Time to introduce another one of our Castle Characters, one much lowlier than the Knight and Royal Lady that we have met so far. This is Matilda, the Barber, who lived in Newcastle near the Castle itself at the end of the 1200s. Ordinary working people like Matilda often disappear in histories of the medieval period, which tend to concentrate much more on the doings of knights, kings, queens and what have you. But we should not lose sight of the people that it was the work of these ordinary people that kept the whole kingdom running, and they lived lives every bit as interesting as their “betters”. Today we’ll be delving into the often gruesome work of the medieval barber…