettlebed, took 18 months to complete and was unveiled to the public over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend. In keeping with social distancing rules, a limited number of tickets were sold in advance and sold out instantly. As well as the large wooden playground, there was an Easter trail, takeaway food and drinks and an opportunity to discover the park’s stone circle, woodland and steep, hilly grounds.
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