Tent Toggles

At top is one of the toggles on my pavilion. They started as commercial 1.5” toggles, with a central groove for the tie that attaches them to the canvas added on a lathe by the tentmaker, Robert MacPherson. They both attach the walls to the roof and close the door openings, a solution that is both authentic and quicker and easier than fabric ties.

The next to photos are toggles from a surviving 17th century tent from the armory at Graz.

The Cut of Henry VIII's Tents.

Inventories of Henry VIII's tents reveal some of the details of their construction. In the 1547 inventory descriptions of "round houses" or pavilions note the number of gores in the roof and bredes or breadths in the wall. For the round tents there are regularly twice as many gores in the roof as breadths in the walls. The same construction survives on a 17th c. pavilion preserved at Basel.

Using less than the full width of the fabric for the gores would bring the diagonal edge of the gores closer to the straight angle of the warp threads, and make the gores less likely to stretch. On the Basel pavilion the difference in width between  the wall segments and roof gores was disguised by false seams dividing the wall segments. Design drawings of Henry's pavilions, pieced from contrasting fabrics,  similarly disguised the difference in width between wall segments and roof gores, presumably by matching  a wall segment with a pair of roof gores in the same color.

Tresauntes, straight covered passageways to connect tents, were without gores, with two breadths of fabric in the walls for each breadth in the roof. This is consistent with each breadth of roof fabric covering both sides of the roof without requiring a seam at the ridge line. Tresaunte roofs could be two to 16 breadths long.

Hales and kitchens had straight sides and gores forming semicircular ends to the roof at each ends, with the number of roof breadths and gores enumerated for each tent.

Cross houses, dormyes, and galleries with a half round had straight sides and a semicircular roof of gores at one end, and connected to another tent at the other end. Again, the number of gores and and roof breadths was enumerated for each tent.

"The kinges bigger Lodginge of Canvas garnyshed with small braunches of blew bokeram" was  complex with a great hall, six round houses, five tresauntes, and four galleries all with walls 7.5 feet deep (presumably the slant height) as well as two timber houses.

The kings lesser lodgings of canvas garnished with great branch of blue buckram consisted of three halls, three round houses, 13 tresauntes and a porch, also all with walls 7.5 feet deep.

Some of the smaller tents:

From the king's lesser lodgings:

Three halls of 8 breadths apiece in the roof, 17 gores every end (possibly an error, a similar hall from the same lodgings lent to the Earl of Warwick the same year had 16 gores per end) 4 yards deep, 32 depths in the walls 2.5 yards deep.

Two round houses of 50 gores apiece 6 3/4 yards deep in the roof, 25 breadths in the walls of every of them, 2.5 yards deep. with roses of red saie in the top inside and outside.

Two tresauntes of two breadths apiece in the roof 2 1/4 yards deep, 4 breadths in the walls every of them of 2.5 yards deep.

Listed elsewhere: a kitchen of Vitry canvas 5 breadths in the roof 14 points in every end 3.5 yards deep 24 breadths in the walls two yards deep.

Based on the roof slopes shown in the design drawings, these dimensions are consistent with canvas breadths about a yard wide.

Other necessaries associated with the tents included 66 vanes of ironwork painted and gilded with the kings arms and badges, sacks of leather lined with canvas for the dry and safe keeping of the rich hangings, two fire hearths, 1,000 wood buttons for tents, 40 ridge plates, 80 plain plates and 15 joints for ridge trees with their bolts and rivets.


The Inventory of King Henry VIII: The Transcript (Vol. 1), ed. David Starkey (London, 1998)

Vane for a Pavilion

This vane was made from brass sheet by Robert MacPherson. The wooden knob it rests on is topped with a brass washer so that the vane may turn more easily. The pole below the vane, like the ball, were turned from wood and gilded.

The ball was originally topped with a silk pennoncel. After a total of a little over three weeks cumulative exposure to the weather, the original finish on the top of the ball showed significant wear.  I surmise that the pennon when drooping in a low wind rubbed against the top of the ball. This will avoid that problem and also display much better in a calm.

The vane is based on a surviving weathervane at Etchingham.

Banner Weathervanes in the 14th and 15th Century.

What is believed to be the oldest brass weathervane in England is still atop a 14th century parish church in Etchingham. (Update: it now seems to have been moved into the church) The Etchingham arms are pierced into the vane, and unlike later vanes the banner is not balanced by an arrow on the opposite side of the pole. As far as I can tell from the tiny images, this is also true of the banner weathervanes in the Tres Riches Heures.

Several images from 1380-1415 appear to show weathervanes atop tents, and they are explicitly mentioned in the 1496 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, where they are made from dowbill platis, which in other references are described as white iron or tinplate.  They were painted by the same painter who painted the king's coat armor. The 1547 inventory of Henry VIII's possessions mentions, associated with his tents, 66 vanes of ironwork "painted and guilted with the  the kings Armes and badges".

A vane associated with the early 17th century pavilion in Basel is dated on the vane to both 1591 and 1736.  This relatively late vane is also unbalanced.

Camping in a Pavilion

A hoop-spread pavilion with separate walls provides  a lot of convenient points to hang s-hooks for stowing things in easy reach, and for a cloths rack for clothes and towels.  Anything you can do to reduce rummaging in chests is good, if like me you find the tops of chests a convenient surface to put things down on. The center pole also has four hanging hooks that press fit into prepared holes, easily removable for packing the pole.

If you can hire good minstrels to play while you eat then I think the joy you get of them will be great compared to the cost of their hire.

Storing Crow Foot Ropes with Hooks

These crow foot ropes have hooks to attach them to my pavilion. If I simply coil them for storage  the hooks have a malicious tendency to hook the cords wherever will entangle them most effectively. I made these slotted cards of heavy card stock, and fit the hooks into the slots as I unhook them from the tent. I then wind the cord around the card as shown.

Military Timeline Event: Cape May NJ, 2014

Here is my pavilion set up for the Cape May timeline event June 14-15 2014.  I spread the doorway by gathering  a bunch of fabric from each flap, wrapping and securing cord around the base of the bunch, and fastening the cord to the shoulder of the tent. I tried to create a bunch as high as possible, and as close as possible to the seam running upwards from the stake closest to the opening.  On my pavilion the loops for the wall toggles and loops for hooks for the roof guys are convenient attachment points.  I think it looks a lot like what is shown in illuminations from 1380-1415. My thanks to Shawn Wheeler for the photos.

An Experimental Archaeology Experience

The evening of April 26,  2014 I had my reconstruction of a medieval hoop-spread pavilion set up at Marietta Mansion in Glenn Dale MD for a military history timeline event. The ground was soggy and a thunderstorm blew through, late on the 26th or early on the 27th.

One member of our group was on site. He heard but did not see the tent fail.  Examining the scene afterwards, it appears that the guy and wall stakes pulled out of the ground on the windward side, the tent center pole left the ground, and the tent blew downwind until checked by the remaining guy and wall stakes on the leeward side.  The tent roof landed with the inside facing upwards. In the second and third photo above, you can see the circular mat in the background that was in the center of the pavilion before it was blown down. Aside from removing the tent pole the pavilion is where it landed.

An adjacent rope-spread pavilion of about the same size survived intact. I attribute the difference to the rope spread pavilion using at least twice as many guy ropes staked down over a broader footprint, the hoop spread pavilion perhaps being more vulnerable to updrafts, and my own failure to stake the tent down as deeply as possible.

I seem to have reproduced a not uncommon failure mode for this kind of tent.

My Presentation at Kalamazoo, 2014

49th International Congress on Medieval Studies
Sunday, May 11
Part of Session 524 "Can These Bones Come to Life?" 8:30 a.m.

A Reconstruction of a Medieval Hoop-Spread Pavilion
Will McLean, La Belle Compagnie

No Sod Flaps

Jael and Sisera, follower of Van Eyck, 1440-1450, Detail of German Tapestry c. 1495

Hoops in Canopies

Details from, top to bottom: Petrus Christus Madonna and Child with St. Barbara and a Carthusian Monk (Exeter Madonna) c.1450, Bible Historiale of Jean de Vaudetar, 1372,   Judith and Holofernes from the Speculum Humanae Salvationis MS Hunter 60 (T.2.18) 1455, Annunciation Martin Schongauer Engraving ca. 1484/5, Annunciation Martin Schongauer, Painting.

Conveniently, the very sheer material of the Exeter Madonna's canopy allows us to see the hoop that spreads it.The indoor canopy of light fabric requires only a slender hoop. In the last three images I believe we are seeing a round curtain rod of slightly narrower radius than the hoop that spreads the canopy, with widely spaced brackets providing enough clearance for the curtain rings to slide along the rod to open or close the canopy curtains.

Medieval Tent Structures

From the top: Images 1-3 rope spread roofs 1: Equestrian portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano (detail) Simone Martini 1328-30 2-3 St. Martin renounces his arms (details) Simone Martini 1312-17. 4 Tent roofs supported by radial ribs. BL Add. 12228, f.150 (detail) Roman du Roy Meliadus de Leonnoys c. 1352 5-6 Pavilions and tents with vertical slats in the walls King René's Le Cueur d'Amours Espris c. 1457 7: Pavilion or tent with a rigid peripheral structure at the shoulder: Agnolo Gaddi: The Dream of Emperor Heraclius ca. 1385-87

Medieval tents used at least four different structural designs.

The tent spread by ropes alone is recognizable by catenary sag visible in the profile of the roof and walls, the shoulder attached to closely spaced guy ropes or crow's feet; although even so, there may be visible horizontal sag between the attachment points, and by guy ropes that descend no steeper than the roof profile, which typically produces a broad footprint for each tent on the ground.

Tents with radial ribs in the roof are clearly recognizable when the roof profile  is convex. The yurts and gers of Central Asia still use radial ribs, with a roof profile that is either straight or convex.

Tents with walls stiffened by slats or battens are suggested when the walls slope without any indication of sag or drape, when a contemporary illustration suggests that they are present within channels in the wall, or when documentary evidence mentions them. King René's accounts for 1453 mention "rods for the wall of the said pavilion" and rods are also included in the itemized materials for a pavilion probably written by a Milanese tailor around 1540 in Il Libro del Sarto.

Finally, by the second half of the 14th century it seems to have been common for medieval tents to have had a rigid internal frame at the shoulder of the tent, circular, polygonal, oval or rectangular as the shape of the tent demanded, with circular the most common design.  The Dream of Emperor Heraclius shows many of the features of this design. A limited number of guy ropes, if any, steady the tent. They descend at a steeper angle than the roof profile, and are insufficient to produce the roof plan shown by themselves. The tent valance forms a perfectly smooth cylinder.

Hardware Beneath Pavilion Shoulders in the Morgan Bible

From the Morgan Bible, 1240s, details of folios 9r, 10v, 27v, 34r and 42r.  If there was a rigid hoop within the pavilion shoulder it would have been fairly straightforward to attach these brackets so they hung as shown here. If not, not.

Pavilions Retaining Their Shape While Falling

From top: Morgan Bible MS M.638 (fol. 3v) Detail, 1240s, (BNF, FR 2643) Jean Froissart, Chronicles fol. 180 Flanders, Bruges 15th Century, BNF Français 364, fol. 125 (Hannibal passant les Apennins, Romuleon, c. 1485-1490), BL Royal MS 18 D II f. 82v c. 1500.  and The Encampment of Henry at Marquison 18th c. copy of a 16th c. painting of Henry VIII's Boulogne campaign of 1544. Details.

Pavilions in the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland: 1538

Item, gevin for the fassoun of ane pavilʒeoun of grene dames, . . . . . v frs.
Item, gevin for ane girth (hoop, usually the hoop of a barrel) of irne to the said pavilʒeoun, xx s.
Item, gevin for ane goldin knop to the samin, . xx s.
Item, gevin for ane cleik (hook) to the said pavilʒeoun, x s.
Item, gevin for the fassoun of ane pavilʒeoun of gray dames, . . . . . . vij frs.
Item, gevin for ane goldin knop to the samin, . xx s.
Item, gevin for ane girth of irne to the said pavilʒeoun, ' xx s.
Item, gevin for ane cleik of irne, . . . x s.

Since each pavilion is equipped with a hook and the hoops only cost twice as much as the hook, these are probably canopies for a chair or bed rather than tents.

Scotland, Thomas Dickson, James Balfour, Paul, C. T. McInnes, and Athol L. Murray. 1877. Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland = Compota thesaurariorum Regum Scotorum. Edinburgh: H.M. General Register House.

Pavilion Project: Part X

Two notes:

If you are building a pavilion with sloping walls and a valance, making the valance a truncated cone rather than a cylinder will be more complex, but will interact with the walls much more amicably.

For a pavilion like mine, with separate walls and roof, channels for the hoop, and an inner and outer valance, setup and takedown go much more smoothly if, before you mate or unmate the final segments, you flip the outer and inner valances onto the roof all around the roof. This reduces constriction of the channels, and gives you more working room for mating or unmating the final joints.

Pavilion Project: Part IX

Two views of the channel that holds the hoop and the inner valance below it. The first was taken with the tent dry. The second shows how much the canvas shrinks when damp with the morning dew.

Pavilion Project: Part VIII

From top to bottom: 1 & 2 show the pavilion closed and open. 3 shows how channels are sewn to the bottom of the roof for the sectional hoop, with gaps between each panel to feed in the hoop sections. Below that is the inner valance, which neatly covers where the wall is joined to the roof with toggles. 4 shows how one panel of the hoop channel opens and closes with hooks and eyes, to allow the final two sections of the hoop to be manhandled into position if necessary. 5 & 6 show the interior of the tent as set up. The rug is eight feet in diameter and woven from jute, with a tarp cut to a slightly smaller diameter circle beneath. 7 shows the roof and center pole with walls and hoop removed, and suggests one possible reason why the word pavilion was used both for this kind of tent and the medieval umbrella. The hoop segments are on the rug behind the pole.

The pavilion is about 8'10" in diameter at the shoulder, and the walls and roof are each composed of 20 panels, about 16" wide from center of seam to center of seam at the shoulder. Loops on the roof and toggles on the wall are sewn at every seam and halfway between them. The doors close with toggles rather than ties, which seems to be a more convenient alternative. The hoop is composed of eight segments, with each join a skarf joint between two steel bands.

Fabric loops at the bottom of the wall for stakes seems to have been a design that came in with the sewing machine. This pavilion ties the wall to stakes with cords: this approach is often seen in medieval art, and allows a more flexible response to uneven ground.

The roof panels are cut with one edge on the warp and the bias edge cut with a slight concave curve.

For more on this project, look here.