Brick by Brick: Rebuilding Our Past - Medieval Building | History Documentary | Reel Truth. History

every year countless thousands of ordinary buildings are demolished smashdown - may waive the new for many this fate is unavoidable but some are so special they're saved carefully taken down piece by piece stored away until a new home for them can be found and they can be lovingly and painstakingly rebuilt a lot grand buildings are always exceptional pieces of architecture but preserve within the fabric are etched or do stories stories about who we are as a nation and what we have achieved about the materials and the techniques we use and why we build the way we do it just feels like you're making it the way it should be mine in this series I'm gon cover the hidden history behind these seemingly humble buildings to reveal there's not just houses of the great and rich that have remarkable stories to tell my grandfather is probably the first airman to die in the first since me well I'll be seeing how these huge incredibly complex jigsaw puzzles that were once buildings are actually put back together again [Music] I'm on the key Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire is hard believe it now but 500 years ago this was the heart of all the biggest and richest port in south wales indeed a commercial hub of national importance sadly no buildings survived now from the places medieval heyday but 30 years ago there was one a structure in magic strange and mysterious I was tucked away over there in 1983 that last surviving building on the Hanford west key side was falling apart but it was saved by four young apprentices who painstakingly dismantled it stone by stone and it's here in these bags and now nearly three decades later I'm gonna join those four same men as they try and put it back together again in the museum a hundred miles from where it originally stood and I'm gonna try and find out what this unusual building actually was who lived in it who works in it I've studied buildings for years they must say this one I find particularly badly now it was here just behind this Palmer the strange tower light structure was incredibly sturdy with exceptionally thick walls most intriguingly of all the ground floor consisted of a vaulted chamber and above it on the first floor was a single room dwelling that originally could be accessed only from the outside by a ladder it dates to the 15th century and unofficially has been called the merchants house this terrain makes things a little bit complicated but the building stood just about here with his back as it were to cliff in front of me and its sights now occupied by these uh ladies laughs oh jeez I have a photograph of the building just before is being dismantled so I'm standing now roughly here almost at the door incredible transformation earth was this building was it related to the port just over there or since it has painted sort of vaulted ground floor I wonder if it was a fortification of some sort perhaps related to the castle which is just there maybe the building itself will hold some clues it's going to be reconstructed here at some faggins National History Museum in Cardiff where buildings from across the nation have been preserved I'm meeting Gareth Nash he was part of the original team who dismantled the Haverfordwest house and is now project manager of the rebuild so who are these guys taking the building down these are taking about 30 years ago and they're still here still working this today all of them yes yes yes so you like the Fab Four rebuilding this building what can I say this is Ian a head carpenter today this is Mike and Andrew still Masons that's yours faithfully there in the middle time has passed and those guys are still here still working on it yes that's wonderful isn't it 30 years on those same three craftsmen are beginning work on the reconstruction so this is the team this is the team hello I feel like I've met you all before maybe slightly younger what are you doing here these are the actual stones from the harvard west house we've bagged them up and in storage and they're just ready to be taken down bag by bag and split open and use okay so you know it's not that every stone goes back into exactly the same position it would have been no it'll just be corner stones window stones Dorf door stones so all of the edges all the key stones go back all the arch stones are going as ash domes and it's just building in between and just just filling in do you think the fact that you were there when it came down it's gonna help you putting it back together what do you think anyone could follow those instructions helps immensely because there may be little quirks in the walls or in the roof and you get that in your memory and you'll be able to put it back well our beams is to see where they'll go because it's quite puzzle [Music] but before the stonemasons can get to work an artificial cliff needs to be constructed in a secluded Glade in the museum grounds a hillside is dug away and huge boulders lifted into position this is to replicate the location where the building originally stood have an idea what's building whether she looked like eventually this is a cut through the building a section and it's got a a vaulted sort of ceiling or the floor structure yes and as you can see the building's built up against this rock face so it's hard up oh absolutely against a cliff that didn't put you off no no no so you're not just trying to rebuild a medieval building you had to make one where you've got to rebuild a medieval kind of environment many landscapes we do the exception is sturdy construction of the mysterious cave site building leads me to believe it could be a fortification connected to haverfordwest castle the castle was built in the early 12th century by the Normans during their conquest and settlement of South Wales this became gateway into South Wales with the town and the port growing around the mighty castle I'm meeting Simon Hancock curate of the town's museum to see the normal English settlement of Haverfordwest could offer some clue to the purpose of our 15th century building well the Normans really began with the settlement of Pembroke in 1093 they removed the native population who were dispersed north it became known as English we didn't it a little England this part of Wales William Camden writing in the reign of Elizabeth the first describes Pembrokeshire as anglia trans Walia little England beyond Wales and that name is always stuck it was absolutely a beacon of the power of the English kings in southwest Wales and it attracted enormous hostility it was a war zone and you're talking of a hundred and fifty year timespan but the troubles goes that they continue into the 15th century don't they in the town and castle they were attacked by Oh England during his uprising in 1405 has craters no that's right we know that they took the town yes there was no Geneva Convention so any of the civilians would have been either captured enslaved or put to the sword but we know that the castle withstood their assault this is fascinating the towns destroyed 14:05 our building is erected well maybe 80 years later yet presumably the memory of this of the destruction indeed centuries of destructive attacks on the town before 1485 inspire inform encourage the buildings of article house to be very very conscious of attack the psychology of defense would have been paramount [Music] it's now September for months since building work began stonemasons Mike and Andrew are completing the vertical base runes using traditional lime water to bind together that tons of stone soon they'll face their greatest challenge the construction of the vault in a way you've basically recreated the little corner of Haverfordwest now and this is the cliff face yeah because it is evolved its we need something substantial to orbit's so you excited about the next stage because this is really up until now it's relatively traditional building but you're about to get sort of medieval aren't you it would be more exciting now when we come to the vault because we don't build them often you know it's gonna be good that's exciting ice exciting that's what we look forward to for me the biggest mystery about our little building is is that vault because the vault takes an awful lot of time of labor of materials basically expense to build now normally you find them in the buildings of the Great and the good in churches and castles or places like this this is the Bishop's Palace in lampf II near Haverfordwest [Music] much of the palace dates to the 15th century the same as our building it's fortified with high walls battlements and gate houses this is for protection but it's also a statement of power and status now this is one of the bishops great halls built in the 14th century and if you just sort of ignore the scale of it for a second there's something very familiar about it and if you look there's a staircase leading up to the first floor where the living quarters are this is where the bishop would would hold court and down below you have this magnificent vaulted chamber look at this isn't it incredible and this is actually a barrel vault just like house and it's the most simple kind of vault that there is it's the kind of thing that the Egyptians used underground for for drainage and for tombs and actually it took the the ingenuity of the Romans to really kind of master the vault and start using it above-ground and that's because it's actually a lot harder to build a vault then you might at first think [Music] now the thing about a vault is it actually it's just a whole series of archers next to each other and I'm gonna try and and make an arc chalice and bricks and show you the principles now to start off with you have to build your side walls now it's very simple when you're building straight sided walls because gravity does a lot of the work for you holds them in place as long as you don't get too tall now we want to start bringing an arch this is where we're gonna spring up from we need to use either lots of different bits of stone with wedges in between them or we're using a brick we need to use the cut brick yesterday you can imagine if you start stacking these are gravity it's gonna want to start pulling them in so you need a former something like this and this is really the secret to all arch and vault building and this is part the reason why it's so much work is that not only do you have to build a vault you have to build a former before you can build the volcker arch this former is gonna take all of the load until you finish the art show actually the former has to be incredibly strong and take tons and tons of masonry on full-size vaults we've also got to make sure that they're gonna meet right so in a way this is the most important brick because this is basically the key stone and in principle it should lock our arch but you're gonna do now is to kind of do or die bit you have to drop the former and then transfer the load off the former into the arch and in principle it should stand up but I have a sneaking suspicion well who knows let's give it a go okay right that's positive whoa [Music] what don't say anything too soon no way [Laughter] so that is how you build an arch you get a sense of of how hard it is to make an arch and that's just a little section of a vault and so it really reinforces that question why did they go to all the effort of making a miniature version of a for bishops Great Hall on the key side and Haverfordwest vault building was also expensive the reason why can be seen back at the museum where in the carpenter is finishing the substantial for work they need for the reconstruction says that the last piece yep [Music] ian's made six sturdy trusses which have to be strong enough to support the massive weight of the vault stone work the frame needs to be self-supporting sitting within the building's walls so you've only gone half way that's right there we found in medieval times with vaulted arches there's a straight chunk in the middle of the vault some people say was an expansion jug things like that but thought were rubbish it was because the timber was expensive so they only made the formwork in sections so we've done this half way so this is all wedged up in place the boys'll masons will do the storm look over it when that set will drop it on the wedges knock out those no chains not the folding wedges out so it drops and then we'll move it over and wedge it back up into place again thank you what amazing to think that sort of what five four five hundred years ago we're doing exact make it exactly this shake of the same thing same size same shape same principles slightly different timbre clucky [Music] my research is leading me to believe that our sturdy Volta structure may have been some sort of fortified building but his design and location here right by the key site at Haverfordwest have led many to think it was in fact a merchant's house over there was Haverford West's medieval keen incredible some warehouses have I but from the 19th century and indeed the keys and the port remain active until the railways arrived in 1853 then went into decline incredible here I've got this some tantalizing photograph taken about 1900 from roughly where I'm standing now I've been see here number the warehouse is shown in this photograph still survived this ramp with steps that survives as does this warehouse at the top of the ramp now with green shutters very striking of these large ships tied up to the key of course in Middle Ages within many ocean-going craft here bringing goods war over Western Europe this is the oldest picture of the port I can find is a 1748 engraving although made 300 years after our building was constructed many of the medieval harbour buildings are still standing large seagoing vessels crowd the port and there are many substantial warehouses had high tide the river was navigable for ships up to 250 tons which arrived from London Bristol France and Spain [Music] with voltage ground floor which could be used for storage and his proximity to the harbor our building could well have been emotions housed here on the coast 10 B 20 miles away from half of at West is a famous merchants house dates from the late 15th century has been fully restored by the National Trust I've come to see a fist building as anything in common with ours oh well the first obvious difference is that the ground floor is not bolted in masonry it's a big timber beam and joists our timber structure and here absolutely huge fireplace so this presumably would have been a kitchen originally or perhaps a shop because it was centered here this level from the level above that staircase has been added quite recently well very different first floor living area great hall really of light large-scale and um terrific details look at this Ruth humble very ornamental Mullins window if he carved light flooding in from three sides the sense of space but although the differences I observe there's something here we should intrigue you look below the core borer is a doorway this would seem to be the door leading to the street said here we see this house was originally entered at first low level like our humble building with a staircase through this door down to the street the core the ground level there this house unlike our building has there a third floor and quite a room it is indeed with a tremendous roof structure of a sword I've only seen in Pembrokeshire it creates a love interior very light very habitable does really feel at the home of a a rich Tudor merchant the high status of merchants who lived in houses like this in the late 15th century suggests very strongly that our humble building was not a merchant's house although of course it could have been the hovel lower status trader or perhaps it had a different function entirely with the supporting formwork now complete stonemasons Andrew and Mike have started work on the vault on the flat edge just like a sandwich so when you come in from under the building yeah and then after you've got that first sort of arch do you then have to backfill to get weight on top of it before before we tighten the arch up we get tons and tons of sleet and knock it in an empty joint to pre-stress it yeah that's right yeah really tightens it up and then would have better luck we can take that formwork down you saw it before it came down I mean was it really well built and was the quality of the masonry on the arch I mean solid well done it was very very well built we had a bit of trouble knocking it down to be honest enemy we was here for six weeks and every every day we worked out I mean this is a huge amount of effort I mean first we almost make a timber build them and that is strong enough you could build on top of it then you go to all the effort of building the stonework and they need to take out the wood so in a way why didn't they just build a wooden floor all this work going to you and it must be for some reason I think it's done for security reasons now we've begun work on the building it's become clear just what a simple structure it is and this pile of stones here tells a very interesting story about it now it's called random rubble it's what the building is built of but what's interesting about these stones is that it comes from different sources that's all local to Haverfordwest but like this one here that's a river stone so they've just gone around the local area scavenging materials wherever they could find them and what's fascinating is you've got to remember this is the medieval period when stone masonry is a really refined art form and beautiful cathedrals are springing up all over the country so it makes our buildings pretty low-rent the few medieval buildings that survived inhabited west of stony there's a castle of course it also screams churches the fact that the town could have fought to build and maintain three churches reveals how well it was in Middle Ages a wealth that came from trade [Music] the stain work in some areas reveals just how skillful the evil Masons could be and on his arcade the dates from the early 13th century see wonderful examples of the of the work the skill the genius of Mason's this work of course is not very contrast war rather rough-and-ready rubble masonry mantle building the oldest part of the church a 12th century but many of the more elaborate and expensive features are added around the time our building was constructed these include the clerestory windows and the wonderful oak roof what's fascinating is that at the same time second half of 15th century other churches in the town were being embellished Kelly was a sort building boom underway waffles flooding into the town does his boom off a clue to the use of our building I'm hoping architectural historian Tom Lloyd may have an answer hello now this is a wonderful church and I just wondering why was it embellished it's just wonderful way you know in the late 15th century my presume it was a the town got up in status or something it did something incredibly important happened in 1479 it received a charter from the fact the Prince of Wales was Lord of Hannaford and that Charter set this town honor honor on a course to prosperity that carried it through for centuries the Charter report in 79 established a mayor bailiffs a sheriff yes 24 councillors and that really meant a part for any Hale said it was free of feudal Overlord ship the place had self-government the mayor had his own pure status the new boss of half West the the feudal overlord had gone the place had self-determination and of course the common counsel of a lifts or of the merchants of the town they were the heads of the trade guilds it's absolutely prospered by 1577 it was described as the best built in most civil town in the South Wales these people were free and they rich they'd got their independence and they were jollyball going to show it fantastic a new elite new men for the New Haven it seems possible that the construction of our building was connected to this enrichment of Haverfordwest merchants a lead in the 15th century not the medieval layout of the town again indicates it wasn't one of their homes well in front of us the high street I mean this of course was a heart wasn't about the merchants town it's got richer as who came up the hill I suspect to the high town here the height act because the bottom would have been smelly and easy and that's where the port was all happening yes you wanted to get away from that down there Keith Street that was the rough end wasn't it rough and prosperous that seals it for me are sturdy tower wasn't a merchant's house but I still suspect it's somehow connected to their trade [Music] it's now five months into the build and stonemasons Mike and Andrew have completed work on their vault morning I'm back visiting site on what promises to be a a momentous day because today the art of the stonemasons is really going to be put to the test because we're going to remove the formwork the wooden support upon which the vault of the undercroft has been built as of course the big question is will the vault say standing when the supports are removed so which so did you do Mike the best site competition to think about it is guys neither side is gonna work without the other so I hope they both work so if you sort of stress tested it at all actually it's a pretty thin structure I was very confident and now actually I'm here so you build the arch and you stand underneath that when you take out the form works like this gold having faith in the fellow tradesman right what's the plan then you take that side I'll take this thing and what do you two do right so what just tap that back right we'll get the boys in though and wheel undo the props and hopefully it'll just drop don't use the word drop no not the word drop you anything James yep [Music] good no I don't think the medieval owner would have gone to all the trouble of building a vault like that unless it was for protection although I don't now believe our building was connected to the castle it does remind me of fortified farms called battles as an example looking at here is remarkably similar our voltage ground-floor one room above entrance only via the first floor door in scale and its status humble modest service of uncanny really the similarity in a very good pointer to him what our building could have been but unfortunately as far as I know these battles is fortified farms exist only in one place on the border of England and Scotland and not in Pembrokeshire [Music] five hundred years ago in the lawless Scottish Borders marauding bands of Raiders known as Reavers terrorized the countryside they stole and often murdered on a massive scale in response wealthier families built battles defendable farm houses their livestock could be secured in the vaulted chamber or the family retreated to the first floor pulling the ladder up behind them and looking the area of the English Scottish border and it shows how range of battles as shown as red triangles is lots of them and then as it one goes south they fall away but she no vessels part his wails and as you would imagine lots of fortifications of different types and seemingly no vassals except much to my amazement one comes right to the south southwest into Pembrokeshire there are battles than the shown here is dark blue inverted triangles around the region of ever furred West indeed could our building be one of these battles two of those self Pembrokeshire buildings described as vassals a tucked away down this bumpy track that Carswell farm and I'm fascinated to see if they bear any resemblance to our building this is it depend to be honest with you it's quite extraordinary built similar stone it's got very similar pitch to the roof and first for access and it's pretty uncanny actually [Music] yeah there's a vault look at that I mean almost identical to ours extraordinary this is the first floor above the vault and this is the original entrance here one entrance defendable there are windows but they're sort of arrow slit windows you know there defendable and it seems to me given the fact that our building was only 15 miles from here that that it must have been some kind of defendable structure some kind of vassal I'm meeting Richard's Sukkot from the Royal Commission on the ancient and historical monuments of Wales to discover what he knows about this ruin hello hello Charlie yeah how are you thanks for coming down good to see a wonderful little building this isn't it absolutely wonderful no it's a defensible structure isn't it that I'm right in thinking that I think that's fair enough to say yes and it's it's a battle right it's similar to a battle that vassal is it's a kind of vertical longhouse the cattle underneath the people on top this is formally similar but it's got a fireplace down below yeah I think we have to think of it as a refuge more than a permanent dwelling a place where you could take refuge in an emergency so it's a medieval panic room yeah that's a really good way of looking at it what kind of emergency we are in the english ree so which is which is the english-speaking part of Pembrokeshire are we talking about tribes or band groups of men coming from mid and North Wales to kind of see what they could get out of the English ring we're talking about people only a few miles away to the north by the 16th century it's pretty clear there wasn't aggression there was avoidance so I think we have to think of another sort of threat all these little vaulted structures are located near the sea I think it's at least plausible that the people who had these houses as refuges were anxious about tyrunt's and there are some late medieval references to piracy in the Bristol Channel now we have a little building that came from Haverfordwest you do that's on a river so do you think as I'm beginning to wonder is our Haverfordwest building a defensible building is it a little vassal kind of structure well it certainly has defensive features its formally its structurally similar to this sort of what is it then well we do have a clue in this drawing of Edward the sixth coronation this is a commercial heart of London yeah and you can see various shops and things here but moving along here you can see some buildings which is not unlike yes exactly vaulted ground-floor with half timbering more decorative sort of similar layer oh yes grander so what do we think these buildings are well it's pretty certain that they were warehouses you have shops here warehouses here so your theory would be that it's it's a secure lockup exactly it's a cure lock up maybe ice not a romantic theory but it in fact explains the evidence with its key site location it does make sense in our building or some sort of medieval strong room to discover if any of the goods that were imported into haverfordwest could warrant such high security have come to the town's record office now on the screen in front of me is a copy of the document held at the National Archives in Kew is a petition dated 1327 directed towards a king from a body of merchants in Hannaford West they are sort of complaining about having to pay duty more than once on their goods because they got the load into the wrong poor before arriving here but the key thing is these chaps proclaim that they have brought why many times obviously there's a big business being wine here from France and wine high-value commodity so it occurs to me that our vaulted cellar our little building was probably part of this industry the importation of wine into in well through Haverfordwest why would have been stored in in the vaulted ground-floor been kept safe from the--from far so no voltage structure made of stone very good um atmosphere for storing wine some further delving in the town archives has uncovered another record which I believe could be the crucial breakthrough in my investigation now this really is quite a discovery is that manual record or the foils who are very distinguished motion family of Haverfordwest is dated 15 84 when this is clearly 20th century reprint and on this page you see that they had um a tenement it says in ship Street ship Street the old name for key Street and next to this tenement a property owned by them described as one seller and the chamber surely that are building one seller the vaulted ground floor with a chamber above what's fantastic my view is it says this building is in my own hands valued at 10 shillings nearly I take that to me that they own the building it's not let value if it were let is 10 shillings a year but they have it in their own hands till because they are letting someone live there so presumably John Martin is a retainer of the family a servant living in the chamber above the cellar absolutely amazing it's now spring and stonemasons Andrew and Mike have resumed work on the first floor walls following a winter hiatus they've also built some steps which probably weren't a feature of the original building but are necessary for public access with the stonework shooting up in the Carpenter has begun prefabricating the roof he's using modern machinery to cut everything to size but then a traditional adds to finish so what's the plan well plan is yep you gonna sit there and strap that near leg and what does this do that's a bit of leather let's call it protect knee or thigh I like this sort of simple technology is it sort of true this yeah this is what they would have used this we try and keep things like Sinise I mean this is commitment to the kind of restoration course plan Lowe is to add to this joist okay so how do you what do you do all of you your skin the top of the timber like so easy and all you gotta worry about is if the grain changes then you just go from the opposite way is the key to sort of let the weight of the adds do you weight with a little bit of power on it and just try not a digging in to work chicken isn't it so come around come around a bit that's not as easy as it looks it isn't it no I thought I'd be you thought you'd rather finish binodal I could do that yeah another full day on it and it should be alright so it's much better than that but it is gonna look amazing oh it will it is a lovely finish on that it's gonna look great by May the walls are complete all the wood has been cut and the construction of the roof has begun one guy's the original group had been replaced long before the building was dismantled so the reconstruction is based on a local medieval design this is really old technology isn't it yeah I mean walls antennas have been around since the Roman times maybe we should get out and get this up yep you bring the collar or the no boys you can put the whole thing together at one yep get in there yeah let's now put knit in some tip it into place tip it into place video [Music] in this is a really wonderful simple roof a beautiful piece of designer - really nice attention to detail as well because it's very traditional he's a peg joint there's two things that's brilliant about it one is that as the building dries as these Timbers dry it gets tighter and stronger and what's amazing is that the Romans used to use nails to hold their buildings together putting with oak is it's got this tannin in it which is what this black staining is and it will eat through metal everything like really than than stainless steel so the Romans buildings used to fall apart in a few decades but if you use a timber peg this will stay up for hundreds of years now beyond that there's this lovely bracket and it's wonderful sort of curved shape now this is really unique I've never seen this before it's unique to Pembrokeshire sort of very beautiful because of the way that it makes this curve and brings the roof sort of down onto the walls of the building and references the lovely stone vault below as our building at the Museum nears completion my investigations into his Haverfordwest origins are also nearly concluded the viol family the rich merchants who seem to have owned our building are recorded as having lived at number 15 the high street it's thought that inside the family's great heraldic fireplace survives but has not been seen in living memory so I've met up again with Tom Lloyd to see if we can uncover it and find more clues by the strange little building they may have owned the house is now a shop with flats at the rear in the 18th century it was given a new facade but behind it much of the medieval building survives well that is uh quite a surprise well clearly appears to be a medieval of vast windows of like from a church I suppose it would have a double high great hall well it must have done it it gives you some indication of how high the status of this house really was and we do have this reference to the royal family who had stained glass yeah in a big window in their house this is reference to George Owen who describes a house in the 1570s some kind of the houses having the the stained glass in the window showing the arms or Morgan royal who was then the occupant of the house so the Royals were big players on a national level the Royals were a very significant Pembrokeshire family Morgan royal was sheriff and mayor of Haverfordwest in the 1580s he was a proud and very rich man and this window is an astonishing evidence of it and we believe as well that he had some chimney pieces carved with heraldry on them too thank you the building has changed so much and now is quite sure where the fireplace is or if it has survived at all but tom has his suspicions in ins the agent for the owner of the property who's very kindly let us come in here to do our worst it odd that it's behind this wall but we think we think chimney piece is and we're basing that on this plan we have here from the Royal Commission of ancient Monty Python some while ago which shows the chimney-piece here we're in this room ok so this is the sense of this thing it said that's good to know there is and we know from all photographs what we're looking for this large chimney piece with this heraldic mantle which I would think is about five foot high you have to find the middle therefore half filled two three four and a half there that's about the middle so I can work it out you should have your finger on the Royal Arms of England and no one in living memory has seen it it's a bit like Tutankhamun's tomb isn't it one of the girls is perhaps a few inches away and yet no one has ever seen it seem like we will see wonderful things we decide to first cut a peephole to see if the fireplace really is behind this wall [Music] analyzing country it is by God it is by God it is and these are all kind of arms just when we thought it was exact height you've got it perfect isn't this fantastic this is something of astonishing architectural and artistic importance really exciting amazing it's just bizarre look at it what is it is it so unexpected and in this very simple room but a thing now of course is if we can't reveal more than its are decoding the the heraldry yes and get the connections back tears if the Voyles it possible and to our little building if possible and confirm this really is created by the people who you know who made our article structure gosh it's front page news now the position of the fireplace is known the builders can use power tools to quickly cut away the remainder of the wall well Tom here it is it's quite as good or better than we expected I'm astonished to see paintwork still I think I can see a bit of red there I mean it's extraordinary what's the healthy tell us in terms of days and meaning this appears to be a religious symbolic of coke tonight I think we have not knotted ropes yes and initials now that was going to suggest the flail which Jesus was beaten with the patient's condition on the panel and it has to be presumably before 1530s case is Catholic imagery it would appear so eyes and also we've captured them just before the Protestant Reformation this is Tillich adding some of the family with Catholic in the tree and then we have the Royal Arms of course here as always this date with the French Quarter ring before the English authoring so the owner of this chimney piece is proclaiming his allegiance to the royal family you know the king and the Catholic Church very important to these status okay that's just before the Reformation when you still have Kathy Miller indeed presumably yes then we have this code which is very interesting to Pembrokeshire code which belong to the omens of Henley's north pembroke show but very important here in this town it seems that what the owner of this house is doing is using the arms of him putting up the arms of important people both nationally and locally to claim allegiance or respect towards them it is amazing these stones really do speak absolutely do you know we are witnesses to the most exciting discovery [Music] [Applause] [Music] who'd have thought of such a modest modern looking room who contain this early Judah wonder this is a beautiful thing is a window into a cotton world who tells us so much about Haverfordwest and about our family the Voyles better built we think our humble structure and a family who created a lavish fireplace like this are certainly one who'd require a secure vault to protect their goods [Music] it's been over a year since the start of this build and part of the reason that it's taken that long is because of the incredible attention to detail and authenticity that the team have gone through to build it in the right way for the period but at last they are on the home stretch so I've come up it's give him a hand with some of those finishing touches yes beautiful yeah tidy say they're very very good where are they from them they're from Pembrokeshire so they didn't come off the building and nor the when we took the building down it was foggy any sheet so we've got some tiles from family in Pembrokeshire the hundreds of slates need to be sorted by size but first most of them need to be reshaped break you Tobin charge again so you get this lovely chamfer driven edge yeah so this is what we're trying to do is it that's yeah we yeah yep that's the finish one side finished that's absolute well if I love it with this diminishing coursing started off at 16 finishing off with sevens at the top that's wonderful so what are we doing we're gonna hang some tiles now so this is literally just hung yep pegged and hung but I thought they were supposed to be done with wooden pegs well they were years ago but we use in aluminium because the wooden ones were just rocks split and after 10-15 years they'd all fast slipping and falling off the roof as it was you pop that through it getting a hang it that's it that's it yeah the food that up the roof you go the tighter they actually become you know oh so it's the weight yeah just the weight of child's on top of them yeah anywhere is it and it's amazing how much coverage you're getting isn't it I mean you end up with almost three layers late Danya which I mean must be very heavy very heavy and I suppose that's exactly why there's such a big trusses in it in a little roof like this massive trusses exactly yeah [Music] the building is also being painted with traditional lime wash just as it would have been 500 years ago [Music] five weeks later all major construction work is complete [Music] the house can now be furnished and the fire can be lit [Music] dan and I have returned to see it in all its glory well it's variants or sculpture isn't it for abstract simple it's very sculptural it's also I mean it's the most beautiful setting with these wonderful mature woodland around it that's a strange circles I mean region is stood on the town key is at the bad part of towns it's not odd that for me to see it you know [Music] what a wonderful well so I said pound balls actually slightly pointed isn't it's very nicely shaped our period of sixteenth century so credibly strong wonderfully well build security for one's goods ones wine or brandy but it might be security from fire it's a wonderful little portrait is not off of Tudor Britain the new merchant classes new men their wealth is in goods in trade the nobles are there you know castles there their fortified manors their armies of God their possessions these virgins what they have they have warehouses like this secure warehouses in a store keeper mob and this is the upstairs lovely I must had in spate to be furnished in mid 16th century style to be locative of the period it's not totally finish there's a few little bits to finish like a bed platform yes the Garda Road the toilet a long drop yes yes still needs a bit you know like a curtain yeah bit of privacy exactly and then the underside of the lovely beautiful slate will be plastered it's wonderful being in this space cuz of you know the boils for example the family owned a building like this perhaps even this one we also know from the doctrines that they didn't let it out but they had all their men living in it to guard their property there's no police force at that times it is down to their mister to fight off the robbers so they put that ladder down they go downstairs all they just look at the windows mean what you like that's basicly what all of this is for a human burglar alarm to celebrate the completion of the reconstruction the head of the museum Beth Ann Lewis has brought her team together to perform an ancient building ceremony I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for coming and also to pay a big tribute to our historic buildings unit who have been instrumental in recreating the building that we've got behind us so a big round of applause to them in order to ensure that an or evil spirits going to invade our new house we've got an opportunity now to do a topping out ceremony and Gareth Nash our buildings character will take a piece of yew tree to do the topping out ceremony so good health yes it'd ah thank you [Applause] [Music] hey well done mate yeah genuinely I think the building is beautiful I think you've done a really fantastic job thank you very much thank you letting me putting up with me myself and attempts to help you know pleasure you know you know well done thank you very much guys [Music] who the thought such a humble building including body so much history these rough stone walls speak of our remarkable transition in British society our emergence from medieval feudalism and the ascent of the new rich merchant class men of great ambition who sailed across the oceans to open the new world and who laid the foundation of the modern age while the men that carefully demolish this building 30 years ago may have aged somewhat it is through their determination and craft that this building has really been rejuvenated eradicating centuries of neglect and I think from the beautiful vault to that wonderful slate roof the result is quite stunning and for me it teaches a very important lesson they do this through the humble and everyday buildings that you truly get an insight into the way that the majority of our ancestors would have lived [Music] you [Music] you

Channel: Banijay History

Views: 128,442

Keywords: history, facts, interesting, documentary, history documentary, documentary history, history channel, ancient, world history, full documentary, top documentaries, documentaire, documental, documentary film, free documentary, brick by brick, construction, rebuilding, old building, building, historic, architecture, heritage, heritage building, world war i, Brick by Brick: Rebuilding Our Past, rebuild, episode 3, medieval, middle ages

Id: GiWz7cIxJpo

Length: 58min 47sec (3527 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 23 2018