There was a wide range of jobs, mostly involving making and maintaining everyday necessities, for example baking, butchering, spinning, and so on. Other people provided services, such as clerks, who could read and write, and minstrels, who were musicians.
Trades included apothecary (prepared and sold medicines), barbers (cut hair and also conducted surgery and bloodletting), cordiner (shoemaker), swineherd (looked after a herd of pigs), fletcher (made arrows), coopers (made barrels), bonnetmakers (made hats), and fleshers (prepared and sold meat).
People often took their surname from their trade, which gives us the Bakers, Wrights and Smiths of today.
To carry out skilled work of any kind, people had to join a guild as an apprentice to learn their craft and then work to gain the right to ply that trade independently. Stone masons had their own ‘mason’s marks’ to sign their work. You can still find mason’s marks in churches and abbeys.
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