Exploring London's Hidden Medieval Metropolis

[Music] if you were to picture London in the Middle Ages you might imagine the Tower of London Westminster Abbey or Guild Hall [Music] but scratch under the surface and there's lots more evidence of this medieval Metropolis I'm Katie wignall a London tour guide and in this series I'm going to be delving into the capitals hidden past in this episode I'm seeking out the London of the Middle Ages a city of narrow streets and soaring spiers almost completely destroyed by the great fire of 1666 and the blitz during the second World War but despite the devastation and centuries of development not all of that city is lost hard to believe that this was built 900 years ago [Music] come with me as I discover the hidden remains evil London [Music] our search begins at a site that was back in the 14th century in the countryside just outside the boundary of the medieval city the story of Charter House stretches back to one of the darkest periods in European history in 1348 a terrifying disease swept through London today we know it as the Black Death thanks to the overcrowdedness and unsanitary conditions of the city it spreads alarmingly quickly with hundreds dying every day by 18 months 40 of the city was dead here in charterhouse square I'm standing on the site of one of the largest mass burial pits thought that up to 50 000 bodies are buried in unmarked graves right under my feet they remained uncovered until 2013 when work on London's Elizabeth line began in the area during the construction of crosswell workers came across this Macabre site and one of the skeletons is on display at Charter House [Music] scientific analysis on the skeleton displayed at Charter House has confirmed the presence of yesinia pestis in the bones foreign that's the type of bacteria that cause bubonic and pneumonic plague it's real to think this person died during the black death but thankfully we do actually know a little bit about him he was in the prime of his life aged mid-20s and from the DNA isotope analysis of his teeth we can tell that he was born and grew up in rural East Anglia and then like many people like him he traveled to the big city maybe in search of work but it was here that he met his sad fate [Music] not long after Europe was released in the worst ravages of the Black Death a carthusian monastery was built on this spot founded by a courtier and favorite of Edward III [Music] it began as a small Chapel in 1371 and developed piecemeal over the following decades most of the original medieval structures are gone but not all of them [Music] this is the only surviving part of the original monastery and at its height this would have been twice as long and it's one side of a four-sided Cloister and all along here would have been sells the living quarters of the monks foreign [Music] the cells are now gone for the most part but the elaborately decorated doorways for some of them can still be seen [Music] the purpose of carthusian life was total withdrawal from the world and the monks spent most of their time in isolation in their tiny rooms [Music] they followed a strict timetable of daily prayers but rarely saw each other only on Sundays would they come together to dine and discuss business [Music] it's in these cells that the carthusian monk spent the vast majority of their time small quite bare spaces and their contacts with the outside world was via lay brothers who would bring food and water via these serving hatches also anything that needed to be taken out of the cells human waste would come from these serving hatches even the cause of nature couldn't interrupt the solitary prayer foreign the museum here houses a remarkable document showing that the cells were arranged in a large square around The Cloister a layout copied from other cathcesian monasteries but the maps themselves had a more functional purpose as I found out from speaking to the museum manager at the Charter House James Spillane so we're looking at this amazing facsimile of a 1430s map can you explain a bit what we can see here of course what we've got here is the great Cloister of the Charter House the London Charter House the carthesian monastery which was founded at the end of The 14th Century it took more than 30 years to complete the building of this but around the great Cloister what they've ended up with is 25 cells each for an individual carthusian monk this range of The Cloister is the only one that survives today and you will have seen the doorway of cell b which is right here today at the top of the map which confusingly is the South those are the church buildings which were mostly demolished during the Reformation and what's this area in the middle of The Cloister well that's the whole purpose of the map it's uh it's a it's a plan of the monastery's running water system um so uh the the bottom of the map in the north you've got um Springs rising up in Islington and then pipes that are bringing water all the way up to the Charter House serving running water for each of the monks in their cells and also the service buildings the kitchens which are up here in the middle of The Cloister is the conduit which is storage for the water so it seems it's unusual to have an image of a medieval building like this because Maps simply didn't exist in in 1430s London so this is a technical document mapping the pipes of the water system but the value to us as historians today is that it's the earliest depiction we've got of a really significant London Landmark the London Charter House the monastery was eventually dissolved as part of Henry VII's religious Breakaway from the Pope in Rome as a result much of the original complex was absorbed into later mansions built for the wealthy nobility of Tudor and Stuart England there are only a few places where the medieval stonework survives [Music] we're going to see one of the earliest surviving courts within Charter House [Music] [Music] this is Wash House Court and when this was a Priory this area was was really dedicated to service it's where you'd hang clothes out to dry or pots might be washed but also here that we can appreciate the many layers of the history of Charter House on this side the white stone is thought to have been part of the original monastic buildings whereas on this side you have red brick and this dates from around the 1520s right before this place was shut down refusing to bow down to Henry VII's religious Authority as the new head of the Church of England the prior was hanged drawn and quartered at tyburn and ten monks were sent in Newgate Prison some believe the letters i h that form part of the decorative brickwork refer to the latinized name of the last prior John Houghton if so it was a small Act of resistance by the Mason from Charter House we're heading inside the old city of London the boundary of which was marked by stone walls originally built by the Romans but later added to an improved [Music] London's Roman War has changed a lot over the centuries and here we can see the layers the white Rubble is from the medieval period and then the red brick is from the 1470s many place names in the city of London refer back to the Roman wall for example this church in the background is Saint Giles [ __ ] gate named because of its proximity to the Gateway in and out of the city the modern Street London Wall closely follows the line of the fortifications though only a small section remains as you walk the route you may come across another surprising remnant of the old city inside the Roman walls in fact leaning up against it was the Medieval church of Saint alphage it was first mentioned in the 12th century and then in the 14th century it was part of a now lost Hospital known as elsing spittle today All That Remains is this medieval Tower another victim of King Henry VII's reforms in the 16th century [Music] the London Wall extended down as far as the Tower of London The Fortress which guarded the medieval entrance to the city and The crucial Crossing Point London Bridge the bridge that existed in the Middle Ages no longer stands that fragments of it do exist if you know where to look this is the church of Saint Magnus the Martyr and while it's being rebuilt since the medieval period what you can still see is this Archway and this was the pedestrian entrance onto the old medieval London Bridge just imagine the millions of londoners who have passed through here over the centuries but there's more evidence hiding here these Stones which you could so easily walk past were part of the old medieval London Bridge and while we don't know exactly when these date from the London Bridge started Construction in 1176. that bridge lasted throughout the Middle Ages and survived the great fire which destroyed most of the city but the New London Bridge was finally opened in 1831 just 30 meters Upstream from the original Crossing Point that was replaced by the modern London Bridge in the 1970s that's the one that we'll have to use today as we cross the Thames if you walked over the old London Bridge weaving between buildings and shops built onto the structure no space was wasted you'd find the homes of some of the countries rich and Powerful on the South Bank around this corner lie is one of the most magnificent buildings of medieval London overshadowed by modern office blocks this is the last remaining section of Winchester Palace it was built in the 13th century for the all-powerful Bishops of Winchester as their London home what we can see here are the remains of the Great Hall which originally stood right on the bank of the Thames the Gable wall of the hall has doors which led to the buttery pantry and kitchen and it has a magnificent raised window but this area had a darker side connected to Winchester Palace was the notorious clink prison where over centuries hundreds of petty criminals people owing debt and the local sex workers were held in awful conditions interestingly the bankside sex workers were actually regulated by the bishop of Winchester their nickname the bishop of Winchester's geese making a quick getaway from the clink we're heading north again back into the hustle and bustle of the city located on Cannon Street our next medieval gem is even easier to overlook it might not appear that impressive but this object has an incredible story and Origins that are shrouded in mystery if you believe the legend the story of this Stone dates as far back as the time of the Trojan Wars what seems more likely is that this was an important Stone in the Roman city of londinium the stone is mentioned in a book belonging to the 10th Century King Apple stand he's commonly thought of as the first king of a United England it was clearly important in the Early Middle Ages and it remains symbolically significant until the end of the period in 1450 the rebel Jack Cade entered the city and he declared himself the lord of the city of London striking this stone with his sword it was a scene that was later dramatized by Shakespeare in his play of Henry VI if the London Stone was at the heart of this city then for centuries one of its key arteries was the river Fleet the river formed the western boundary of the Roman city and was navigable for centuries allowing small boats from the Thames to sail up into the City and unload cargo in the 13th century the river was called the river of Wells as people used to draw water giving us the names of places like clerkenwell but later in London's history the river became a foul sewer and was covered over very few people know its existence today there aren't many places where you can see the river Fleet but it is still here it's just flowing underground at the corner of saffron Hill you can catch a glimpse of the river Fleet if you look down this drain the river Fleet became part of the present-day sewer system with the construction of faringdon Road in the mid-19th century but it still does flow under farringdon road today and then it meets the River Thames just by Blackfriars Bridge [Music] Outside The Old City once again we're almost back where we started in open Countryside north of the medieval walls it was here in the middle of the 12th century that The Priory of Saint John was founded on 10 acres of land granted by a local Norman Baron this site became the headquarters of the Order of Saint John in England better known as the knights Hospital the monks who lived here took vows of poverty Chastity and obedience and were expected to fight in the Holy Land If called upon [Music] where I'm standing now community and the gateway to the precinct was just up ahead and this area would have been used for Gardens and kitchens and a place where the knights would have processed through on their way East to the holy lands now just at my feet here this line is an outline of a large circular Nave of the original Church foreign Church headquarters of the Knights Templar in England it was built in the style of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem a reminder of the order's purpose but while very little of the original complex survives above ground a few steps below street level is one of London's best preserved medieval Crypt [Music] hard to believe that this was built 900 years ago it survived fires Redevelopment and the Bliss the round Arches from the Romanesque period give way to pointed ones showing the changes in fashion in the 12th century now today it's all painted white but the evidence suggests that once this would have been covered with bright colors [Music] the stained glass windows down here are backlit by artificial lights but it gives you an idea of how this space would have felt in the 12th century when the windows would have been at ground level these are the original medieval Stone benches that line the Crypt walls and they were used by the monks for their chapter meetings where they discussed daily business but also Royal visitors would have come down here they're not very comfy so let's hope those VIPs had a cushion to sit on [Music] this rather Macabre Effigy shows William Weston and he was the last prior of the Order of Saint John when alive he was a very preeminent member of Henry VII's court but this all went wrong when Henry decides to break with Catholic Rome on the very day that William finds out that The Priory is to be dissolved he apparently dies from grief and he's shown here emaciated this skeletal form is a reminder that despite your status everyone will return to bones and dust foreign there are many fascinating medieval buildings in London that haven't crumbled away to dust just yet and the legacy of the old city can be seen and felt all around as you explore the capital in the street names places of worship and centers of power I hope you enjoyed this video about the remains of medieval London and if you want to know more about the Order of Saint John we have a whole episode coming up about the knights Hospital don't forget to hit subscribe and I'll see you next time

Channel: History Hit

Views: 539,944

Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, medieval london, london middle ages, knights hospitaller documentary, knights hospitaller, knights hospitaller london, charterhouse, roman wall london, old london bridge, medieval london bridge, black death london, black death skeletons, black death burial, london medieval times, medieval london history, history of medieval london, crusades london, hidden london, medieval sites london, medieval sites uk, london medieval history

Id: phCEKdSKaS4

Length: 22min 10sec (1330 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 28 2023