Exploring One of the First Norman Stone Castles in England

mm-hmm [Music] [Music] 1086. William the Conqueror has successfully held England for 20 years but it's not an easy task how can he defend himself and his people the solution was this castles a stone embodiment of Norman domination [Music] this is my favorite castle in all of England here behind these formidable stone walls some of medieval history's biggest moments were played out this is Ludlow Castle standing proud on the wild western frontier between England and Wales Ludlow gives a vital glimpse of how people lived and worked in these stunning spaces and just what Norman power really looked like for centuries castles have loomed over the landscape of Britain in this series I'm exploring some of our greatest fortresses investigating how they helped Forge a nation and discovering how you build a castle and how you tear one down [Music] Walter delacy the first owner of Ludlow Castle had crossed the Channel with William the Conqueror in 1066 his reward for their success was the earldom of Hereford close to Wales thank you [Music] Ludlow Castle is located near the Welsh border in the modern county of Shropshire and stands proudly on the west side of the town Ludlow offered the ideal location to cite a castle it's protected on two sides by a bend in the river team and on a third side by the river Corps the fourth is sheltered by the town it makes it so highly defensible here and it needed to be easy to defend this part of England was a frontier that demanded constant vigilance Ludlow sat in this wild west and had to be ready to protect itself against all comers but what did Ludlow castle look like when it was first built after 1066 the first structure here in the immediate aftermath of the Norman Conquest was made of wood there was a Timber ring work enclosure of the kind that's quick to construct in hostile areas the Normans proved impossible to dislodge and by 1085 Ludlow like other Norman castles in England was transforming from wood to Stone [Music] three of the towers here at the Northeast north west and southwest corners of the Curtin wall are survivors from that early Norman building [Music] one of ludlow's interesting architectural features is the arch of stone that we can see in the front of the keep there that's the old way into the castle a couple of centuries after it was built it was bricked up and moved to the side where we accessed the castle now this new doorway was positioned to help better defend the castle and to turn the former entrance Tower into a more recognizable keep Ludlow has an inner and an outer Bailey the outer Bailey would have been a bustling Hub housing every trade a castle needed from the blacksmith to the Brewer inner bayley at Ludlow was home to the kitchens a well the Great Hall and comfortable Apartments [Music] but unlike bambra ludlow's inner Bailey is surrounded by a moat a moat is a large ditch around a castle which can be filled with water this can be a barrier against digging or tunneling under the inner Bailey and can help hinder the use of devastating Siege weapons such as battering rams or scaling ladders [Music] a drawbridge once sat across this dry moat it's a door that can be lowered and raised when needed to protect the inner Bailey from Attack most of the towers at Ludlow are rectangular and like many Norman castles it has a keep [Music] this is the inside of ludlow's keep the defensive heart of the castle and down here you can still see one of its last lines of defenses these are murder holes they're literally holes in the floor but they look down on that original entrance into the castle so that from here Defenders could drop down anything they wanted on someone attacking the castle all of these features speak to the need to be constantly on guard attack was never very far away and if enemies were coming you'd want to have everything you needed to survive inside ludlow's inner walls castles usually had a chapel so the users didn't need to leave the space during a Siege to pray for God's help in their success in war as well as not having to join the masses in the local church if they didn't want to here in the heart of the inner Bailey stands Saint Mary magdalene's Chapel it was built in the 12th century and it's a rare example of around Chapel that mirrors the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and links to Templar ideas there are only four surviving Norman Round chapels in Britain and this is one of them it was commissioned in the early 12th century by Gilbert delacy the grandson of ludlow's first owner Walter [Music] thank you the pattern of alternating Chevrons and plane carvings around the walls is a fashion from that period the lower windows were added in the 16th century when a second floor was created it used to be linked to the Lord's apartments by a tunnel so that they didn't have to get wet on their way to Chapel and it's still an incredibly evocative place today [Music] thank you Ludlow has one mystery that's captured my imagination since I first came here as a child this is something that had fascinated me for years about Ludlow Castle my childhood mind went wild wondering what this could be castles weren't just built for defense people had to live here too and this particular space has a rather cool purpose as a kid running around Ludlow Castle I'd convinced myself this was some sort of prison cell that the mug would be filled with water and people locked in here would be floating as part of their punishment that the light from above was a way of people checking up on them but maybe also poking fun at them while they're being tortured turns out it's nothing quite so sadistic ludlow's moat was never filled with water the stones porous so that it was always just a dry defensive ditch this is Ludlow Castle's medieval fridge it's cut into the Earth of the outer Bailey so that it's always a few degrees cooler than anywhere else the curtain walls that surround the outer Bailey are made from locally quarried limestone these walls had a crucial role in medieval warfare providing protection and acting as a deterrent to anyone daring to Rebel which was especially important in a castle like Ludlow which was living under constant threat from Neighbors in Wales and along the marches but these walls are also an architectural feat and are a testimony to the skilled craftspeople who created them nearly a thousand years ago teams of stone masons would travel across the country building Cathedrals and castles even gluing the stones together required unique and specialist knowledge I'm traveling to a stone mason yard near Ludlow to meet Master Mason Ben McMillan to find out how similar his work is to the ways they used to build castles just like Ludlow Ben thank you so much for having us so we've got a nice Stone how do we turn this into a nice looking wall now these obviously could be as big as you like I mean we could you could get early Cathedral work Castle work you can get units of ashlar which are you know impossibly large for a human to lift so the lifting equipment that we're going to use today is a Lewis pin so this is the Lewis pin which is a Victorian version of the three-legged medieval Lewis pin [Music] in the medieval period Stone Mason's building a castle like Ludlow would have used something like what the victorians called a Lewis pin it would have had a central pole and had three legs surrounding it which worked on a hinge a hole is drilled into the stone and the Lewis pin is added once the chain is attached the distribution of weight means that the legs kick out and grip the internal section of the block and then we can begin lifting up so if you'd like to put it in the hole for us we've already drilled the hole yeah we'll give this a go that's it keep them together at the same height as it goes down just there we go that's as deep as we're going to get it we'll just latch that on there you can wind that one for me that's it that's going to begin to lift now and there we go okay that'll do we wonder how people get to tops of castles tops of cathedrals and things like that this is effectively more gears and uh there's almost nothing you can't lift fantastic so now we know how to lift the block how do we get these Stones together so what kind of mortar would a medieval Mason have used to lay his his walls he would essentially use the lime mortar mix so local Sands and lime from wherever they can get it I mean we've got the Wenlock edge here in Shropshire which used to produce lime the lime we buy now is hydrated but it they would have bought lime putty that's what would have been available lime putty gets mixed with local Sands now the mortar that we're creating here is not designed to be brittle at all because you're not you're not using the mortar as a as an adhesive grab all you're really doing is trying to create a very soft cushion of lime which will stop the stones cracking each other so here's one I made earlier it's nice and smooth now the stone is dry that we're about to lay on and obviously when that stone lands on that one you're going to create suction and movement in the mortar to get a fix and it's going to take a sip it's going to drink the water essentially this because the stone is dry we're going to wet the stone and if it goes too dry too quick you're not going to get that option so we're just going to lay a little bed in here if we just bring that over okay and when you're ready if you want to start winding it down yep looking good hang on steady steady okay keep going there we go we take a sponge and we'll just clean that down and there you go and so on and so forth Just several thousand more times and you've got yourself a castle Yeah that's exactly that thanks for watching this video on the history Hit YouTube channel you can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great films that are coming out or if you are a true history fan check out our special dedicated History Channel History hit dot TV you're gonna love it

Channel: History Hit

Views: 202,014

Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, ludlow castle, medieval castle england, norman castle england, norman motte and bailey castles, motte and bailey castle, matt lewis, matt lewis castles, history hit castle, medieval castle documentary, ludlow castle documentary, building medieval castles, how castles were built, how castles were built in medieval times, how castles are built, how castles were designed, war of the roses castle, william the conqueror, castle norman conquest

Id: dNQmS_Aeq64

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023