How Did Normal Medieval People Survive Winter? | Tudor Monastery Farm | Chronicle

this channel is part of the history hit network [Music] 500 years ago england was emerging into a new era after years of war plague and famine the kingdom was enjoying peace and prosperity under the reign of the first tudor king henry viii a new class of business savvy farmer was thriving boosting food production and then over she goes while wool from their sheep was generating half the nation's wealth many of the nation's farms were under the control of the biggest landowner in england after the king the monasteries their influence could be felt in every aspect of daily life they were not just places of religion they were at the forefront of technology education and farming but with the daily lives of monks devoted to prayer they depended increasingly on tenant farmers who worked and tended their lands steady girls [Music] now historian ruth goodman and archaeologists tom pinfold and peter ginn are turning the clock back to tudor england here at wielden downland in west sussex to work as ordinary farmers under the watchful eye of a monastic landlord [Music] to succeed they'll have to master long-lost farming methods and get to grips with tudor technology quite noisy it's a really violent process while immersing themselves in the beliefs customs and rituals that shaped the age this is mary england for heaven's sake so to speak let's enjoy it this is the untold story of the monastic farms of tudor england [Music] it's september the beginning of autumn and the days are getting shorter the team are preparing for the end of their farming year and their time as tudor farmers ruth peter and tom need to make provisions for the winter the pea crop has been collected and stored yeah this is good flabbergasted was just how many peas we've got yeah it's time to bring the animals back to the farm from their summer grazing [Music] and the barley crop is now ready to be harvested in the tudor period the harvest was the climax of the farming year if the harvest failed or the weather turned it could lead to malnutrition and even famine it's a lot of barley isn't it it's a lot of work but it looks amazing like the color is just incredible as one of england's largest landowners monasteries owned vast amounts of agricultural land most fields were open and not enclosed by hedges unlike today so tenant farmers would be given strips of land to cultivate within these large areas so i suppose as much as this would be a huge open field we would just have this strip here wouldn't we and also probably another strip over there and another strip over there but everyone would be growing the same crop and all be all hands to the pump yeah definitely well that's why school holidays take the form they do isn't it because even students had to come out and do harvesting yeah we need bodies [Music] the team are discovering just how back-breaking the harvest would have been for the tudor farmer how often we have to actually sharpen our tools i mean you think metal versus barley it'd be an easy win but it's not once it's cut it needs to be bound into sheaves traditionally it's the men who reap and the women who bind so you run along behind the blokes picking up all the loose stalks and then binding it into a sheath see so much easier to control once it's banned like that history hit is like netflix just for history fans with exclusive history documentaries covering some of the most famous people and events in history just for you whether you're looking for insight into the reign of medieval history's most notorious rulers or to experience the mysteries of cultures and civilizations long lost history hit has the documentary for you that just a click away and it's not just documentaries either we have a network of incredible history podcasts bringing you new episodes every day sign up now for a 14-day free trial and chronicle fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code chronicle at checkout every last grain from the harvest was precious even the smallest amounts would be gathered by those less well-off a practice known as gleaning well for very poor people it was a really important source of food i mean for anybody that extra bit makes the difference doesn't it you know if you think this is your year's crop that little bit was gleaned by the kids is the last week's food yeah and you can get pretty hungry in that last week don't we know it if it rained then all the barley they had gathered would be ruined to prevent this the sheaves were stood upright on the ground known as stooking which allowed the grain to dry off it is the most incredible amount of work this tiny little piece that we've done of our strip this has taken us four and a half hours to do and look how much more there is waiting for us [Music] as well as bringing in the crops it was crucial in the autumn to prepare meat for the winter the essential ingredient for doing this was salt ruth's learning the job of a waller the women who were in charge of making salt salt was one of the most important commodities of the ancient world and also in the medieval it was one of those things that you simply couldn't do without it was necessary for survival it was an important item of trade and a huge industry however it was one of the basic staples of life which you basically had to purchase for cash it was part of the cash economy unlike say carrots which you could grow your own in tudor times the majority of salt was imported from france or spain but pockets of england were highly productive especially areas in the north that had natural brine springs the team have reconstructed the equipment used in this period what i've got here are two different parts a furnace and a pan now the pan is made of lead flat bottomed to evaporate off as much of the water to produce the salt but that has sort of technical difficulties lead is a very soft metal it means that under the weight of the water there's a danger that it would collapse downwards so that's what this frame over the top is for it's actually for supporting the pan the areas set up for salt production were known as walling yards hence the name waller for the women who worked there the pans were left boiling 24 hours a day it takes some serious boiling to turn brine back into salt but it is beginning to happen the surface is crusting over it's becoming so concentrated after bucket or brine reduce reduce reduce and there it is salt forming as a skin on the surface [Applause] in autumn the tudor farmer would make provisions to ensure all their valuable animals would survive winter we're coming up here because the weather's turned it's got cold we need to look after our flock we need to protect our investment and the best way to do that is to get them back to our homestead to get them back to the farm you can even sleep above your animals to get the heat coming up if you so need to you're not enjoying the the cottage then the farm said not good enough for you won't snuggle [Applause] the monasteries flocks could number thousands tenant farmers face the daunting task of herding their sheep from the fields back to their farms [Music] so we've got sheep up there and sheep up there ideally getting down the middle working down here pincer movement pin some movement i'll see you in about an hour don't fall asleep counting your sheep the 1530s would see a turning point in sheep farming at the end of the monastic era the monastery's land was sold so flocks were broken up and large common fields were enclosed [Music] this is good they're going it was the last time these huge flocks grazed together changing farming enterprises and the landscape of britain come on it's going really well this field is massive it's an open field but the secret is not to go in there too hard and heavy we're just slowly pushing them tickling them here tweaking them there and they're all bunching together in a mammoth flock [Applause] good stuff tom we don't even have a dog this time i've got you peter i've got you [Music] [Applause] the brine has been boiling for four hours enough water has evaporated for ruth to attempt the next stage of the process extracting the salt the very best quality salt is this first scum it's clean and there is one thing i could do to make sure that it really is clean what i need to do is throw a load of proteins in and then those proteins will bind with any impurities that are there the cheapest was oxblood but i haven't got a huge supply of that i'm going to try with some eggs just give them a good stir up it's certainly gathering bits together in larger clumps i mean the sort of leaves and twigs it's not doing much too but it does look like it's taking some of that funny color out prices for salt varied depending on its purity and whiteness there were different grades of salt with the grayest and cheapest used for household cleaning and the whitest being reserved for salting cheese that is looking much cleaner ruth is experimenting with forming salt in a traditional wicker cone these would have been used for draining and transporting it will be taken back to the farmhouse to be used for her winter preparations before the weather turns the barley needs to be safely stored or the crop will be ruined to ensure it is kept safe the boys are using an age-old technique picking gorse so what we're going to do is actually make a layer of this gauze in the bottom of our barn and these spikes will keep on the mice and the rats at bay keep them out of it but also raising the barley off the floor just get some air underneath keep it nice and dry protect our investment protect our crop although this is not a job i'm enjoying it seems like it's going to be one of our easiest tasks but uh at the moment bleeding now prickly my ankles i know it's like taking an angry dog for a walk isn't it [Music] autumn was the time for slaughtering animals as it was harder to feed and look after them in the colder months the tenant farmer would want to make their meat last for the months ahead [Music] ruth is trying a tudor technique for preserving beef using the salt she's produced you know nowadays we cut up beasts according to certain joints we want to get out but a tudor butcher was looking for something rather different he was looking to be able to fill his barrel with equal sized pieces of a portion for a man nobody really worried too much when they were butchering whether one person got mostly meat and another person got mostly fat as long as you got your two pound weight it's not exactly easy though butchering it up into beautiful pieces salting the meat for winter was usually the job of the tudor housewife i am really pleased with my salt cone well i can tell you it's a heck of a lot of work after the salt has been crumbled it is then rubbed onto every surface of the meat and what i'm hoping to do by this process is to dehydrate the meat i'm going to try and draw out all the juices within it because they are what allow infection in once the blood and other fluids have been drawn out of the beef it is ready to be stored in brine a mixture of water that has been boiled with salt and herbs this will move the salt further into the tissues of the meat there we go now just need to leave it in the brine for three days for that brine to really penetrate once this has happened the meat can be packed into a new barrel of dry salt for the final stage in preserving during the winter pieces of the meat would then be taken out and rinsed when required for cooking [Music] so i'll jump over pizza you pass it over yep let's get this ghost down that's prickly prickly stuff if i pop it over there and you can spread it with that [Music] i suppose not only have we brought our our sheep and our cows in we're also bringing in our harvest and by doing so we're leaving stubble fields so we're taking away the home of the rats and the mice and we're creating a food store for them so they're all going to come here looking for food so we need this course down here to protect it otherwise we're stuck this barley would have been used throughout the year to make two of our staples bread and ale so it's very important [Music] well one more load to get and then we can have our feast i'm looking forward to it let's crack on it's michaelmas a feast day to st michael the protector of the christian church it marked the shortening of days and the end of the yearly farming cycle ruth is cooking goose the traditional meat eaten at this time of year [Music] i mean nowadays many people only ever eat goose if they eat it at all at christmas and that's a madness from a farming point of view utterly ridiculous it's completely out of season there are two points in the year when it makes sense to eat goose one is towards the end of summer at that moment they are their fattest and their juiciest and it used to be called a green goose a grass-fed goose however if you want to keep them through to michaelmas then there is one more source of free food to fatten up your goose you set your geese free on your stubble lands and they pick about and then you've dropped graves they feed on and fatten up a second time and that is a stubble this just ready for michaelmas [Music] the last of the barley is being brought in to be stored it was customary once the last field was reaped for people to celebrate marking joy and relief after the hard work that had gone into the farming year the celebration took the form of harvest home and was steeped in rituals as communities across the kingdom thanked god for helping them with their harvest it's almost religious it's like every single grain is precious the amount of work and effort has gone into this thank you thank you professor ronald hutton has joined the team to help bring in the harvest so this year the fact that we've got such a good crop oh this really is a moment for celebration let's consider the alternative a moment there was a disease in tudor england called the bloody flux in modern times we thought it was some infection that had died out only with our relief work in ethiopia and the sudan the late 20th century did we realize that the bloody flux is the last stage of starvation when your body is famished beyond a certain point the wall of your intestine gives way in a massive hemorrhage that kills you off and that's the alternative to getting in a good harvest or even a harvest that's pretty stark [Music] with the dark prospect of famine avoided the farmers would have been able to rejoice once the cart was filled with the last of the barley the community would choose a harvest queen a maiden from the local village who would be carried on top of the cart as it made its way back to the farm [Music] come on come on come on here she is here congratulations mary that sounds pretty unanimous you get the honor of a crown and ride in the cards we're gonna grace our last harvest [Music] gentlemen yes one last little ordeal for you yes there are generally games involved in bringing home triumphantly the last cart from the field usually guys vs gals one which lasted for centuries after the tudor era was for the men that's you i'm afraid to try and get a small sheaf of cereal each into the bar now you see the ladies are lined up behind you armed with water who will try and empty the water over as you do so so this is speed and intelligence ready [Laughter] [Music] you and your crazy ideas this is history that does it to us i'm just the messenger and you're dry the rituals were followed by a great feast to reward the harvest workers for their toil it was a time of year which marked relief expressed by giving thanks for farming success [Music] the feast of michael and all angels which marks the real end of the agricultural year that's why we're celebrating so hard and the monastery has rewarded us for our labor by a customary extra gift of a goose which we roast for michaelmas to show that not only are we getting on well with each other but we're getting on well with our landlord but before we do anything would you please speak the grace [Music] benedictus ben and die cat paella christian dominum nostrum this goosey is fair carve away [Music] [Applause] there more gigs [Music] well ronald it is good to be alive it certainly is right now remember in 1500 we have winter ahead of us hypothermia darkness and above all boredom we're gonna have to wide away those long nights with lots of stories well as the beer is flowing we'll have a few stories that is a wonderful wonderful idea here's to you wow with the harvest safely stored the team have completed their farming obligations for the monastery for the previous 800 years monasteries had been at the forefront of farming education and technology as well as a hub for a range of craft and commercial activities monasteries wanted elaborate beautiful buildings to display their devotion to god and skilled masons were in high demand peter has come to gloucester cathedral to meet with master mason pascal michalisson who is restoring the stonework [Music] what are you working on at the moment a canopy is this this for gloucester cathedral yeah a canopy that's the stone which is covering a statue the head of the statue it always amazes me cathedrals they're they're so beautiful and it's so ornately carved and i suppose one of the few buildings that were built out of stone in the period so yeah when we we talk about stone architecture we talk in measurable time we talk almost exclusively about religious architecture yeah that means the masons their patron where the church and very soon most mason would be out of a job after the dissolution of the monastery a mason would trace designs onto floors and use basic geometry and rules of proportion to create buildings that have lasted for centuries what is extraordinary with the medieval medicine on judo masons is what they did with almost nothing and using very very little tools and mostly they use their wheat right and that's the tool they build category with a pickaxe that's all they had so could anyone become a mason the modern equivalent to understand that spot-on is you go to a football academy either you can kick the ball or you can't it's a roofless but fair system of meritocracy it's at the end of the day either you can have the skills of wielding the axe or you can't well i've kicked a few balls in my time they've never gone in the direction i want them to but hopefully if i hit a few blocks of stone i can yeah but we we can have a little demonstration building was usually done in the spring and summer months the mason would work with stone that was fresh from the quarry and contain natural sap that made it soft and much easier to carve the stone could be put in place and left to set in the winter all right that cuts looks absolutely fantastic um and you're doing that all by eye well i uh i i'm a trained mason so it would be sad if i couldn't do it you make it look so easy have a go okay and this this finger this is basically for guidance is it this piece of stone will be placed in the cathedral when complete you see you've got to control the cutting angle so you've got yeah straight away it's coming yep out like that so i need to so what tilt the axe slightly up like that yeah it's amazing the difference that the index finger makes it does give you that control a tudor stonemason would traditionally serve a seven-year apprenticeship a system which still operates today and what is nice too is medieval medicine didn't need to go to the gym [Laughter] keep your feet well based on that very very little bit of me yeah chopping a bit of stone off do you think i've got potential to be able to cut kick a football in your your stomach yeah i think we can put you on a three-month trial right i wish you hopefully you won't regret that [Music] the beautifully embellished monasteries were not just places of prayer they were also places of refuge and many monastic orders were involved in looking after the sick in the local community [Music] ruth has come to the monastic herb garden to pick plants that were believed to cure ailments common to the winter months this is my last chance to harvest the medicinal herbs ready for the winter and this is the job that you'll have found going on in pretty much every household all over britain you needed a stock of household medicine to keep you going medical knowledge in medieval times was quite limited relying on herbs and folklore remedies in about 1500 the renaissance makes it to britain and what this really is is a rediscovering of ancient greek texts it was changing the way people understood the plants around them if you were to be an intellectual in 1500 one of the forefronts of research was in plants the botany of this age was the science of the day [Music] monasteries were often large complexes of gardens dormitories and areas for prayer all of these areas were rich in decoration great tiled floors were costly and were another craft that thrived thanks to the patronage of the church and monasteries peter has come to the abbey to meet with karen slade from the company of artisans who will help him make tiles for a church so how do you make one well you have to start with some clay then you can take a wire and you can cut it from a block and you can then wedge that up and put that into a tile frame so this is a frame that just helps you get everything the same size the tiles would then be decorated um so if you'd like to make a 1500s tile this one is a pattern from hales abbey in gloucester and was made in about originally about 30 1536 so that's a fleur-de-lis that's a fleur-de-lis yes and the three petals that you see here they symbolize the trinity so you've got the father-son and holy ghost and very popular symbol but also right in thinking that henry vii yes he did yes he did okay so i just line this up yes that's it line it up nice and square with the clay that's it you hit it with a hammer so one sitting hard you hit it relatively hard in the middle first and then each corner [Music] [Applause] that's it and then just hit it just about there just level it up that's it brilliant i'll just have a look and see how that's come out oh there we are that's perfect certainly ready to use the sunken areas on the pattern are filled in with another form of clay known as slip which will then turn yellow once glazed and fired and this is the only thing that they used to have to pay for so you can see how little i'm using compared with the red clay the red clay was free you could dig that up but this white clay isn't found in very many places so it's precious and then that's it and then that's it so the next stage we need to do is to just have a go at scraping off the surface now that it's stiff you're trying to get a clean edge in between the two colors so if i just start with just this tiny piece at the top here just so that you can begin to see that lovely clean edge how long does this take you oh it takes ages it takes about takes about 20 minutes um per tile i was going to say the sort of process of making a tile did seem ridiculously fast and i knew there had to be a snake there is a snag this is the snack so if you want to have a little go you want to take over you just need to scrape it flat one thing i never thought i'd be doing was shaving the tile they will not know if the pattern has worked until it's been fired i think that one's almost done but that's not going to make an entire floor is it so no we have to we've got a few more i know you better get going in tudor england the threat of fatal disease was ever present such as the sweating sickness and the bubonic plague the average life expectancy was just 35 years herbs were used for treatments and it was important to store them over the winter [Music] ruth's using the hyssop she picked to attempt a tudor remedy that's a load of honey and i'm just bruising the first of many batches of hyssop and i'm going to seethe the hyssop in the honey hyssop is one of those plants that was used really quite extensively in the period it's not so much now if you went to a modern herbalist they wouldn't be all that impressed by using hyssop but in 1500 it was considered to be an important medicinal plant medieval medicine was based on the theory of the four humors it's centered on the balance of four liquids in the body blood phlegm black bile and yellow bile illnesses were believed to be caused by an imbalance of one of these humors and medicines would aim to restore the balance and every plant out there was assigned to one of the particular humors to a lesser a more or less degree so hyssop which is the one here this is hot and dry it's ideal for counteracting for balancing diseases of phlegm anything where you have too much phlegm can be cured according to this ancient greek idea by hyssop a spoonful of hyssop mixture mixed with hot water was viewed as a useful remedy [Music] the infirmary was a space within a monastery where the elderly and the infirm of the community could be cared for whether they were there because simply of old age or you know whether it was a particular ailment it was an area of the monastery that was heated unlike the rest monks were allowed to not take part in all the offices of the day so that they wouldn't get too exhausted and they also were allowed to bypass some of the dietary rules there was a bed there was warmth there was food but more importantly in the eyes of the 15th and 16th century there was spiritual care [Music] under the reign of henry viii many of these monastic hospitals were closed in their place came the civic and parish provisions which laid the foundations for modern social welfare [Music] peter and karen have come to the church at hales abbey to see their tiles put into place on the reconstructed floor these these look a lot smaller than when we're making them oh yes they do they shrink quite a lot you have to think about that when you're making a pattern um oh wonderful look at that we're bringing you more tiles um it's looking pretty good though i mean are they fairly quick to lay the fairly quick delay um by using the lime screed to start with that gives you a level base right and then you're simply just buttering on the bedding material so the tiles can be more or less flat anyway tiles could feature the crests of the benefactors paying for the floor as funding works on religious buildings was viewed as a way of avoiding purgatory other designs had more religious overtones so this is our tile so that's it after it's been scraped and then dried and then fired with a glaze on top and the glaze has changed the color from white pure white to a yellow color yes on this side so you're happy with how it's come out though i think it's fantastic good the distinctive yellow and red tiles were phased out from the 1540s with the influx of tilers from the continent bringing new styles all of a sudden you've got wonderful italian tilers and french tilers and people from holland making delta making blue and white yeah and as soon as people see blue and white tiles on the floor um they don't want brown and yellow anymore suddenly their floors are in hd that's it they don't want they don't want them anymore the final process is to use a dry mortar mixture of lime and sand brushed over the tiles into the cracks water is added to set the mixture and keep the tiles in place at the point of dissolution the larger monastic houses were still spending money on embellishments such as these tiles ornate stone work and they really didn't see it coming [Music] [Music] in 1500 the monasteries under henry vii were thriving even rivaling the power of the state but when his ambitious son henry viii came to the throne the new monarch came to resent the monastery's power their wealth and their control from rome the king also questioned the religious purpose of the monasteries influenced by ideas from europe that monks no longer needed to pray on behalf of society individuals should now pray directly to god to ensure their own salvation in the 1520s the wheels were put in motion for the king to break away from the roman church and dissolve the monasteries professor james clark an expert in medieval history has come to discuss the dissolution of the monasteries i just find it utterly amazing that so enormous shift happened with remarkably little protest it is remarkable uh this is carried out in in four years or so they are in fact continuing to embellish their churches and the the buildings of the convent at the very moment that the king's commissioners arrive there's one uh scene at one monastery where the king's commissioners are literally picking their way over the the trenches that are being dug for the foundations of new walls and and so on what was the impact to the wider society the institution that has really made and shaped many people's living and working environment is removed monasteries provided care for the sick through hospital foundations they had school foundations and these are closed at the dissolution this is uncharted territory for many village and town communities across england the team's time as tenant farmers of the monastery is coming to an end the farmer's calendar was punctuated with religious festivals earlier in the year the team set up a religious guild a group that monitored its members piety to ensure the salvation of their souls guilds often put on mystery plays a tradition that was to be largely lost after the dissolution of the monasteries a representative from the guild would be in charge of organizing the play and recruiting locals to act and help build the sets the team are meeting with drama expert dr elena lowe to find out what's involved what do we mean by mystery play in the first place well the word mystery links to the latin word mysterium which means a guild or a craft so these plays were very much linked to the the guilds who who put up who were responsible for each of these plays and each of the guilds would be asked to put on their own section of the story so these these mystery plays were a cycle of plays several different plays each of which told us a little snapshot moment from the bible they they tell the story of the scriptures from the creation right through to the harrowing of hell so it's education and entertainment at the same time all at the same time are we talking professional actors then or people giving it a go no so these are amateurs as part of the guild performing on the street in front of their fellow townspeople um ruth is in charge of making a popular tudor drink for the audience at the play using forgotten fruits from the countryside [Music] sugar was only known as a sort of rare spice in early tudor england so you couldn't possibly make jam or bottle fruit or any of those sorts of methods that later on in history people use for preserving fruit through the winter no in the 1490s and 1500 fruit had to keep all by itself so what you were looking for was varieties which would do exactly that a fruit was expensive to preserve any that could last for longer in the larder would be most welcome bullish is a ripe on the bullish tree a really ancient fruit one that sort of gets rather forgotten about these days a little sort of type of plum a little bit sour but i mean you can eat them raw if you like sharp flavours a little bullis being a a more solid fleshed less watery sort of a fruit will keep for three or four weeks after it's been picked as taste changed and sweeter varieties of plums such as damsons became more popular the bullis plum was largely forgotten but what that means is it becomes something of an indicator species if you're out in the countryside and you come across a great line of bullish trees you're almost certainly at the site of ancient settlement they're as much a part of our heritage as any church or other building to impress the audience of the play guilds would pull out all the stops to produce a memorable performance tom has come to see alchemist jack green to experiment with making tudor pyrotechnics [Music] jack it looks like we're about to start cooking here we've got pestle and mortars got ingredients but this is actually what we're going to use to make tudor fireworks fireworks yes although they had been used in china since the 10th century in england it was not until the 13th century that a churchman called roger bacon first studied how to make fireworks so jack what's our first ingredient uh charcoal is what we need no great cost easily accessible yes [Music] this is basically the the principles grind all the ingredients down and mix them isn't it yes and the finer you grind them the more intimately mixed they are the more powerful is the fire [Music] fireworks were produced by adding other minerals to the charcoal like saltpeter so what is saltpeter well it's a salt and it's a salt that accumulates in manure heaps it uh helped ignition there's also an element of risk creating gun powder i imagine it's not something people wanted spread about that knowledge um the difference between a modern scientist a modern chemist and a medieval alchemist is that a modern chemist believes in publishing results alchemists had exactly the opposite attitude all alchemists wrote in code and the fascination of alchemy is to work out what the symbols mean the tudor period was the first time these ratios of ingredients were studied and gunpowder was made to be as explosive as possible jack and tom are trying their own ratios very good that goes in there this is fulfilling funnel okay and this goes in the top i do have a secret ingredient for this we have here some gunpowder and we'll put a little of it in now goes down the bottom does it yes uh make it uh finish with a flourish you see layers of the powders need to be built up to create different effects jack's experimental layer of gunpowder will hopefully make it go with a bang and then a little more of this it must be there by now surely i don't know you're the boss well you're the man with the eyes now we put the fuse in to start it off that should be good there we have it so there we are good luck for the mystery play trust me these gonna bring the house down i hope not [Music] ruth is experimenting with an ancient recipe to make an alcoholic refreshment for the audience to enjoy it will be made from the freshly picked bullishes whenever people talk about monks and monasteries the word mead comes up of course the truth is that monks mostly drank beer and they drank an awful lot of beer but now and again in party mode there was a little bit of mead floating around your basic need is just some honey and some water and you will allow it to ferment but if you flavored it with fruit you called it melamel that's what this is so i'm just crushing up the fruit in order to release the juice and then that just goes straight in our brewing vessel and along with that the honey now the more honey i use the stronger it'll be there we go and then the water and that's it you'll notice that i didn't wash the fruit first and that's deliberate i want the wild yeasts on the skin of the fruit to be in there working feeding on the sugars from the fruit and from the honey quietly turning the water into alcohol basically it ruth will leave it in the sun allowing the fruit to ferment and hopefully create a tasty drink [Music] [Music] it's the day of the mystery play [Music] [Applause] for mankind shall dwell evermore in bliss that never fails within records give some details of how plays were put on and the team have converted a farmyard cart into a stage from which these mobile plays would be performed across towns so what's really interesting about these plays is that um they're very popular in the 14th 15th century and then by the time we get to the 1590s they've really been censored out of fashion and you know that's partly to do with the dissolution of the monasteries because of course they're you know very much tied up with the catholic church calendar gills chose a play that reflected their interests carpenter's guilds as woodworkers would naturally put on the crucifixion and the team's farmer's guild has chosen a play centered on the salvation of souls by jesus the harrowing of hell my brethren i think our health is near and soon shall cease mystery plays were similar in style to modern pantomimes tom is playing beelzebub and the bad guy's arrival on stage is marked in the same way it is today with from here they shall not pass records of the plays show accounts of pulley systems and elaborate sets being used peter is in charge backstage using whatever he has to hand [Music] so they're there they revive the dissolution itself then they just sort of peter out of it afterwards yes exactly and then in the 16th century we get the foundation of the permanent theatre structures um and professional theatre of companies i sink into my pets [Music] [Applause] jesus has saved the souls and banished the devil lightning down lightning off the cloud of peace and love here we go freeze his [Applause] glory well done guys well done awesome that's brilliant well done go take the praise the festivities will carry on for many hours and ruth's melamel has turned out to be a hit with the audience [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] in 1534 henry viii made himself supreme head of the church breaking away from rome it marked the beginning of the end for the monasteries it would be the last time that religion and farming were so entwined over the course of the next four years monasteries were pulled down their valuable land and materials stripped and sold off [Music] the great structures that had dominated the landscape for centuries were left as empty shells they're really melancholy places these aren't they we are standing in a monastic graveyard we were standing in the end of an era that was just so total it's important to remember it's not just the lost these buildings it's the social services that are lost by the monasteries closing down the education the caring for the old and the sick the employment and it takes near enough a generation to replace this but also i suppose monasteries are a victim of their own success they are these institutions of wealth and power of craft and industry of raw materials and henry viii looks at them and says yeah i want that it is a lost age you know lost past you think what a huge turning point it was in our history [Music] it's the last day on the farm the boys have come to say goodbye to their faithful oxen gwyn and graceful and give them their winter feed these girls have worked so well for me yeah we have been a team guys you have been our farm done our plowing you've done our harrowing you've moved the carts of wool you've kept us in check haven't you well they really have been steady performers haven't they yeah that's the thing well someone had to be yeah indeed they picked up the slack where we've let it go [Music] yes you'll get some food in a second can i miss you guys without them we could have got half stuff done and we built up a working relationship and some real insights of just how reliant the tudor farmer would have been on their livestock without these guys you don't have a farm without farm you don't have a livelihood well it's been emotional better luck girls so in 1500 the monasteries had been at the peak of their power and influence they were one of the largest landowners in england controlling mines waterways and farms and holding a virtual monopoly over the wool tray i thought they were supposed to be white sheep these ones [Laughter] they were the dominant spiritual and cultural focus in tudor society the dissolution transferred the power of the monasteries along with their land and wealth to the crown some aspects of monastic authority would be taken over by the state and private enterprise others would simply disappear and the farming landscape of britain was changed forever [Music] it's been amazing working on a tudor monastery farm i mean turning up it was just hustle bustle the marketplace everything was going on it was just idyllic everything's been fun but it's definitely been hard work you know weights dropped off a little bit you know a few aches and pains bruises sores but it's been fantastic i wouldn't change anything i felt this year almost a sort of nostalgia that we were living a life that was about to slip away this is such a pivotal moment it's like the deep breath that britain takes ready before it suddenly launches into new way of living

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

Views: 754,833

Keywords: history documentary, medieval history documentary, middle ages, medieval history, the middle ages, middle ages documentary, middle ages history, normal medieval people, normal people middle ages, ruth goodman, tudor monastery farm episode 6, tudor monastery farm, middle ages for kids, chronicle

Id: xNPe-dh9GY0

Length: 59min 9sec (3549 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 31 2022