13th Century Interior Design | Secrets of the Castle (3/5) | Absolute History

castles dominated the medieval landscape and Britain has some of the finest in the world today most are decaying relics many of their secrets buried in time [Music] now historian Ruth Goodman and archaeologists Tom painful compete again are turning the clock back to relearn the secrets of the medieval castle builders this is the ultimate medieval technology the origin of our customs is distinctly French introduced to Britain at the time of the Norman conquest of 1066 [Music] here in the Burgundy region of France is get along castle the world's biggest archaeological experiment a 25 year project to build a castle from scratch using the same tools techniques and materials available in the 13th century it's a lot of hard work and coalface because this is industry for the next six months Ruth Peter and Tom will experience the daily rigors of medieval construction drop-down and everyday life how workers dressed and the art of combat [Music] this is the story of how to build a medieval castle [Music] it's May and the team have been immersed in the building works alongside getting ons Masons they've learned how the castle was defended in times of war [Music] every stone has to be annoying because this is it now up and are enough now the team discovered a surprisingly colorful world of 13th century castle interiors and much of the material they work with will come straight from the ground some of the stuff in here is ochre from paint to brighten the rooms look at the difference on those fingers - turning mud into floor tiles can you imagine living in a world with no electric lights and they'll be rediscovering an ancient art in a midnight firing at the kiln [Music] the medieval castles were used to seeing today a scarred by centuries of warfare and weather erosion [Music] most of their original roofs carpentry and interior finishes have long since disappeared but these drab walls are a far cry from how they looked in their heyday [Music] this is how many of us think of the interior of castles bare stone echoey damp gritty underfoot but that's because we're used to ruins when they were in use back in the 13th century they were rather different you have to imagine tiled floors and plaster on the walls perhaps painted white washed and then hangings of fabric over the top filled with furniture and that too is covered in fabrics cushions all sorts an entirely different beast [Music] to strive for accuracy the get-along project has adopted a specific historical timeframe to work to the castle is being designed and built as it would have been in the fronts of the twelve 30s and 40s during the reign of King Louie the ninth [Music] the region of quiz a in Burgundy was governed by one jean de to see a vassal to the king in turn the to see was the overlord of several other lower ranking noblemen and it was one of these lesser nobles who would have commissioned a castle like the one being built here at get along today it's not a grand royal castle bristling with military might enormous wealth but a fortified residence of relatively modest taste and design according to the rank and means of the imaginary lord of gettin on the team along with site administrator sarah preston are exploring some of the key rooms and quarters within the castle to find out how the interiors are being dressed this is the castles Great Hall great is the word so this is very much the hub of castle life this is it's a dining hall it's a it's a banqueting for feasting hall in this room it's a statement of power and prestige isn't it absolutely which is what it's important to bear in mind of course once it's finished we won't have these bare stone walls the Great Hall was the political and business hub of castle life this was where the Lord held court receiving his tenants and listening to their concerns and grievances with many of the social rituals of the day being held here it was important for the interior design to show off his wealth and status to invited guests over the next few years the Great Hall at get along and the great tower adjacent to it will be dressed in the style of a 13th century Lord and his lady so this is currently the Lord's chamber this is where the Lord would sleep with his wife and his children it's certainly a residential chamber you can see that from the fireplace on the hall behind us so can you heat it that's not true of all the castle the stone walls are rough uneven and drafty but they would have been dressed and painted Peter and tongue are going to be painting and tiling some of the castles indoor spaces while Ruth makes paint but first sarah takes her to the already decorated kitchen under the Great Hall but eventually it will have render applied and then a lime wash it with much whiter and brighter you have a look oh I see what you mean I mean that's real darkness into light isn't it it makes such a difference people aren't used to necessarily seeing me inside of castle walls rendered and lime washed but it's made such a difference to the people actually work in the kitchen because it's sort of Bank salt has an electric light absolutely and I guess in terms of Hygiene it would have made a difference oh yeah definitely really it sort of kills anything that might be there and stops bugs getting into all the cracks and things so you start with a really sterile surface repaint if you don't whenever you need to I mean obviously so far we haven't had the time to render the inside of all the rooms we've got other priorities at the moment but as soon as we finished kind of major building work then we can get on with the job of rendering the inside but I hope also the outside of the castle because often the outsides of castles were also rendered and lime washed because in terms of visibility it just meant that your castle stood out in the landscape so that's something that we couldn't necessarily get away with in a genuine historic monument but here on this experimental site that's something that we can show our visitors the Tower of London the White Tower was named because it was lime washed on the outside [Music] the tower nearest the quarry known as the quarry tower would have been a guardroom or shooting gallery even this would have been brightly decorated the boys have been tasked by stonemason for Eastman girl with rendering the interior wall with lime mortar the medieval equivalent of plaster we're gonna use two-and-a-half buckets of sand and one lime and water and mix it in what we're looking for here is the right consistency keep on adding a little more moisture Turnitin Turnitin it's okay are you happy good enough he's good yeah cozy workspace a breeze demonstrates our medieval wall is rendered but some water should not drench their bare army she's banding this time if she don't put footer archaeological research has revealed that rendering wouldn't have been applied in several smooth layers but with a single ruff using a technique similar to spreading butter [Music] I'm gonna learn from your mistakes so to do a turret like this how long do you think would take - tweeting - three days ten days as the lime mortar is relatively porous it will draw out any dampness in the wall and so help to preserve the masonry underneath it's interesting isn't it we're only putting on one coats that butter coats but this is an established practice isn't it you always think when you go to the ruined castles in the UK or around Europe these bare walls and what they were looking at however not the case it was a prestige thing to get a layer render up decorate it yeah I mean castles majority casters they are just ruins on that you're coming to them very long after their lives the medieval manufacturer of tiles for castle roofs and floor spaces was an industry in itself so far I get along 28,000 tiles have been created for the roof of the Great Hall building alone a job which took four years to achieve it's estimated that a total of 80,000 times will be needed to cover the roofs of the castle in its entirety but as the four towers around the curtain wall are still on the construction tile production is now shifted from roof tiles to floor times when tom is about to discover just how laborious the process is to make just one tile it's breaking up some of this clay I'm gonna use it for our tiles obviously not in this state we actually need to get a lot of these impurities out but some of the stuff in here is ochre ochre can actually turn into paint so when separate some of that out now just stack up on this clay get it back to the twe Lurie or the tile makers in the 11th century many Hamlet's and villages in France specialized in tile production to meet increasing demand from the local nobility and as the medieval tile trade grew so did the strict regulations it was governed by designed to standardize production let's see about clay isn't he not easy to work feel all the muscles get involved in 1280 a decree from Toulouse stipulated that good tiles may only be made from well pug clay well trampled underfoot and not over dry feels nice lace is this good for hands good for skin very nice for the skin yeah some people are paying for this lucky us I've always wanted soft hands Tom and tile maker Emmerich we are now removing any twigs and stones and making the clay homogeneous and malleable so this hard lump here this could be oka yes the ochre pigments contain colorful iron oxides and a set aside to be used for making paint [Music] an integral feature of castle design with the toilets they were known as Garda home the French word for wardrobe clothes would often be kept inside them because it was believed the smell of ammonia from urine kept parasites at bay Garda Hogg were often built out of the castle walls to allow the waste to drop down through the hole to the ground or moat below [Music] get-along keeps the wooden grille over the holes to dissuade any modern-day visitors from attempting to spend a penny it's a big question isn't it how people use guard ropes there is little bits of evidence in the earliest of the manors books which are aimed at pages who are serving a night hoping to become a scribe become a knight so it's it's for little lads you know their first job of the day before their Lord is up is to prepare the Privy and he's told to make it extremely clean he's got to sweep it down and make it clean he's also got to put cloths in there not quite sure how the cloths were used but they're to go in there and sweet-smelling herbs yeah so that it's somewhere comfortable and pleasant to be so at least for those at the very top of society going to the toilet ought to have been quite a nice experience yeah I think I mean they wouldn't smell too bad I mean I know the poos going down and yes if it's not getting moved there might be a bit of wafting up but those herbs has certainly taken the edge off and there is of course the question of toilet paper curries I mean many people think leaves the moss but let's face it deforestation where the heck are you gonna get a leaf of the right size of the middle of January I read obviously and then you also you think more moths but you'd have to have most plantation these wouldn't you to keep a big community it's very very dry sauna so I'm there's nothing to say that people didn't use I mean you know as well as I do that archaeologically all sorts of things turn up instead spits so probably people use whatever was to hand but I do wonder if maybe the more normal system especially in a castle would have been to have your own cloth or rag or flannel to wash yourself with for even a communal rag wash it out in a bucket washed out in a bucket it's perfectly possible for these privies anyway sunny use a coat of render coach the lime wash probably a loose seats I think adore might be a good idea to the wall so you have to take some this fingers grease is dripping you have to take it on your finger like this um that's for cake just work that round and that's actually lubricate the side but the template is it yeah the toil will come out easily at the end so I like to start with hands because you we can feel you can feel all the corners it's very important to have good corners in your child if not the Masons really not satisfied is very hard for them we don't have said Mason's no don't do that so you can use this as well when you think the donors are okay you can finish you know just hissing now Eve looks like you're rolling a bit there yeah a little bit if you like do you like this right okay so much like she's not questing it's off as you make Congrats here with me in between you two you tool you use this one like this and try to get something very flats so we have to to see if it's okay on the other side when there's opponents always with the conus or with something with the comers so I got to check the corners okay my Connors are good what if this is perfect oh yeah yes yes my sons will be happy okay you put it's there and you do like this with the grease poke family it is going but you have to sign with the name of this race and basically that's what quality control yes and we'll be done once we got another 69 to do yes [Laughter] [Music] just beyond the castle walls Ruth is visiting get Allen's paint house to discover how the ochre found in the quarry and in the clay is used to make pigments for paint [Music] I'm gonna start by grinding down the earth valeriy earth toe is a ceramicist by trade from a family of local potters she's in charge of pigments painting and decoration that get us so these are the pieces the Tom was finding in amongst acclaim he was doing the tiling at once if I could overlap here like we're done will appear we're not gonna pop paints funny stuff it's it's not the same as dye dye stains the fibers of what you're dying so so if you get a wood stain that is a die for wood because it's dying the wood fibers in the same way as cross there's a dye that stains the fibers paint it's different pain is bits of colored stuff that are glued onto a surface and so if they're very big lumps the amount of light coming off is quite small the color looks patchy and thin if you can make the particles very very tiny the light will refract off them in a great burst and you'll get a really strong intense color I mean I shouldn't think a 13th century person thought about light refraction but they did know that if you grind it thoroughly you get a much better paint good against yellow a yellow still on their yellow ochre is the other key color found in the natural get annoyed bone no Caminos this really is the color of gathering look at her when you're around here everything's this color absolutely everything that is the dust that we breathe in whenever you get anywhere near the castle it sorts grinds underfoot it's the know just look at the place this is the color of the ground so having sort of crushed it up a bit and dissolved it we're now sitting in we want all particles as the mixture settles the heavier ochre particles fall to the bottom and the remaining liquid is left out in the Sun to dry the finer particles left behind are then ground down into a powder enormous amount of work to grind this down to the finest that you need but when you just see the range of colors that be produced just out of the earth of get-along you can see why people would bother just look at it aunt in the castle courtyard Peter and Philippe de l'arche known to his fellow craftspeople as Gandalf like a mixing lime wash made with one part lime and one part water where is that in French language leadership Oh milk milk of lime how can you tell it's good consistency all right there's more than oratory is that that's good yeah should be enough yep I'll grab that bucket yes up sau Peter heads towards the Lord and lady's bedchamber in the great tower to brighten things up in the garden in French and then it's down down down and it just gives a beautiful beautiful texture I know it get long there's a massive debate as to whether you know they should leave the stones the walls there because all this work had gone in by the Masons to to put the stone there and they say if you cover up with mortar if we work with render and painted with I wash the public won't see it but this is how the council's wearing medieval age course as we come across castles their ruins generally very little plaster work survives [Music] Ruthie's and valerie experiment with a bit of 13th century chemistry so this is the local yellow ocher weight and we're cooking it askew veteran your push to try to turn it red it's quite exciting isn't it this just comes out of the ground all yellow and you can get this range of colors no you did this yeah oh yeah yes you're right I can see yeah well it's hot look at the difference on my fingers yellow ochre is a hydrated iron oxide known as limonite as it heated over the fire some of the limonite turns into hematite turning the ochre into rich darker shades such as burnt sienna and burnt umber pigments is a really ancient right across Europe if you think of those cave paintings right at the dawn of human history this is the sort of paint that they were using to make them and if you think of Britain the pigs I think those people are no more described in the ancient Roman texts as being covered in red paint the red men and they Irish talked about it it seems to have been a really celtic thing to do to paint yourself look [Music] just beyond the castle walls of Goodell oh the earth and kill used for the firing of tiles is lined with bricks kilns were often owned by the local Lord who of course charged his tenants for using them in a 13th century regulations governing the work of local tyler's in and around Toulouse specified not only the consistency and dimensions of the tiles themselves but also the size of the kilns used and the number of tiles permitted to be fired in any one firing get-along fires 4,000 tiles at a time [Music] Bruno Favaro is the chief tile maker at gettin all and he and his team have presided over 15 experimental firings during the past nine years each firing has enabled them to improve and finesse their techniques [Music] the way they're placing them in the kiln they're leaving gaps so that when they fire this the flames can work their way up through every single tile and hopefully we win even temperature making each one hard each one a very similar color and and making sure there's no losses in one of the problems with these tiles when you dry them out if there's any water in there and you fire it too quickly the kiln that water expand does it turn into a gas blow the toilet park you'll hear a pop and if these are stacked incorrectly if one tile goes several tiles could go they've been doing this for a number of years they know what they're doing it's a lot of this is trial and error experiment so I killed you they they they know what these kilns look like from excavations have been done in the UK done in France now they know how these kilns actually worked because they've been working these kilns [Music] out in the peace and quiet of the forest Ruth is making an essential tool for applying her medieval paint so if I'm actually going to be able to paint anything that looks like something I'm going to need a decent brush to do it with so I went and found some badger here well I'll be honest there was a there was some roadkill so I shaved it I know it sounds a bit but weighted tainted too so I shaved it as close to the skin as I possibly could in order to keep the hairs all as they grow naturally in order so when I sort of grab a little tuft of it here if I sort of try to separate a bit out and what I want are these long straight hairs that are what helps a badger shared water the hair is designed to move water which is why it makes such great brushes I'm going to glue those hairs in place so they don't move during the next bit of the process the glue booth is using is gum arabic hardens self from the acacia tree mixed with four parts water gum arabic of course is water-soluble so I'll be able to just wash it out of the brush at the end and can you see how that's coming together now as a point that's exactly what I wanted to do as a finished brush if you look at a modern paint brush there's this sort of metal bit between the hairs and the stick the 13th century ago no I'm not gonna mess around trying to make a metal ferrule you just do something much much easier and cheaper you go and get yourself a feather because if you think about it if I cut that bit off and I cut that bit off I've got a ready-made tube I can take a little bit of thread and bind my hairs it's whipping them into place that's tight as I can manage and I've got a nice firmly held with a paintbrush head I should be able to poke through there we go and see how firming that's in there now see don't brush head all I need now is jammer stick in the other end done that looks like it'll work on it the pressures on at the tile kiln the 13th of May in medieval France was regarded as the day of the Holi I see it was believed to be the last day of spring in which a hailstorm would occur sent by God as a sign of his omnipotence before the arrival of summer and as Hale often turns quickly to heavy rain that could have disastrous consequences for the fate of this batch of tiles this firing has already been held up for several days owing to heavy storms and once again dark clouds are looming overhead the rain is coming and we've just got to get this finished because if these tiles get wet it'll be a serious problem not only can it affect their abilities fire since you know they may explode if if the water gets in there you also take an awful lot more fuel to dry this kiln out and then get it up to temperature medieval tile makers would probably use mud earth or wooden boards to weatherproof the tops of their kilns but for reasons of practicality and efficiency get-along relies on sheets of 21st century corrugated iron there isn't a moment to lose here it comes the holy ice the year you will get hail and almost as if on cue as feared the hail quickly turns into a downpour the kiln will remain covetous several days to allow the soil around it and the wood required for firing time to thoroughly dry out only once Bruno has assessed at the ground and climate conditions are optimal well the firing finally take place and at this rate it may have to be postponed for several more days yet glad I've got poncho Tomo [Music] [Music] while the tile firing is unhold progress is made on the chapel tower the guardroom within the lower floor is undergoing a colorful transformation Valerie and her colleague aurélie paya are using the gedan on ochre to paint a design on the walls known as fictive masonry this was a popular style of artwork among the nobility and royalty throughout Europe in the mid 13th century it was a less expensive way to create the illusion of the walls having been constructed from expensive white limestone by lime washing the cheaper sandstone white and then over painting this with a colorful fake stonework pattern a look at grandeur and of wealth was created to think it goes from best I surrender on to like mush to this and Isis prestige is 1240 Queen of England has something very similar in a bed chambers with addition of flowers but no brightens the room doesn't it is like visual is impressive and these fake joints made out of this ochre paint give the impression of highly carved stone exactly so it's like you're replicating what's beneath with a very stylish way no way that actually says to people come here to visit this is what I'm worth I've got money I can make this happen the ochre pigments would be mixed with a glue binder made from egg or sometimes rabbit skin to make the paint is dark enough oh I think I top loaded my brushes that were too much there yeah it hasn't run that's the danger isn't it too much pigment on you your brow at all sniffing man no no miss what then wrong it's going wrong it's looking awful it is yeah I've seen worse but [Music] [Music] every aspect of Gatlin's design is planned by a scientific committee of experts they work closely with the staff so that every feature is based on authentic primary sources of historical evidence and just a few miles away in the village of loot here is a key example of that evidence the Church of st. Peter built around the Year 1000 the Church of the Middle Ages was a huge and wealthy landowner which exerted a powerful influence over people's lives and the interiors of its buildings often set a benchmark for the tastes and trends of the era in the early 1980s the white distemper covering the interior walls started to crack appeal this is amazing uncovering a fascinating medieval secret everywhere a painstaking conservation over the next 10 years revealed these stunning ochre murals from the 13th century they've provided get along with an authentic and illuminating resource from which to draw inspiration for the interior decor of the castle this is the panel that we're particularly interested in terms of the work we're doing it getting on it's amazing you can see you can pick out there you can see the frieze yeah at least five petal flowers you find these all over the place very pop up but it's pure 13th century of course the church should have been absolutely essential in people's lives and everyone locally would have had to have come to this church so the paintings on these walls aren't just decoration they are here to tell stories they can be read very much like a cartoon strip it's almost the entertainment of the age the biblical story just laid out in scenes and I like the way that the artists have also taken the opportunity to retell the story in their way if there was any kind of friction for three men in a church we've got Eve here rushing away being very cheeky given the wink to Adam here they have a a wink we can't see what happens behind the pillar and then afterwards they've got a harvest and a child so I wonder what the reaction was because up resumee the villagers would be in on the joke are you leaving you [Music] Ruth is applying some of the techniques discovered at the Church of San Peter to the bedchamber which would have been used to provide hospitality to the Lord and ladies most distinguished guests it's the most highly decorated room in the castle so far and Ruth is using the burnt red ochre paint to restore the Rose motifs in the window seat obviously the domestic spaces within a castle are intended to impress they have to look gorgeous it's about the look of the place as much as anything else and naturally people painted their walls it's not a church this isn't about religious storytelling this was about showing your power it was about prestige that up there that little bit where it's painted to look as if it's masonry with the little roses in front often cool stones and roses is perhaps the most typical as far as we can tell of all interior decorating designs of the mid 13th century that is what the Queen of England had on her bedroom walls in the Tower of London stones and roses the very height of fashion [Music] back at the Church of San Peter Moochie ser explains how the paintings on these walls have informed the way in which get on ins interiors are decorated [Music] because we don't have a lot of evidence of the types of paintings that were inside castles we were always very careful to say to people okay we don't know if there was ever a bedroom painted in exactly the style that we've got with the castle that's just a stone's throw from the castle at the same time we're painting these same patterns and crucially it's the same color palette this is just like walking out of the quarry and you've got the red oak the the yellow ochre is the Browns I have to say I mean you look at the Masons when they come out for quarry and that kind of the dust and the ochre it's on them that is your color palette absolutely no it's everything's there so if we wanted to paint in this area it with blues or greens we'd have to buy those pigments him from further afield and they would have been more costly and it's interesting to see that in a church the decision has obviously been taken not to have too much blue or green they've used the materials that were available locally Oh like this just doesn't really survive and castles castles gem ruins but church is there's such a an important historical reference that was certainly a challenge for us and that we were aware that there are very few models of the types of paintings that they would have been inside castles at this time it was a very deliberate decision not to use the human figures because obviously these are depicting biblical stories so we stuck very much with the the flowers the trees the geometric shapes but what we're wanting to do is offer people a vision of what a 13th century visitor might have seen and to get over the fact that the castles weren't pear stone empty places they were decorated and they were full of color [Music] another area of the castle which is the result of intense research into 13th century architecture is the chapel Clement Gerard the chief stone carver again along is a highly experienced draftsman but he's about to undertake his most ambitious project to date by now Clemens doing the drawing for what will be the prestige feature of the chapel so much so they've actually imported a slightly less higher type of limestone but were easier to carve this really is precise work I am marveling at the skill he's got [Music] Lemoine is designing a decorative piece of masonry based on a very common 13th century design found throughout France it's a niche for the chapel wall with a trefoil shaped head which will sit upon pillars rising from two small basins called piscine Agudelo white dress limestone is used for the more decorative features of the castle although it's cricket addressed on the quarries hard sandstone it's easier to chip so great precision is required and the stakes could prove costly [Music] finally it's the morning of the long-awaited firing of the kiln Peter's up early to help share the workload but fly under one the firebox in the lower chamber has been stacked with logs and twigs and at last the first piece of kindling is within seconds clouds of wood smoke are billowing out at the top of the fire engine it's going to take hundreds of armfuls of wood and many hours of careful monitoring to turn these flames into the roaring blaze required to fire the tiles a long hot and exhausting day lies ahead [Music] the stone carvers have completed the first part the white limestone leash and are ready to transport it at the chapel tower the hoisting of the stone requires care and attention the Lord and all of those working for him would have set great store by this sacred work of art [Music] but for us the significance is that this is the first real piece of religious architecture that we've got in the castle this is the the only sacred space within the castle so we're actually standing here in the area where the altar will be so this is the holiest place right this is sacred space well you'd have Miley water on your wheels yeah so that this is the most delicate sculpture that we've done here as you can see it's a hand base and you've seen it being being dressed earlier you can see the two dips now we had some priests visiting as we were wondering ourselves why there were these two kind of recesses and the priests that were visiting suggested that maybe one was for washing priest hands before the mass and that the other one was them for washing the influence that have been used in the mass what we've been told at least is that the idea is that all the water that is in this this bosina this this what hand basin is holy water and as such you can't just be thrown away all the water will actually and we're not sowing about huge amounts that the water will just kind of filter down into the wall and stay within the the stone of the chapel itself is obvious of course it's gonna absorb a holy water and essentially make this whole space even more sacred so a little mini little temple here at get long so it's been an opportunity obviously for the stonemasons to use different techniques and then it was a little bit of improvisation never that gave that the stonemasons an opportunity to to kind of have a bit of freedom of movement you can see each column is slightly different this is matches you can see his mark up here on the stone and on the other side we've got John Paul's thank you [Music] the Masons marx undressed stones are a permanent reminder of the ancient skills and techniques of the medieval Masons each one presents us with a unique signature of the craftsman who carved a particular piece [Music] [Laughter] [Music] at the kiln tension is rising a month's rain has taken its toll and the firing is not going to plan everything of wet the kiln got wet the wood got wet so it's just taking that a little bit longer to draw everything out get rid of the moisture the blaze is still several hundred degrees below what it needs to be peter leads a frantic effort to try to save the four thousand tiles inside [Music] we know today the optimum temperature for successful firing is around 1,000 degrees centigrade thirteenth-century Tyler's relied on their experience their senses and costly trial and error they would have been under intense pressure to get firings right [Music] the kiln it's just about getting up to temperature now ready to really feed up that's pretty soon those tiles we're getting close to firing but it does mean it's gonna be a longer day I mean the Sun is setting in the sky we're gonna go late into the night a tireless trade depended on the local nobility's trust and the reliability of his product and the strict laws governing the standards of production were rigidly enforced tiles must be correctly stacked the temperature must not be too high too low the heat must be distributed evenly throughout the kiln if not the results could be under fire over fired or otherwise damaged tiles and the medieval Lord would neither accept nor pay for a single substandard tile failed firing had serious consequences for a tireless livelihood [Music] as darkness falls Peter and the team finally succeed in getting the temperature up to 1,000 degrees centigrade we've been working since this morning without stopping and now we are big time it was because our but now it's such a good temperature right what's your ecology looking for it must stay arranged all right if it's white it's too much if it ones the ties to be fired evenly we must stay at this temperature doing two hours all right but are you happy yes yes we are it's a dream [Music] [Applause] [Music] can you imagine living in a world with no electric lights I mean tonight we have the Stars we have the moon and we have the tower kill four thousand tiles they're just about to block this up a foot and they're gonna seal it in it's a lot of hard work at coalface because this is industry could you imagine what it must have been like to see a castle being built of stone surrounded by these kills that the firing flames into that much die let's set back here thinking about that's the hell down there and the heavens up there and your tiles currently in purgatory which way they're gonna go have you been good will they be using that blossom [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] it takes several days for the kiln to cool down Peters helping to unload the tiles and examine the results oh yeah oh yeah this is really like this sound is perfect like for us that ringing sound is what you're looking for what why are you guys twitching on the tiles Oh to see to see if he's cooked because sometimes the sound is not enough anyway the song can be a meter we don't have slow-cooked so we can spit on it and if the side of a stay there it's cooked if it's going inside inside it it's not every single trial coming out of this kiln view of quality rolling them you're listening to yes you're unsure especially it goes yeah we can't fit on every 1000 oh we have an example so it was not for this 5m it was for one before when overcooks was going like that so we have this bubble of gas inside and the bubble is big is going bigger and decide which bursts with time this is good plenty handmade well I saw how hard you guys worked and how long it takes to make these tiles - I'm happy especially with this timing with really happy yes we have very good results very nice to have it the fire tiles are now used to floor the fully rendered and lime washed quarry Tower it will take thousands more tiles and several more years of rendering lime washing and painting before the entire castle finally looks like it might have done in the 13th century with the tiles and the walls or plastered and painted it's starting to get that feel of a living space I'll be honest I did not appreciate how much work and effort it would take to get this stage actually happening you know clave the tiles finding the paint but when you see it it's unbelievable and I really can't wait I know it's a long time in the future yet but for the furniture and the furnishings for the textiles to finally arrive wherever size is there's actually a living space and not just a defensive building doesn't it in moments like this you look unless you know yes I've actually sit here and relax yeah it's not all about warfare when it comes to curses this is an entertaining space next to the Great Hall you can bring your more select guests in here to wine them and dine them and perhaps a guest bed in here and everybody else sleeping rounds or mats you can get the feel for that sort of convivial way of life I have to say though the medieval period far more colorful and I thought it was next time the community of skills it takes to build a castle from the blacksmith transforming metal to the neverending need for wood plus making a medieval water mill Wow is all I can say [Music]

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Views: 423,940

Rating: 4.9358974 out of 5

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, castles, geometry, Medieval Documentary, Tom Pinfold, stories, stonemasons, Channel 4 documentary, Documentaries, medieval castle, Britain, France, Documentary, 13th century, history documentary, Documentary Movies - Topic, build, archaeologists, BBC documentary, medieval, Full Documentary, hand-carved, Peter Ginn, real, Secrets, Staircases, Historian, documentary history, History, TV Shows - Topic, Ruth Goodman, construct

Id: pUOF7FY8vFE

Length: 58min 48sec (3528 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2020