9. People during the Middle Ages were not forced to drink wine and beer because of the lack of available clean water.
One of the most enduring myths regarding the Middle Ages is that the people who inhabited it were forced to drink alcoholic beverages due to the lack of clean water. Due to the infrequent inclusion of water as a subject in historic texts, some medieval historians inexplicably determined that because chroniclers in the Middle Ages didn’t constantly talk about water that they can’t have regularly consumed it. This conclusion, stimulating a lasting belief, could not be farther from the truth. Water was, in fact, habitually consumed throughout the Middle Ages, with a 7th-century Byzantine physician recording “water is of most use in every mode of regimen” and that “one cannot find a better drink”.
Even more contradictory, communities in the Middle Ages went to great lengths and paid enormous costs to ensure there was access to clean drinking water. Aware of the dangers of tainted water, in the mid-13th century the city of London constructed “The Great Conduit”: a system of lead pipes to bring fresh water into the settlement from outside the walls. People were granted free access, with the system replicated throughout Europe. Whilst there might have been a preference for alcoholic substances, with Ælfric’s Colloquy noting “ale if I have any, or water, if I have no ale”, a preference does not denote regularity or exclusivity.