The Surprisingly Colourful World Of Medieval Interior Design | Secrets of the Castle | Perspective

paper was light gold in medieval times i want tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong [Music] castles dominated the medieval landscape and britain has some of the finest in the world today most are decaying relics many of their secrets buried in time [Music] now historian ruth goodman and archaeologists tom pinphone and peter ginn are turning the clock back to re-learn the secrets of the medieval castle builders this is the ultimate 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 getalong 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 the coalface because this is industry for the next six months ruth peter and tom will experience the daily rigors of medieval construction and everyday life how workers dressed you can really smell your food and the art of combat this is the story of how to build a medieval castle [Music] it's may and the team have been immersed in the building works alongside gedilon's masons [Music] they've learned how the castle was defended in times of war [Music] every stone has to be in line because this is going to go up and up and up now the team discovered the surprisingly colorful world of 13th century castle interiors and much of the material they work with will come straight from the ground some of the stuff in here is ochre from paint to brighten the rooms it's hot look at the difference on my fingers to turning mud into floor tiles can you imagine living in a world with no electric lights and they'll be rediscovering an ancient art in a midnight firing at the kiln [Music] the medieval castles we're used to seeing today are scarred by centuries of warfare and weather erosion [Music] most of their original roofs carpentry and interior finishes have long since disappeared but these drab walls are a far cry from how they looked in their heyday this is how many of us think of the interior of castles bare stone echoey damp gritty underfoot but that's because we're used to ruins when they were in use back in the 13th century they were rather different you have to imagine tiled floors and plaster on the walls perhaps painted white washed and then hangings of fabric over the top filled with furniture and that too is covered in fabrics cushions all sorts an entirely different beast [Music] to strive for accuracy the getalon project has adopted a specific historical time frame to work to the castle is being designed and built as it would have been in the fronts of the 1230s and 40s during the reign of king louis ix [Music] the region of prisay in burgundy was governed by one jean de tusi a vassal to the king in turn the 2c was the overlord of several other lower ranking noblemen and it was one of these lesser nobles who would have commissioned a castle like the one being built here at getalon today it's not a grand royal castle bristling with military might enormous wealth but a fortified residence of relatively modest taste and design according to the rank and means of the imaginary lord of gednon the team along with site administrator sarah preston are exploring some of the key rooms and quarters within the castle to find out how the interiors are being dressed this is the castle's great hall great is the word so this is very much the hub of castle life this is it's a dining hall it's a it's a banqueting feasting hall i mean this room is a statement of power and prestige isn't it absolutely which is why it's important to bear in mind of course once it's finished we won't have these bare stone walls the great hall was the political and business hub of castle life this was where the lord held court receiving his tenants and listening to their concerns and grievances many of the social rituals of the day being held here it was important for the interior design to show off his wealth and status to invited guests [Music] over the next few years the great hall at gedelon and the great tower adjacent to it will be dressed in the style of a 13th century lord and his lady so this is currently the lord's chamber this is where the lord would sleep with his wife and his children it's certainly a residential chamber you can see that from the fireplace on the wall behind us so it can be heated it's not true of all the rooms in the castle the stone walls are rough uneven and drafty but they would have been dressed and painted peter and tom are going to be painting and tiling some of the castle's indoor spaces while ruth makes paint so this is the story but first sarah takes her to the already decorated kitchen under the great hall but eventually it will have a render applied and then a lime wash and to make it much whiter and brighter come and have a look oh i see what you mean i mean that's real darkness into light isn't it it makes such a difference people aren't used to necessarily seeing the inside of castle walls rendered and lime washed but it's made such a difference to the people who actually work in the kitchen because it's like sort of bounce off an electric light absolutely and i guess in terms of hygiene it would have made a difference oh yeah definitely really it sort of kills anything that might be there and stops bugs getting into all the cracks and things so you start with a really sterile surface repaint it if you don't whenever you need to i mean obviously so far we haven't had the time to render the inside of all the rooms we've got other priorities at the moment but as soon as we finish kind of the major building work then we can get on with the job of rendering the inside but i hope also the outside of the castle because often the outsides of castles were also rendered and lime washed because in terms of visibility it just meant that your castle stood out in the landscape so that's something that we couldn't necessarily get away with in a genuine historic monument but here on this experimental site that's something that we can show our visitors the tower of london the white tower was named because it was limewashed on the outside [Music] the tower nearest the quarry known as the quarry tower would have been a guard room or shooting gallery even this would have been brightly decorated the boys have been tasked by stonemason fabrice mango with rendering the interior wall with lime mortar the medieval equivalent of plaster we're going to use two and a half buckets of sand and one lime and water and mix it in what we're looking for here is the right consistency keep on adding a little moisture turn it in turn it in don't be smart it's okay are you happy is that good enough he's good yeah cozy workspace paprice demonstrates how a medieval wall is rendered put some water we're not drenched in here though are we just dampening this time if you don't put water more or just wait just watch this archaeological research has revealed that rendering wouldn't have been applied in several smooth layers but with a single rough coat using a technique similar to spreading butter keeping the board close to the wall pushing the render should i go first yeah let me get it wrong yeah i'm going to learn from your mistakes my friends um so to do a turret like this how long do you think it will take two three days two three days that's ten days four times at least ten days for me good luck see you later as the lime mortar is relatively porous it will draw out any dampness in the wall and so help to preserve the masonry underneath it's interesting isn't it that we're only putting on one coat that butter coat but this is an established practice isn't it you always think when you go to the ruined castles in the uk or around europe these bare walls are what they were looking at however not the case it was a prestige thing to get a layer of render up decorate it yeah i mean castles majority castles they are just ruins aren't you coming to them very long after their lives the medieval manufacture of tiles for castle roofs and floor spaces was an industry in itself so far at getalong 28 000 tiles have been created for the roof of the great hall building alone a job which took four years to achieve it's estimated that a total of eighty thousand tiles will be needed to cover the roofs of the castle in its entirety but as the four towers around the curtain wall are still under construction tile production has now shifted from roof tiles to floor tiles and tom is about to discover just how laborious the process is to make just one tile just breaking up some of this clay i'm going to use it for our tiles obviously not in this state we actually need to get a lot of these impurities out but some of the stuff in here is ochre and ochre can actually turned into paint so i'm going to separate some of that out but now just stack up on this clay get it back to the toilet or the tile makers in the 11th century many hamlets and villages in france specialized in tile production to meet increasing demand from the local nobility and as the medieval tile trade grew so did the strict regulations it was governed by designed to standardize production ah that's thing about clay isn't it it's not easy to work you can feel all the muscles getting involved in 1280 a decree from toulouse stipulated that good tiles may only be made from well-plugged clay well trampled underfoot and not over dry it feels nice though is this good for hands good for the skin very nice for the skin yeah some people are paying for this lucky ass i've always wanted soft hands tom and tilemaker emmerich guillot are now removing any twigs and stones and making the clay homogenous and malleable ah so this hard lump here this could be ochre yes the ochre pigments contain colourful iron oxides and are set aside to be used for making paint [Music] an integral feature of castle design were the toilets they were known as garda hope the french word for wardrobe clothes would often be kept inside them because it was believed the smell of ammonia from urine kept parasites at bay gardahog were often built out of the castle walls to allow the waste to drop down through the hole to the ground or moat below [Music] get along keeps a wooden grill over the holes to dissuade any modern day visitors from attempting to spend a penny it's a big question isn't it how people use guard rooms there is little bits of evidence in the earliest of the manners books which are aimed at pages who are serving a night when they're hoping to become a squire become a knight so it's it's for little lads you know their first job of the day before their lord is up is to prepare the privy and he's told to make it extremely clean he's got to sweep it out and make it clean he's also got to put cloths in there not quite sure how the cloths were used but there to go in there and sweet smelling herbs so that it's somewhere comfortable and pleasant to be so at least for those at the very top of society going to the toilet ought to have been quite a nice experience yeah i think i mean it wouldn't have smelled too bad i mean i know the poo is going down and yes if it's not getting moved there might be a bit of wafting up but those herbs would certainly have taken the edge off and there is of course the question of toilet paper there is i mean many people think leaves and moss but let's face it deforestation where the heck are you going to get a leaf of the right size in the middle of january i mean honestly and then you also you think more moss but you'd have to have moss plantations wouldn't you to keep a big community so i mean there's nothing to say that people didn't use i mean you know as well as i do that archaeologically all sorts of things turn up in cesspits so probably people used whatever was to hand but i do wonder if maybe the more normal system especially in a castle would have been to have your own cloth or rag or flannel to wash yourself with or even a communal rag quite washed out in a bucket washed out in a bucket it's perfectly possible for these privies anyway certainly he's a coat of render a coat of lime wash probably a loose seat i think a door might be a good idea too and a door so you have to take some uh this thing is uh grease is dripping uh you have to take it on your finger like this and that's for cake you put it inside just work that around and that's actually lubricate the side of the template is it so the tile will come out easily at the end so uh i like to to start with hands because we can feel you can feel all the corners it's very important to have good corners in the tile if not the masons are really not satisfied to work is very hard for them we don't upset the masons no don't do that so you can use this as well when you think the corners are okay you can just finish all right so but you're not just hitting it are you sort of looks like you're rolling a bit there yeah a little bit if you like do it like this right you'll see so okay it's almost like you're twisting it off as you make contact that's what's happening with you with me it's kind of in between i think new to a new to you use this one like this and try to get something very flat so we have to to see if it's okay on the other side when there's a problem it's always with the corners always something with the corners so we have to check the corners okay my corners are good what do you think this is perfect oh yes yes masons will be happy okay you put it there and you do like this with the grease poke normally it's going but you have to sign with the name of this place and basically that's about quality control yes and if we've done once we've got another 69 to do [Laughter] yes [Music] just beyond the castle walls ruth is visiting gedelon's paint house to discover how the ochre found in the quarry and in the clay is used to make pigments for paint [Music] i'm going to start by grinding down the earth's valerie erto is a ceramicist by trade from a family of local potters she's in charge of pigments paint making and decoration so these are the pieces that tom was finding in amongst the clay when he was doing the tiling part paints funny stuff it's it's not the same as dye dye stains the fibers of what you're dying so so if you get a wood stain that is a dye for wood because it's dyeing the wood fibers in the same way as cloth is a dye that stains the fibres paint is different paint is bits of coloured stuff that are glued onto a surface and so if they're very big lumps the amount of light coming off is quite small the color looks patchy and thin if you can make the particles very very tiny the light will refract off them in a great burst and you'll get a really strong intense color i mean i shouldn't think a 13th century person thought about light refraction but they did know that if you grind it thoroughly you get a much better paint it's not a bad color is it look good against the yellow i've got a yellow stone there yellow ochre is the other key colour found in the natural getalon environment this really is the color of gathering look at that when you're around here everything's this color absolutely everything that is the dust that we breathe in whenever you go anywhere near the castle it's got grinds underfoot it's the you know just look at the place this is the color of the ground so having sort of crushed it up a bit and dissolved it we're now sieving it we want small particles as the mixture settles the heavier ochre particles fall to the bottom and the remaining liquid is left out in the sun to dry the finer particles left behind are then ground down into a powder it's an enormous amount of work to grind this down to the fineness that you need but when you just see the range of colors that have been produced just out of the earth of ghetto you can see why people would bother just look at it [Music] out in the castle courtyard peter and philippe delage known to his fellow craftspeople as gandalf are mixing lime wash made with one part lime and one part water what is that in french limewash how can you tell it's good consistency all right there's more oh it's really good is that that's good yeah yeah oh it should be enough yeah i'll grab that bucket yes come on up the towel peter heads towards the lord and ladies bed chamber in the great tower to brighten things up in the gardaho right left english french brush gosh and then it's down down down and it just gives a beautiful beautiful texture i know at gedlong there was a massive debate as to whether you know they should leave the stones the walls there because all this work had gone in by the masons to to put the stone there and they said if you cover it up with water with render and paint it with lime wash the public won't see it but this is how the castles were in the medieval age of course as we come across castles they're ruins generally very little plaster work survives ruth and valerie experiment with a bit of 13th century chemistry [Music] so this is the local yellow ochre earth and we're cooking it so if you're trying to turn it red it's quite exciting isn't it that this just comes out of the ground all yellow and you can get this range of colors yes you're right i can see there where it's hot look at the difference on my fingers yellow ochre is a hydrated iron oxide known as limonite as it heated over the fire some of the limonite turns into hematite turning the ochre into rich darker shades such as burnt sienna and burnt umber pigments like this are really ancient right across europe if you think of those cave paintings right at the dawn of human history this is the sort of paint that they were using to make them and if you think of britain the pics i think those people are known or described in the ancient roman texts as being covered in red paint the red men and the irish talk about it too it seems to have been a really celtic thing to do to paint yourself because red and yellow ochres look at that [Music] just beyond the castle walls of gedelo the earthen kiln used for the firing of tiles is lined with bricks kilns were often owned by the local lord who of course charged his tenants for using them in the 13th century regulations governing the work of local tilers in and around toulouse specified not only the consistency and dimensions of the tiles themselves but also the size of the kilns used and the number of tiles permitted to be fired in any one firing get along fires 4 000 tiles at a time [Music] bruno faval is the chief tilemaker at getalong and he and his team have presided over 15 experimental firings during the past nine years each firing has enabled them to improve and finesse their techniques [Music] the way they're placing them in the kiln they're leaving gaps so when they fire this the flames can work their way up through every single tile and hopefully we'll win even temperature making each one hard each one a very similar color and and making sure there's no losses um and one of the problems with these tiles when you dry them out if there's any water in there and you fire it too quickly the kiln that water will expand because it'll turn into a gas it'll blow the tile apart you'll hear a pop and if these are stacked incorrectly if one tile goes several tiles could go they've been doing this for a number of years they know what they're doing it's a lot of this is trial and error experimental archaeology they they know what these kilns look like from excavations have been done in the uk they've been done in france now they know how these kilns actually work because they've been working these kilns [Music] out in the peace and quiet of the forest ruth is making an essential tool for applying her medieval paint so if i'm actually going to be able to paint anything that looks like something i'm going to need a decent brush to do it with so i went and found some badger hair well i'll be honest there was a there was some roadkill so i shaved it um i know it sounds a bit of a weird thing to do so i shaved it as close to the skin as i possibly could in order to keep the hairs all as they grow naturally in order so when i sort of grab a little tuft of it here if i sort of try and separate a bit out and what i want are these long straight hairs that are what helps a badge of shed water the hair is designed to move water which is why it makes such great brushes i'm going to glue those hairs in place so they don't move during the next bit of the process the glue ruth is using is gum arabic hardened sap from the acacia tree mixed with four parts water gum arabic of course is water-soluble so i'll be able to just wash it out of the brush at the end and can you see how that's coming together now as a point that's exactly what i want it to do as a finished brush if you look at a modern paintbrush there's a sort of metal bit between the hairs and the stick the 13th century i'm not going to mess around trying to make a metal ferrule you just do something much much easier and cheaper you go and get yourself a feather because if you think about it if i cut that bit off and i cut that bit off i've got a ready-made tube i can take a little bit of thread and bind my hairs it's whipping them into place as tight as i can manage and i've got a nice firmly held little paintbrush head which i should be able to poke through there we go you can see how firmly that's in there now see paintbrush head all i need now is jammer stick in the other end done that looks like it'll work [Music] the pressure's on at the tile kiln [Music] the 13th of may in medieval france was regarded as the day of the holy ice it was believed to be the last day of spring in which a hailstorm would occur sent by god as a sign of his omnipotence before the arrival of summer and as hail often turns quickly to heavy rain that could have disastrous consequences for the fate of this batch of tiles this firing has already been held up for several days owing to heavy storms and once again dark clouds are looming overhead the rain is coming and we've just got to get this finished because if these tiles get wet it'll be a serious problem not only can it affect their ability to fire essentially they may explode if if the water gets in there they also take an awful lot more fuel to dry this kiln out and then get it up to temperature medieval tile makers would probably have used mud earth or wooden boards to weatherproof the tops of their kilns but for reasons of practicality and efficiency gedalon relies on sheets of 21st century corrugated iron there isn't a moment to lose here it comes the holy ice the hail the last time of the year you'll get hail and almost as if on cue [Music] as feared the hail quickly turns into a downfall the kiln will remain covered for several days to allow the soil around it and the wood required for firing time to thoroughly dry out [Music] only once bruno has assessed that the ground and climate conditions are optimum will the firing finally take place good work peter good work and at this rate it may have to be postponed for several more days yet [Applause] glad i've got a poncho tomorrow [Music] while the tile firing is on hold progress is made on the chapel tower the guard room within the lower floor is undergoing a colorful transformation valerie and her colleague aurelie payar are using the ghetto on ochre to paint a design on the walls known as fictive masonry this was a popular style of artwork among the nobility and royalty throughout europe in the mid 13th century [Music] it was a less expensive way to create the illusion of the walls having been constructed from expensive white limestone [Music] by lime washing the cheaper sandstone white and then over painting this with a colorful fake stonework pattern a look of grandeur and of wealth was created transformation is incredible isn't it to think it goes from bare stone to render to live wash to this i mean this is prestige it's from 1240 the queen of england has something very similar in her bed chambers with the addition of flowers but yeah it brightens the room doesn't it it's like visual is impressive and these fake joints made out of this ochre paint give the impression of highly cut stone exactly it's like you are replicating what's beneath it but a very stylish way in a way that actually says to people coming here to visit this is what i'm worth i've got money i can make this happen the ochre pigments would be mixed with a glue binder made from egg or sometimes rabbit skin to make the paint sure if my lines are dark enough [Music] oh oh oh oh oh oh i think i top loaded my brush a little bit too much there yeah it hasn't run that's the danger isn't it too much pigment on your your brush yes you want to touch up that bit there and then i'll nip in no it's all there wrong what's going wrong it's looking awful it is i've seen worse well i know but you know you should put yourself down [Music] [Music] every aspect of getalon's design is planned by a scientific committee of experts they work closely with the staff so that every feature is based on authentic primary sources of historical evidence and just a few miles away in the village of mutier is a key example of that evidence the church of saint peter built around the year 1000 the church of the middle ages was a huge and wealthy landowner which exerted a powerful influence over people's lives and the interiors of its buildings often set a benchmark for the tastes and trends of the era in the early 1980s the white distemper covering the interior walls started to crack and peel this is amazing uncovering a fascinating medieval secret everywhere a painstaking conservation over the next 10 years revealed these stunning ochre murals from the 13th century [Music] they've provided geraldo with an authentic and illuminating resource from which to draw inspiration for the interior deco of the castle this is the panel that we're particularly interested in in terms of the work we're doing again it's amazing you can you can pick out there you can see the freeze yeah and these five petal flowers you find these all over the place very pop art but it's pure 13th century of course the church would have been absolutely central in people's lives everyone locally would have had to have come to this church so the paintings on these walls aren't just decoration they are here to tell stories they can be read very much like a cartoon strip right almost the entertainment of the age the biblical story just laid out in scenes and i like the way that the artists have also taken uh the opportunity to retell the story uh in their way if there was any kind of friction between them and the church we've got eve here sashaying away being very cheeky giving the wink to adam just behind here we have a wink we can't see what happens behind the pillar and then afterwards they've got a harvest and a child so i wonder what the reaction was because presumably the villagers would be in on the joke i only mean you [Music] ruth is applying some of the techniques discovered at the church of saint peter to the bed chamber which would have been used to provide hospitality to the lord and lady's most distinguished guests [Music] it's the most highly decorated room in the castle so far and ruth is using the burnt red ochre paint to restore the rose motifs in the window seat [Music] obviously the domestic spaces within a castle are intended to impress they have to look gorgeous it's about the look of the place as much as anything else and naturally people painted their walls it's not a church this isn't about religious storytelling this was about showing your power it was about prestige that up there that little bit where it's painted to look as if it's masonry with the little roses in front often called stones and roses is perhaps the most typical as far as we can tell of all interior decorating designs of the mid 13th century that is what the queen of england had on her bedroom walls in the tower of london stones and roses the very height of fashion [Music] back at the church of saint peter sarah explains how the paintings on these walls have informed the way in which gedilon's interiors are decorated [Music] because we don't have a lot of evidence of the types of paintings that were inside castles uh we were always very careful to say to people okay we don't know if there was ever a bedroom painted in exactly the style that we've got at the castle but just a stone's throw from the castle at the same time we're painting these same patterns and crucially it's the same color palette this is just like walking out of the quarry isn't it we've got the red ochre the yellow ochres the browns i have to say i mean you look at the masons when they come out of the quarry in that kind of the dust and the ochre that's on them that is your color palette absolutely nice everything's there so if we wanted to paint in this area with blues or greens we'd have to buy those pigments in from further afield and they would have been more costly and it's interesting to see that in a church the decision has obviously been taken not to have too much blue or green they've used the materials that were available locally artwork like this just doesn't really survive in castles castles generally ruins but churches are such a an important historical reference that was a that was certainly uh a challenge for us and that we were aware that there are very few models of the types of paintings that there would have been inside castles at this time it was a very deliberate decision not to use the human figures because obviously these are depicting uh biblical stories so we we stuck very much with the the flowers the trees the geometric shapes but what we're wanting to do is offer people a vision of what a 13th century visitor might have seen and to get over the fact that the castles weren't bare stone empty places they were decorated and they were full of color [Music] another area of the castle which is the result of intense research into 13th century architecture is the chapel clemon girard the chief stone carver at gedelon is a highly experienced draftsman but he's about to undertake his most ambitious project to date right now clermont's doing the drawing for what will be the prestige feature of the chapel so much so they've actually imported a slightly less higher type of limestone or easier to carve this really is precise work i am marveling at the skill he's got [Music] clamor is designing a decorative piece of masonry based on a very common 13th century design found throughout france it's a niche for the chapel wall with a trefoil shaped head which will sit upon pillars rising from two small basins called piscine at getalong white dress limestone is used for the more decorative features of the castle [Music] although it's quicker to dress than the quarry's hard sandstone it's easier to chip so great precision is required and mistakes could prove costly [Music] finally it's the morning of the long awaited firing of the kiln peter's up early to help share the workload with florian dubois the firebox in the lower chamber has been stacked with logs and twigs and at last the first piece of kindling is lit within seconds clouds of wood smoke are billowing out of the top of the firing chamber it's going to take hundreds of armfuls of wood and many hours of careful monitoring to turn these flames into the roaring blaze required to fire the tiles a long hot and exhausting day lies ahead [Music] the stone carvers have completed the first part of the white limestone niche and are ready to transport it at the chapel tower [Music] the hoisting of the stone requires care and attention the lord and all of those working for him would have set great store by this sacred work of art well for us the significance is that this is the first real piece of religious architecture that we've got in the castle uh this is the the only sacred space within the castle so we're actually standing here in the area where the altar will be so this is the holiest place right off this this sacred space where you'd have the holy water and the oils yeah so that this is the most delicate sculpture that we've done here as you can see it's a hand base and you've seen it being being dressed earlier but you can see the two dips now we had some priest visiting we were wondering ourselves why there were these two kind of recesses and the priests that were visiting suggested that maybe one was for washing priest's hands before the mass and that the other one was then washing the implements that had been used in the mass right what we've been told at least is that the idea is that all the water that is in uh this this pisina this this hand basin is holy water and as such you can't just be thrown away all the water will actually and we're not talking about huge amounts but the water will just kind of filter down into the wall and stay within the walls the the stone of the chapel itself is obviously porous it's going to absorb that holy water and essentially make this whole space even more sacred that's the idea it's our mini little temple here at gidlan so it's been an opportunity obviously for the stonemasons to to use different techniques and then there was a little bit of improvisation that gave the stonemasons an opportunity to to kind of have a bit of freedom of movement you can see each column is slightly different this is mature's you can see his mark up here on the stone and on the other side we've got jean paul's right here [Music] the mason's marks undressed stones are a permanent reminder of the ancient skills and techniques of the medieval masons [Laughter] each one presents us with a unique signature of the craftsmen who carved a particular piece [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] at the kiln tension is rising a month's reign has taken its toll and the firing is not going to plan everything got wet the kiln got wet the wood got wet so it's just taking that a little bit longer to dry everything out get rid of the moisture [Music] the blaze is still several hundred degrees below what it needs to be peter leads a frantic effort to try to save the 4 000 tiles inside [Music] we know today the optimum temperature for successful firing is around 1000 degrees centigrade 13th century tilers relied on their experience their senses and costly trial and error they would have been under intense pressure to get firings right [Music] the kiln is just about getting up to temperature now it's ready to really feed up and it's pretty soon those tiles were getting close to firing but it does mean it's going to be a longer day i mean the sun is setting in the sky we're going to go late into the night a tiler's trade depended on the local nobility's trust and the reliability of his product and the strict laws governing the standards of production were rigidly enforced tiles must be correctly stacked the temperature must not be too high or too low the heat must be distributed evenly throughout the kiln if not the results could be undefiled fired or otherwise damaged tiles and the medieval lord would neither accept nor pay for a single substandard tile failed firing had serious consequences for a tyler's livelihood [Music] as darkness falls peter and the team finally succeed in getting the temperature up to 1000 degrees centigrade we've been working since this morning without stopping and now we are a bit tired it was uh it was hard but now it's at the good temperature right and what sort of what sort of colours are you looking for it must stay orange if it's white it's too much if if you want the the thais to be fired evenly we must stay at this temperature during two hours all right okay but are you happy yes yes we are yes it's a dream [Music] [Applause] [Music] yourself can you imagine living in a world with no electric lights i mean tonight we have the stars we have the moon and we have the tile kiln four thousand tiles they're just about to block this up with wood and they're going to seal it in it's a lot of hard work at the coalface because this is industry could you imagine what it must have been like to see a castle being built of stone surrounded by these kilns that were firing flames into that night sky but sat back here thinking about perhaps the hell down there and the heavens up there and your tiles currently in purgatory which way they're gonna go have you been good will they be used in that castle who knows [Applause] okay [Music] hey it takes several days for the kiln to cool down peter's helping to unload the tiles and examine the results you can hear this yeah it's really like this sound is perfect for us that ringing sound is what you're looking for hey perfect songs oh it's a good sound um why are you guys spitting on the tiles oh to see to see if it's cooked because sometimes the sound is not enough the sun can be at the middle we don't know if it's well cooked so we can spit on it and if the saliva stays there it's cooked if it's going inside the tile it's it's not every single tile coming out of this kiln you're quality controlling them you're listening to if you're unsure you spit on it if it goes in yeah we can't spit on everyone's four thousand we don't have enough but uh what what happens if they if they overcook um oh we have an example so it was not for this firing it was for one before when overcooked it's going like that so we have this bubble of gas inside and the bubble is big is growing bigger and uh the side with bursts with time this is good quality handmade well i i i saw how hard you guys worked and how long it takes to make these tiles i mean it's it's good i'm pleased i'm you know i'm happy for you you're happy too especially with this firing we're really happy yes we have very good results it's really nice to have it the fire tiles are now used to floor the fully rendered and limewashed quarry tower it will take thousands more tiles and several more years of rendering lime washing and painting before the entire castle finally looks like it might have done in the 13th century [Laughter] this is really starting to look like a finnish castle isn't it you know with the tiles and the walls all plastered and painted it's starting to get that feel of a living space i'll be honest i did not appreciate how much work and effort it would take to get this stage actually happening you know clay for the tiles finding the paints but when you see it it's unbelievable and i really can't wait i know it's a long time in the future yet but for the furniture and the furnishings for the textiles to finally arrive well emphasizes it's actually a living space and not just a defensive building doesn't it in moments like this you're looking at this you know yes i could actually sit here and relax yeah it's not all about warfare when it comes to castles this is an entertaining space next to the great hall you can bring your more select guests in here to wind them and dine them and perhaps a guest bed in here and everybody else sleeping around on mats you can get the feel for that sort of convivial way of life i have to say though the medieval period is far more colorful than i thought it was next time the community of skills it takes to build a castle from the blacksmith transforming metal to the never-ending need for wood plus making a medieval water mill wow that's all i can say [Music] you

Channel: Perspective

Views: 32,756

Keywords: Arts, The Arts, Theatre, Music, Full EPisode, Full documentary, documentary, performing arts, secrets of the castle, episode 3, castle painting, secrets of the castle episode 3, medieval art documentary, medieval pigments, medieval pigment recipes

Id: ddwz6Pf3ylE

Length: 59min 20sec (3560 seconds)

Published: Sat May 22 2021