How To Build A 13th Century Castle | Secrets Of The Castle | Absolute History

[Music] castles dominated the medieval landscape and Britain has some of the finest in the world today most of decaying relics many of their secrets buried in time [Music] now historian Ruth Goodman and archaeologists Tom pin phone than Pete again are turning the clock back to relearn the secrets of the medieval castle builders this is the ultimate and medieval technology the origin of our castles 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 at 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 March Tom Ruth and Peter have traveled to San Fazio a hundred miles south of Paris where get along Castle is being built there now 17 years into a 25 year project and over the next few months its most defining features the towers will take shape should dizzy the team are meeting members of get Allen's work force Master Mason froyo a new chief and site administrator Sarah Preston oh this is amazing thank you Castle in the making I'd like to introduce you first of all to fly on fly always our Master Mason so he's gonna be guiding you throughout your stay here you oversee this entire project that is amazing that really is well it's really simple I just have to know very well of the castle but you almost like the puppet master you have the people work in the quarry that people working it's Mason's the carpenters you can control everyone well I prefer the major of a musical conductor we have to to be in the same time walking this is very important yes rhythm so it's like music well if you all the conductor and you got the strings over there and the cushion over there and then Tiffany over there I can play a triangle building getting on is an enormous undertaking it will require some 30,000 tons of stone that must be quarried shaped and lifted into position without modern machining there are also teams of wood cutters and carpenters constructing scaffolding roofing and doors blacksmiths making iron work and tools as well as tile makers and cartas in the 13th century English workers crossed the channel to hone their skills in France France is where architecture is happening castles churches we're looking at their built environment and thinking wow they're really good at that and we're importing all those ideas into Britain smoochie historians are very used to reading the theories behind how castles are made are hopefully it's an experimental archaeologist I can actually tests on those theories put them into practice 13th century life there's a lot of questions surrounding it there aren't that many records so by the actual act of building this castle it's almost like creating a window through which we can observe what 13th century life might have been like [Music] building a medieval castle began with a wooden model so what is this model useful in medieval times they don't have a paper plan right so the use of wood model I guess this is way of the Lord saying this is what I want my castle to look like yes and enter Lord he came it changed things with the mother it seemed very easy for him I suppose a medieval building sites like you have here you can easily have over a hundred Masons they call can look at this and knowing angles they need to be doing in the and the wall that they're working on geralyn's design is typical of the 13th century many British castles such as harloff Conway Carnarvon have a similar layout castles were not only for defense they were show of strength allured putting his stamp on the landscape inside the walls there were grand houses with great halls kitchens and even chapels a thick wall surrounded by a dry moat protects an inner courtyard which itself is protected by six towers [Music] Wow this is the great tower this is what Florian wants us to work on when completed the great tower will be almost 30 meters high providing a lookout for approaching enemies and with walls four meters thick it's the castles ultimate stronghold so if we if we were the wall or stand here I'm inside your inside that's four I mean that's massive it just brings home our when he tens of thousands of tons of stone will be in this castle when it's finished back then the only way of transporting stone over land was using horse-drawn carts minimizing the distance it had to be moved was paramount so like many castles of the time getting on is actually built in a quarry in the quarry we have the sandstone the primary building fabric we also have the sand and the water that can be used to make the mortar we have ochre which again can be used to making pigments we're on a clay lens here and the clay can be used for firing tiles roof tiles floor tiles and we're surrounded by forests which is a source of timber it's a source of fuel that can keep the blacksmith's going almost everything we need to build a castle is just a stone's throw away [Music] the boys have put to work extracting blocks of sandstone under the watchful eye of a stonemason who's worked here for 16 years clémence gear are the first job upon your table oh you poor who yes it felt pretty cool on a PA our make this small Stein Clemens teaching the boys have to cut huge stones from the quarry into usable building blocks using just a hammer a chisel and a wedge I don't think I'm gonna skills to do this I'll give it a go this is on I'm Gladys you got me they're making this hole fit the wedge snugly but I'll see Clem over these years and years of experience knows exactly how to orientate this so the which goes into this one hole you hit it and that's gonna cause a fracture in the already pre-existing sediment lines and it was split in half good we still get to finish bond music good music good music and now a sledgehammer Wow you could just see the fracture starting to appear this is not about brute force about listening it's about looking precision engineering perfect this is a good island toy the hardness of the sandstone varies considerably depending on its iron content the more iron the harder the stone so the medieval Mason had a system of grading it got three categories are stoned here the pit footpath in the proof got a pair this sort of black high iron content sandstone that's used for the major load-bearing parts of the castle the path is more reddish sandstone and the soft one the puffs sort of very yellowy crumbly sandstone yes I was shopping for stone root isn't it but coming out here we're looking at the colors and we can actually get what we want the particular task we're about to do these stones will form the main building blocks at the castle just as important as the stone for the workers in the woods surrounding the castle Ruth setting up home [Music] building a castle involves such a lot of people and they've all got to live somewhere so you get a sort of temporary community setting up at the edge of the building site as all these different people come and go with their various skills and naturally over time that begins to become a bit more permanent a village in the making indeed many villages right across Europe in Britain as well as in France can actually trace their origin to being camps for workers on a building site this small hovel is typical of a workers home on a medieval building site workers cottages somewhere like this were always going to be thrown up in a hurry and fairly sort of basic but then so were those of most 13th century people and this is our everything this is all there is here is our kitchen our living room our sleeping quarters just this one single space [Music] the centerpiece of every medieval home was the fireplace the fire was not just used for cooking it also provided heat and light in grand houses obviously they sort of like cobbled this whole area but we know from lots of archaeological digs the ordinary houses it's just a patch on the ground and also I use a couple of bigger stones to balance pops on a bit [Music] the cottage needs somewhere to store the staple foods of wheat and barley so Ruth is calling on English carpenters Simon Dunne to make a grain arc I'm guessing that making furniture in the 13th century was rather different from what a modern cabinet maker would do Oh certainly certainly very different from what anybody would do now or even in the last couple of hundred years you're limited by the materials and the tools available in the 13th century saws were expensive so carpenters used them only when absolutely necessary instead wood was split using wooden wedges yeah and then turn it over and further down gosh this is faster than soaring isn't it absolutely there we go that's into Simon splits the wood again to produce planks this you know I mean that piece particularly is a really good piece of plank yeah it's pretty flat you can work with it and that's a couple of minutes I mean I hate to think how long that would take to a song the rough planks must now be smoothed off this is a side ax it's just ground on one one edge so it's flat on the other so you can just trim up the surface of it you can more or less use an axe like a plane once all the planes are made the ark is assembled without nails or glue pegs your basic thing for joining furniture together instead of nails yes so there are some things you do need a sort we'll just cut the year pegs off to size right there's no glue or anything in here it's just the word holding Zords together anyway [Music] so you happy with that I'm gonna do the job it'll do the job home isn't home without a grain art absolutely not [Applause] water was another vital resource to the building of a castle and hundreds of gallons would have been used every day to make more - alone so castles were always built near a plentiful supply Tom and Peter have been sent to repair the castles well to hoist the bucket it needs a new rope and pulley we can make rope I reckon is ten meters down give or take a meter but I suspect they sunk this to a depth where they're never gonna run out of water exactly it is crucial for defense it's crucial for life inside the car so once the castles operational you need to have that constant supply and obviously we need it now for our building Peters commissioning a pulley from woodturner Gary Baker for the first stage is to select a log yeah and the pulleys gonna be in historic okay so you could just cut a life section for a log and just do that as a pulley that would never work really problem with the end grain yeah it shrinks at different levels and it's just gonna split up live so we're gonna follow the grain this way we're just gonna rough chop it what's the wood that you either this is a ash now she's very a very dry wood and therefore when it dries it doesn't doesn't move that much it's not gonna warp and crack a mandrill is hammered into the center of the roughly shaped wood so it can be turned on a pole lays pole lathes like this have been used both in England and France since before the 10th century so it's just a pedal pulling string around the mandrel yeah a flexible pole and a pole basically all it does is lift pedal back up the roughly shaped ash is turned to make a cylinder watching you that's really really agnostic it is it is it's like the gymnasium maybe you would remain here but you do get fit [Music] as well as a pulley they'll need a rope for the well rope is essential on a medieval building site to lift loads and bind scaffold Tom's commissioning a rope for the well from the castles rope maker Yvonne alwa first he lays ham peons along the Rope wall to form four strands each with 14 yarns I could definitely see why this is called a rope walk always him to do is walk up and down for this 50 meter rope he's actually walked half a mile was extraordinary the four strands are now complete next they must be twisted together first stage of the twisting will actually reduce the length these strands by about 10 cents that's about 1.5 meters so estimating that's about there when the traveler hits this mark Yvonne knows the rope has been twisted the optimal number of times very slowly the travellers moving in but with each turn that Yvonne does we get something I see as being rope [Music] Gary's turning the cylinder into a pulley by cutting a groove in its rim [Music] take it off there we go so smooth and so fast stop the yarns have been twisted to form strands then the strands are twisted in the opposite direction to form the finished rope [Music] to make the strands to twist the yarns in one direction to make the rope twist the strands against each other that way you create that tension and that torsion it stops them unravel [Music] super cool kami se passe I thread this through wish what you hold it up now Ruthie Peter can fit the pulley and rope to the well in the castles courtyard you know traditionally this is where people gossip burning standing around the well well Tilly's standing around the water cooler drop it down yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] on a medieval construction site the majority of the water is used to make mortar to fix the quarried sandstone in place okay the production of the daily batch is supervised by a policeman go item we need 25 basket of his son 25 and 50 oh this one motor makers at a vital role to play in the building of a castle as the strength of the entire construction rested on their mixture formulas were closely guarded secrets and passed down from master to apprentice due to the huge amounts of sand required to build this castle the trying source as much as possible from the local area and luckily and the quarry right there means you've got a huge amount of sand on tap lime is the key ingredient that adea's the stones to one another it's made by heating limestone to 900 degrees and then mixing it with water to create slaked lime good that looks very nice piece of it right now I think the experience is showing for the French guys they're really putting me to shame it's it's enjoyable work though I actually do feel like now bit more connectors and castle [Applause] Philippine cleaner you actually speak to some of us just get on and work and like you seems to roll around and every bit of building material in each am six year it's just just natural magnetism even ten all that gray hair is actually drawing water is actually just stressful working [Applause] [Music] today's batch of mortar and sandstone are destined for the great tower so far it's reached a height of 18 meters but when complete it will be 30 meters high the materials are hoisted to the top using a treadmill winch the forerunner of the modern crane it takes two people to power it and can lift over half a tonne these things are an absolute godsend aren't they they are the machine of a medieval building site bringing up all the stone for the for the walls you think got 500k Taniya wait they're pulling up and yet we maneuver it so easily the service my strength your ballast look there it is this is the ultimate medieval technology to lower the cargo onto the tower the boys simply walk in the other direction okay so walk slowly exciting yes [Music] so this is our stone the sandstone from the quarry and it will be graded into three Lots is near the pit the part for the buffer isn't it less hard that's path that's the medium the pit that very very hard sandstone that is used for facing for the structure for the external walls whereas the path and the puff as she used to infill the walls tie it all together she leaped a large began his career as a builder over 40 years ago for the last 10 years he's worked at get along where he's perfected his skills as a stonemason you are going to lay the mortar but not crush prepared just like this if you were bricklaying do you do that we call flat surface but stone has go in and the mortar has go up into the stone don't go flat okay one of the biggest challenges is ensuring the walls are absolutely straight the integrity of the entire tower depends on it the solution is simplicity itself a lead weight on the end of a string known as a plumb line on the scaffolding here you'll notice is about a two inch gap so you get your plumb line down there and make sure the walls absolutely straight because if it's not Tower starts going like that it will start going like that most of these medieval tools and techniques have been around for millennia and are still used on building sites today just doing the rubble infill to the wall so I've got the facing stone if if the hard stone and that is laid horizontally so the grain runs as it is in the ground if you imagine a book if you lay a book horizontally you stand on it it was put your weight whereas if you lay a but vertically understanding it it will collapse however the infill Bank actually gets laid vertically so the grain is going in the opposite direction and that's because they're all stacked against each other and they push against each other around the tower making this absolutely solid all the tricks of the trade where's that Moss of Peter already in the wall top already [Music] now these I'm hoping are the secret ingredient to transform what is frankly a muddy hole into somewhere comfy to live medieval sources tell us cottage floors were strewn with rushes but just how they were loaned is a bit of a mystery what I think might be the answer is to keep it in bundles and lay them in a sort of herringbone fashion across the whole floor it's the temperature difference between putting your hand there and putting your hand there is astonishing that is cold and wet nasty that is wrong every few weeks Ruth will lay down new bundles of rushes I think that when I get the fresh ones on top what will happen is that the damp earth underneath will as these crushed down will gradually compost leaving you on top of new fresh reeds well away from that all dry and clean and warm that's the theory nobody really knows quite how this works we'll see [Music] back at the castle slowly and surely the great tower is taking shape but before they can build up the walls any further a doorway into its third floor room must be installed live sign has been shaped by the Masons it's gonna go to the great power for the doorway into that top room we're just using this crane as directed by Philippe using this simple lever system one man can lift four times his own weight its then raised up the tower using the treadwheel crane but it was wood you this was the thing that built castles and this was the thing that made men feel quite seasick whilst on dry land like myself before the stones are fitted a pinnacle is set into the stone from which the door will be hung it's held firmly in place using molten lead what they've done if they built this reservoir out of clay and that way you can pull the LED in it's not gonna drain off and don't waste a valuable resource the Masons have just one chance to get this right as the lead sets almost instantly once it hits the cold stone getting it wrong might mean the whole stone having to be replaced oh that was brand new oh it's fantastic it's amazing to think in a building of this size how little metal is actually used but where it is used it is essential now the stones can be set in place on a layer of mortar it's essential that they're perfectly aligned so the forerunner of the spirit level the Masons level is used Roman Britain medieval France or even a modern-day building site these are tools and techniques that every builder would have been familiar with these have been honed over centuries of use it is timeless it really is it's look good now yeah I'm Annina Square here says it's all it's all good it's ready to further next stone now the stone lintel that will top the doorway can be fitted this is very very delicate like this is an extremely heavy stone possibly the heaviest stone you've made so far and that's a serious bit of kit in it it struggles to lift this it's so heavy I think we're right on the weight limit maneuvering this heavy stone with the simple crane is tricky one slip and serious damage could be done to both the lintel and the surrounding stone work quite vulnerable they're now gonna be honest stone masonry like so many medieval jobs was heavy work so a well-fed workforce was essential to [Music] prepare food in the cottage roof needs cooking vessels today pots and pans are metal but in the Middle Ages they were often clay Ruth is calling on the services of English Potter Jim new bolt what would people think about cooking with with pottery I mean I think it's people scared of it the idea of it now but it used to be the way of cooking I mean it's the oldest form of cooking utensil of any sort even your iron ones are called cooking pots there's the clue first Jim makes the basic cooking pot on the wheel he then fits handles so it can be lifted on and off the fire and not under is extruding the clay so it means that as you pull the handle it creates the grain so it's gonna be stronger than if it was just squash together together clay is heavy and difficult to transport so Potter's sourced it from as near to home as possible where'd you get your clay from them from as close as a side of the road as you possibly can that's a pothole one way you could lose a wagon and team into it pull you've dug clay for pots it's a pot you pull over to let another wagon passing glance pass next Jim reshapes the base of the pot so what shape is best then for fire for cook pots on the fire big round bottoms right you want to no sharp corners no no it means that the heat moves around the outside of the pot and then with a sharp blade a knife we start taking off the edge there as long as the pots made evenly it'll work better this big thick lunch somewhere then you're gonna have problems around that flaring it out the round bottom means it won't sit on a flat surface so the medieval pot often had legs there's the the cook pot [Music] the hovel is now fully equipped and ready to sustain the workers this is perhaps the most important thing in it this is our larder our fridge or pantry our food supply a brain arc there it is this is the mainstay of our diet this is our main food it's certainly the starch the bulk and it's also the source of any beer or ale we might drink and the lid is not attached because it goes that way up and it becomes my door off when I need to make bread it's really clever in math and there are all sorts of food supplies hanging about and hanging is the operative word because I don't want anything on the floor where mice and rats can get it so hanging it either from the walls like the vegetables in Nets or from the underside of the roof keeps them safe away from all the crawling vermin and the smoke as it percolates its way out keeps away flies you can think of this space not just as a living space but as a storage space [Music] after a day's work the boys have returned to put Ruth's experimental rush floor to the test you've spent all day working on the castle you're tired just come back I mean this is insulating its cushioning it's it's it's not as bad as you think is it I mean when they say they haven't got a bed and that's that's it you just get a blanket and this is what you sleep on it sounds a bit horrendous but it's not it's all right it is a tiny space though to live a complete life just one little space like this isn't it yes the whole family I much right well you say it's a tiny space Olivia entire life I mean it I'd rather be in a small space like this and get the heat point and also how much time you're gonna spend in here really like the safety thing like you know a sitting room with a TV and a big sofa is gonna relax in there with me working most of the time and you've got all your jobs and tasks to do so that's sort of like rest and relaxation isn't as important salut they don't clink today that's about the only thing I've got against drinking bowls they don't clink [Music] it's morning and the team are getting ready for work knowing what ordinary medieval people wore is a challenge but fortunately a few items of clothing have survived most useful garments were survived because they were actively kept because they were the clothes of saints they have been preserved in churches right across Europe so this yellow dress that I'm wearing this is something that has been derived from too early to mid 13th century Saints st. Elizabeth from Germany and Saint Claire from Assisi in Italy so it's loose but you can you see there is quite a lot of shaping to it you can see all these seams it's made very particularly to make the cloth hand nicely no matter what position your body's in I do have a belt however it's not to give you a waist but it's all about creating an attractive drape of cloth I tell isn't as comfy they have it everyone it is faintly ridiculous I think that medieval underwear is as big as this I think of C for Tommo that's probably an appropriate size but both myself and roof to fit into these they feel a bit like a pair of 19 and 50s football shorts although in the light vaguely see-through and then we just got the foes single next hose at this stage where it's very similar so kind of I suppose stockings and suspenders however if they were sewn onto the plants pretty soon you'd have a pair of trousers we can't see with the evolution of clothes comes from roots headway is inspired by the medieval Queen Eleanor evacute and as she got older she decided that her chin was sagging a bit and she wasn't looking quite as lovely as she did so she invented a bar bet which goes under the chin and onto the top of the head and pins there and then with a bar bet you're always wearing Filat and this is village is just another button sewn into a circle when you wear that one was crowned like on top it's a very 13th century look so that's it my French look [Music] today Tom and Peter have been summoned to the Masons Lodge for the next stage of their apprenticeship carving limestone so far they've been working with roughly hewn sandstone to build the castle walls but for more intricate features like arches windows and stairs limestone was preferred as its fine grain meant it was quicker and easier to carve for lots of turn having first the boys use they're splitting skills to create rough limestone blocks under the supervision of stonemasons abdul-allah a bead now you can try the big one the rough block is moved into the Masons Lodge onto a platform known as a banker ready for the skilled job of shaping it how many 10 yes facing a stone was a basic skill that every stonemason would have heard first the edges are cut using a pitch about there yes yeah actually you have two dates in one time one time yeah swing you have to throw here now like to follow three okay very good a stonemason would have learned under the watchful eye of the Master Mason I don't want to hear still Mason its rhythmical or quick but it is always the same you can do very rhythmical music stonemasons were paid a stone carved so the quicker they worked the more money they would earn these limestone blocks are for the chapel tower this year the team are hoping to build the walls up by six meters to complete the chapel room itself in the 13th century religion was central to daily life and nearly all castles had a chapel here we are well we are in this room yeah and we have to draw the niche in the east part of the room just in front of us yeah this drawing you have is it's very much a kind of stylized view but now's the stonemason you must precisely mark it out yes exactly we have it now to trend form imagination during in a youthful journey the niche is where the altar will be before any building is done the walls must be marked out with absolute precision okay this is a continuing the curve of this wall the alternate was being the east of the town so Florian is marking out the east-west axis using an ingenious medieval tool I absolutely love this it's a horn to cut off the ends that's been tied to a piece of string which is way around an axle and it is encased in ochre powder I mean the same ochre that we find in the quarry when you pull the string up and snap it it hits the ground thus shedding the ochre and leaving an absolutely true straight line and these they've been around for millennia [Music] flip it over using just a rope dividers and the oak alignment the chapel's walls are marked out to reach this first floor chapel a limestone spiral staircase is being built to design it flora and Tom have come to the tracing floor next to the stonemasons Lodge the tracing floor was the nerve center of the medieval building site where the Master Mason drew full-scale plans using a compass the circumference at a spiral staircase is drawn actual size this is a apprentice jump always the apprentice never the master foreign the camera working out the central part of our staircase and out form the column that runs up connecting all the stairs and now we're going to Joe 12-step for the medieval Mason geometry was the jewel in the crown of their art using just a compass angles and shapes could be accurately drawn to within the degrees with perfect symmetry here Florian divides the circle into six equal segments which are then subdivided to create twelve steps now we have the step we can try the step in the drawing first I mean this is a fantastic way to actually make sure before you start cutting stone wasting materials on a line that they work you can see there they're bigger than my foot length so that's workable now we need to finish one step because all the steps are the same frier needs to make just one template this is a precision job now you mess this up you're gonna mess up your stone in the castle so the last thing to do is basically just cut the template thank you very much got a template now placed on top of our large piece of stone we're marking it out with a bit of slate magic there it is now it's ready just could be just just casi 5-10 minutes 2 or 3 days you can hear how good quality this stone is by the ringing sound when Kendall hits it and I think that's why to be honest I'm standing here and not actually been allowed to do anything I like writing an apprenticeship for a stonemason would have been about seven years but to be honest as k1 says it's actually a lifetime you're always learning and Peter and I haven't been here long just so much to take in carving stone takes its toll on the tools and everyday there must be sharpened by blacksmith Martin Claudell is it true get on if there's no placement say for two days work stops yes walk stub because we have to fix a lot of stone masonry tools and if we don't do that they can't work first the worn down chisel is heated to 1000 degrees and to soften its tip to reach this temperature fellows blow air through the fire I love these fellows one goes up the other one goes down says it's constant airflow isn't it [Music] Martin draws the chisel to a point on the anvil then sharpens it using a file but the chisel tip will be blunt again in no time unless it's hardened hardening is one of the great discoveries of the ancient world achieved by heating the metal then quickly quenching it in water as it gets hot the metal changes color and this tells the blacksmith how hard it would be once quenched too soft and it won't cut too hard and it will shatter to carve stone it must get a yellow heart the Watchers for the colors appearing on surface and metal blue the red most importantly the straw yellow at the very end now it's ready for the Masons there are a few clues as to how ordinary people lived day to day in a medieval village but Ruth's piece together fragments of knowledge to work out how people did the most mundane of everyday tasks like washing up haven't got a scouring pad but I've got sand for the pad well this Tamir there's plenty of fresh grass I could use straw just as something to rub with now if I've got to deal with grease that's a different matter altogether sand will take the worst of it off but you know I mean no matter scrubbing with just some more mortar is going to shift the greaser to something you need a little bit of chemical help and for that I turned a wood ash just straight out the fire the wood ash combines with water to make caustic soda when it comes into contact with fat on the dishes it makes soap leaving the dishes spotlessly clean handful ash wipe it round with a bit of grass of straw rinse it out with hot water and you get clean easy peasy huh [Music] knowing what peasants ate in the 13th century is also a challenge but we do know what ingredients they had to hand Ruth has come to the castles garden to see what there is to harvest could really do this until healthy this patch of garden but nonetheless the fair few things are starting to sprout through which is a relief so I've got parsley coming through here and a number of other things that you might think of as weeds and indeed they are weeds but are edible there's a lot of land crest so this little white flower on so that's quite bitter in flavor but you know anything to give a bit of bite plants that we know consider weeds would also have been used it's quite a lot of dandelions and nettles too which will help bulk it out wheat and barley were also essential ingredients flour was expensive so workers ground their own using a device that has been around for 10,000 years a rotary coin like this was estimated to require about an hour to an hour and a half's work every day this is the daily grind you pop a handful of grain in the center barley in this case and off you go the posh EU and more refined your food was an ordinary people often may do with food that was really quite coarse and you can see that in people's teeth when we dug up archaeologically with the tools sharpened clamo has put the finishing touches to the step now comes the delicate task of transporting it to the chapel so your steps arriving while secure step the step is winched up the castle wall using only manpower ready break off [Music] [Music] [Music] once on top of the wall it's moved up the tower using an inclined plane one slip and the step could fall wasting three days would [Music] [Music] these guys been doing this for 15 years they know how to get things like this up here but it's amazing what they can move without the use of all what we call machines were sensing the use of rollers levers inclined planes pulleys made out with wooden stone working together perfect harmony that means how much step must be absolutely level or else the staircase will veer to one side a Masons level and plumb line are used to ensure it's perfectly positioned I suppose this staircase has still got quite a long way up to go isn't it and if this isn't absolutely perfect the first little bit of skew and that it just gets magnified as you go up but carrying anything up here or god forbid fighting your way up here really difficult wouldn't it yeah tom is not stuck down there is either wait wait [Laughter] using the greens from the garden and the ground barley Ruth is cooking a medieval pottage in the clay part a little bit of water in there I'm gonna start with my leeks this tummy here nettles are still quite tender I wouldn't say that you're add nettles for flavor particularly but they are quite good bulk they're one of the few things that grows in profusion at this time of year grain is added to create a porridge like dish [Music] [Laughter] [Music] oh you're back how was it today it's going very very well it's amazing how the whole thing is it's all in two-dimensional layers but then you see yeah I mention appear such as the the doorway that we've been working on put the lintel on there suddenly Wow gives me a real feel to of just how much impact such places must have had on people you know if everybody's living in this sort of little tiny one-room half in the centre low building and then there's that [ __ ] great thing help the hair it's it's a quite a shock to the system really isn't I mean it makes a huge impact once this is a period when these great like military buildings religious buildings stand up rise up and really make an impact on the landscape the team are also getting used to the simple medieval food this is a triumph this is an absolute triumph it's for barley and vegetables it's not bad you're a hungry man you've been pounding all day at the stone walking on the tread will anything is good to eat it's not exactly easy either grinding the darn stuff I've been it's just as hard workers pounding away all day at the in the stir in the quarry there's no easy jobs in the medieval age next time defending the castle with crossbows nice and architecture against the most powerful weapon of the age the trebuchet [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 2,738,533

Rating: 4.9221148 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: SURsW7BpCNc

Length: 58min 49sec (3529 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020

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[u/stickypad1]

I came across this documentary today and I thought it was an excellent glimpse into the 13th century life of a castle builder. Everyone has a different job and set of skills and they all contributed to the construction. This group really goes all in. This is great for anyone who is interested. It’s cool to see the parallels in modern society when constructing a building.

[u/blackcoffeesarcasm]

Clicked on this thinking, 'wow this will be cool!' First minute, I see Ruth, Peter, and Tom from the "historical farm" series! I am so excited to watch this now, those three are amazing! I've watched all that have been broadcast here in Canada. For clarity: it's a historian and two archaeologists, and they spend around a year at a historically correct farm (Victorian, Edwardian, WW2, and Tudor Monastery) and perform the daily tasks with age appropriate equipment, clothing, food, and housing. Not just the 'farming' either. Sheep auctions, a beach day for Victorians, making bricks... I found it endlessly fascinating. I will watch anything with these three. (Well, four, actually. Most of the series' have Alex Langlands instead of Tom, but love all four!) Sincerely, as I did not know about this series, and have looked for more from this team, thank you!

[u/Kurvo1ovac]

The people making the castle have an excellent YouTube channel where they explain all the different aspects of construction.

[u/imperialus81]

They are still working away at it too...

https://www.guedelon.fr/en/

The chapel looks like it is finished so it's cool to see the progress.

They even have some YouTube videos. They are in French but with subtitles.

[u/[deleted]]

I've been putting them all in a playlist in case anyone wants to go through them chronologically.

[u/Adraerik]

Ayyyy, i live pretty close to the site and i visit the place every 2/3 years to see how things are advancing.

[u/[deleted]]

FYI it’s in France (for the lazy)

I went there last week with my family. I’ve been telling everyone and their dog to go visit it since. It’s really awesome for kids and for adults.

[u/MarxReadsRushdie]

This is called Experimental Archaeology and it helps archeologists understand exactly how people accomplished tasks, whether or not we understand their tool use strategies, and the social organization of tool & labor use.