Walking Tudor Britain - The South Coast | Episode 1

[Music] i'm professor susanna lipscomb and i'm taking to foot to explore the tudors i'm walking different parts of the country to get up close and personal with our tudor past uncovering hidden secrets revealing fascinating characters and visiting magnificent buildings from henry vii to the virgin queen they were the most important dynasty in our history they did more to shape our identity to make britain what it is today than any that had come before this time i've come to the south coast to discover how henry viii transformed england into a naval superpower this is where he would build up a navy capable of taking on our greatest enemies and it's where henry viii would fortify the coast with a series of castles that would prove vital for defending england against invasion in the centuries to come [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is south sea castle and on a remarkable day like this it has the most fabulous views these are the famous waters of the soland and over here in the distance you can see the isle of wight and this is a place steeped in tudor history henry viii built this coastal fort to defend england from attack after his schism with the roman catholic church made england into an international pariah as a result of that just over there his beloved flagship the merry rose sank and in fact for years afterwards you could see the tops of the mast at low tide but this walk is about more than just this wonderful castle and that remarkable ship it's about the way that england grew its defenses that it became a powerful nation and it's also for better or worse about the beginnings of the british empire my 19 mile walk will take me along one of the most dramatic stretches of england's south coast from south sea i'll follow the shoreline to the home of henry's new navy portsmouth across portsmouth harbour our step into the 1600s at the tudor and stewart village of little wooden before reaching lee on the solent an england so-called naval hero francis drake and finally our head to southampton a port city which flourished under another great tudor monarch elizabeth the first but my journey starts overlooking the solent at southsea castle this is just one in a chain of over 30 coastal forts that henry viii built in the 1530s and 40s it was the most ambitious coastal defense network to be constructed since the romans but henry was sure that it was needed because as a result of his break from rome to mariam berlin he had made an enemy of the pope and the pope had issued a papal ball which is a kind of decree excommunicating henry and allowing his rivals francis the first the king of france charles v the holy roman emperor to invade and so henry authorized the building of coastal forts like this one to defend england from attack [Music] the castle had a key position guarding the entrance to portsmouth harbour the birthplace of henry viii's royal navy it's interesting when you look at the changes that henry makes in terms of the armed forces of wants of a better term he does invest strongly in the navy that in some ways is quite a departure and at the same time some of the cities along the south coast had their defenses strengthened as well so this is a huge huge program of capital expenditure the tudors for the most part were fragile and when i say that they're fragile i mean that they were monarchs always looking over their shoulder looking over their shoulder to more powerful states such as spain and portugal france the holy roman empire [Music] england was a small nation on the outskirts of europe that was fighting to maintain any position within the international framework of things just under a mile and a half west around the headland i'm arriving in what we now call old portsmouth the best way of finding out about this part of cuda history is on foot to walk along a coastline that henry viii knew well from his visits here i'm meeting historian dr dominic fontana to find out more about the lengths to which henry went to protect the city and his navy oh wow look at this view so dominic you brought me to the round tower tell me what this is when it was built why we're here well this is probably one of the most significant of the tudor defensive structures in portsmouth probably originally built by henry vii and then re-fortified by henry viii as part of his coastal defense program but it's placed right by the very narrow entrance to portsmouth harbor which is key to the whole defense of portsmouth and the royal navy in two times there would have been several forts over there wouldn't it they would yes there were three over on the gospel side fort block house which is just immediately over there they would have all been in line of sight so that they could signal to one another by flags and so on to to have coordinated action so if you've got guns here and you've got guns over at fort blockhouse you can control the entrance to the harbour for the very limited tidal windows that a sailing ship would have to go backwards and forwards so there's plenty of opportunity for the defenders to shoot at anybody coming in right i see why did henry hates choose portsmouth to be the place to build his navy it's a very defendable harbour because of the narrow entrance it's got possibility of supplies of timber from the forest of beer and further along the south coast it's got deep water keysights that are available all around the clock so it's a very protected place henry would use his navy to carry his army by sea and he ensured that his fleet grew from five ships at the start of his reign to 57 by the time of his death in 1545 his english navy would face its biggest test yet against an invasion fleet that was nearly twice the size of the later spanish armada the french launched a large fleet against england and they made their way into the solent and they actually landed troops on the isle of wight the fact that henry was excommunicated meant that not only could spain or france attack him anytime arguably they had a duty to attack they had a duty to remove the heretical king of england the english were greatly outnumbered the french had more than twice as many ships and almost three times the number of soldiers [Music] dominic and i are going to see an artwork in what was an old tudor pub that captures this moment in our history called the cowdery engraving this is an 18th century copy of a remarkable tudor painting it's a fabulously detailed image of the town of portsmouth and of the solent and at the battle of the silent it is just incredible what a treat to see it this one this is a color version but this must be a copy this is a colour copy from another original [Music] the cowardly engraving is a fascinating tableau of tudor life but it also shows what happened at a critical point during the battle of the solent it's full of incident we're able to really study the geography and to understand what's going on within the battle and to see the immense amount of work that henry had done to fortify the town of portsmouth who can we identify well let's start with henry because he's so recognizable on his horse riding towards southsea castle immediately followed by the man who commissioned the painting so anthony brown oh master of the king's horse literally his right hand man indeed so henry had come to watch the battle between the french and the english whose ships were blocking the entrance to the harbour as long as it could keep these enemy powers at bay you know england was like to be safe but once very large numbers of experienced foreign soldiers had landed here english forces might have been overwhelmed the english army doesn't exist at all and henry is still totally dependent on nobility summoning their retainers and their supporters english fleet allowed the french to arrive off the eastern end of the isle of wight and that left a position where it was almost a stalemate because as long as the english ships stayed there the french could not pass to make their way to southampton or into portsmouth where they would find deepwater keysights where they could get troops off their big ships the french really hadn't thought this through yes you need to get thirty thousand soldiers off big ships it doesn't matter if you've got thirty thousand if they're stuck on the ships if you can't land them they're no good at all not at all but the french did send four of their smaller galleys into the soland there's four of them shown firing at the english ships and they attacked henry's flagship the mary rose there she is shown with masts up above the surface of the water with the yard arm and sail on the foremast and this distressed sailor waving from the top of the fighting top and around some drowned sailors in the water this battle must have confirmed for henry that he had been entirely right to invest in the navy and that he needed to carry on doing so it really did his navy was crucial to the defense of the realm the navy always has been crucial to the defense of the realm [Music] coming up resurrected from the seabed i'm getting up close and personal with henry's beloved flagship it doesn't matter how many times you come it just gives you such a tangible sense of the past [Music] i'm walking along the south coast to find out more about how henry viii protected england from invasion i started off at south sea castle then travelled north west towards the city that became the birthplace of henry's navy this is old portsmouth but sadly much of what made up tudor portsmouth was obliterated by bombs during the second world war but still i am walking in the streets where masters ship builders and new navy captains and their families would have lived i'm heading though to a modern building that's going to help me understand why henry chose this city to base his fleet of ships the perfect place to take in the view of portsmouth harbour is from the very highest point the spinnaker tower is the city's most prominent landmark a 170 meter tall observation point which reflects the city's maritime history its design is based on a spinnaker a type of billowing sail wow it's just a spectacular view i've never come up here before because i'm a bit scared of hearts but it's just amazing there are panoramic views over the entire city there's the isle of wight and this is the entrance to portsmouth harbour here down here this is this is tudor portsmouth and there's the round tower where we were before i was just thinking how much henry viii would have loved to have had a perspective like this and what was going on deeper into the harbour to the north is the city's historic dockyard in the foreground here is hms warriors in the 19th century and nelson's warship hms victory i mean just shows you how portsmouth is still very much the heart of the navy two massive aircraft carriers my next destination is another remarkable ship for over 400 years the mary rose lay hidden in the soland submerged in its murky depths until she was discovered in 1971. eleven years later she was raised to the surface it was one of the trickiest and most expensive maritime salvage projects ever the lifting of the very rose from the seabed was an epic feat of engineering by an international crew and what a treasure trove of history they found she's a time capsule that takes us right back to the tudor age the mary rose is now in a state-of-the-art museum here in portsmouth historic dockyard not far from where she was built between 1509 and 1511. alex it's just amazing to be here again it took 600 oak trees to make the merry rose a cutting-edge ship built for war it doesn't matter how many times you come it just gives you such a tangible sense of the past i know you want to embrace her don't you yeah archaeologist dr alex hildred was part of the team who excavated the mary rose and she's been studying every part of her ever since the fragile ship is kept in a carefully controlled climactic environment but i've been given an exclusive opportunity to get up close each of these timbers tells a story it tells us that that she was continually upgraded and refitted and it's just applying the science and having the time to do it she was so well preserved by the sea water and silt that she has been called britain's pompeii how much of the mary rose was retrieved from the water i mean what size would she have been in when she was complete well we've got nearly the whole length uh if she had been whole actually the front would be touching the window over there of the the 20 great ships in henry's fleet she's sort of the second largest and most heavily armed and so just by the fact we found two cannons we can say this is the merry rose because that's the only one that had to so by the time she's synced she is the most advanced weapons carrier and that's why she's important because she can tell us what's happening at the time these changes of gun technology gunpowder technology which means you can put more on then you have to adapt the ship and we can look at that by reading the timbers by looking at this ship structure so and by looking at the things we found on it so that's why she's unique there were five decks on the mary rose the lowest was for ballast then came the storage deck where the food and weaponry was kept in the middle here in fact right in this area was the galley so that's a huge brick-built structure basically across the side of the ship with ovens underneath with an oven underneath and there were two of them one on each side above that were two gun decks then the upper deck now i know there are lots of different theories but why alex do you think the mary rose sank the historical accounts say the french sanctuary so that's one you know thing you have to look at there's no evidence i've had people crawling over this looking for any evidence that you could say okay well that looks like it's shot another theory is that the gun ports the openings in the ship through which her guns were fired were left open they say that she was sailing and she fired guns from one side of the ship and was turning to fire guns from the other side as she turned that's a huge amount of moving the sails and everything to turn ship and if you do get a sudden gust of wind during your turn with too much sail out that will push her down she begins to push down and as that happens water begins to come in through the gumport she basically rolled over in 12 meters of water so you could have walked on the side of it which is again such a shame because all those lives lost when basically you just imprisoned in it in a capsule that's turned over on its side alex what would it have been like to be on the merry rose when it was in full sail you've got to think very dark and trip hazards everywhere because you've got piles of shot you've got on the decks we had chests belonging piled up against the carpenter's cabin and lots of people so noisy dark smelly and when you fire a gun using black powder it it's everything's black and the smoke is just as frightening there were 500 crew members on board when the mary rose went down we know that of that crew very few of them escaped and why why couldn't they get out because access routes were there weren't very many we can only find evidence of two the middle area of the ship had an open deck area on the upper deck with the netting above it so they would have probably thought that the best way to do that would be to get onto that deck with the netting and then cut their way out or try and get out but obviously they didn't make it you know that's it you only know that 35 may have survived wow the picture you're painting from my perspective is making me get a rising sense of panic at the dark and operating trip hazards and not being able to get out and having the smoke and falling over things i mean how terrifying would it be and the fact that you that you're not in deep water either i mean that must have been even worse because you think well if i can get out you know i can see south sea castle it's not that far away within touching distance but you can't get out obviously it's difficult to get at the emotion of anyone 500 years ago but what do you think henry viii might have felt when he saw the mary rose go down oh well i think he would have been devastated really he in fact had taken great interest in the mary rose most powerful weapon system largest number of guns in one place dreadful loss of life devastated i would expect what's also extraordinary about the mary rose is the vast number of objects that were discovered they give a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the men who sailed on her hi sorry nice to see you yes you too simon ware has been studying these artifacts for 30 years mary rose is such a treasure trove nineteen thousand objects was it that's right nineteen thousand after that's recovered in fantastic condition and for example one of the nick combs made from uh boxwood which a lot of the crew would have had at the sort of grooming and uh removing head lice and the white teeth combing the hair it's amazing because you think about the sort of epic scale of this ship that's been recovered and yet something like this is so intimate well it really is and we've recovered over 60 of those in all parts of the ship some were found in the men's jerking pockets others were found in chests and you can see some containing of the lips in the fine tune wow it gives you such a sense of the mundane details of everyday life to be looking at something like a comb what else have we got here then um we've got another shoe so yeah a left foot um and belonging to one of the officers on board so obviously handmade hand-stitched only the sort of wealthier crew members would have had something like that shoes like this are really rare aren't they to find just them surviving anywhere else surviving purely because they were buried in the cell on the seabed most of the crew would have been eating from a wooden dish or bowl as this one is what are those scratches on the back they're the marks of ownership so the person that owned this has actually marked it with a symbol so he knows it's his so when there's sort of several um hundred plates or poles down in the galley you want to be able to find yours quite quickly well i guess people weren't literate they couldn't write their names no so a mark would um would do the job how clever and in these drawers here we have something very special these are some of the longbows that were recovered and if i live this one out you will see how well they've been preserved it's so beautifully worked it's made of you which is the best timber for these bows i mean i know they're called longbows but they're so big they are this particular one as you can see is probably six foot seven six five six and it must take so much strength to pull back something that size well the draw weights sort of range from anything from about 60 pounds through to around about 180 pounds so people are pulling their body weight that's right and you're drawing an arrow back sort of um quite some distance i suppose somebody in tutor england would have been practicing archery every week they would have been practicing from about the age of seven or eight yeah and build up that muscle that made it possible exactly but i think you and i would struggle to pull back so that's true you really would once it was fired an arrow would travel around 250 yards i believe they were able to shoot 12 hours a minute that is remarkably quick to be able to put on another arrow and i mean they're like machine guns and archery we recovered over 3 000 from from the ship and they might want to have a lot more than that that's amazing so much work next i'm finding out how henry's navy enriched the lives of everyone who lived in the area and i'm even having a go at making a tool they'd have used you said it wasn't about the strength of my arms [Music] i'm professor susana lipscomb and i'm walking along tuna england's south coast i started my journey here in portsmouth to discover the extent of henry viii's coastal defenses i walked from south sea castle to the round tower both impressive tudor forts but now it's time to move on before we say goodbye to portsmouth and the mary rose there's another element of the story which reveals the fascinating diversity of the tudor world not long after she sank in 1545 there was a remarkable attempt to salvage valuables from the wreck the merry rose was the most heavily armed ship in henry's fleet and they couldn't afford to lose her guns so they hired a team of expert foreign divers to recover what they could this tudor attempt to salvage from a tudor vessel was led by an african man his name was jacques francois and he'd been born in guinea in west africa it was famous for having pearl divers that can hold their breath underwater for large periods of time and we think that jack francois was one of those pearl divers and that's why i was employed in a salvage operation where you had to hold your breath [Music] we don't know exactly how he came to england he may have been a free man or he may have been enslaved but we do know that he was an expert swimmer and a deep sea diver skills that were very rare in tudor england modern divers have tried to simulate some of these activities using modern equipment and it was extraordinarily difficult it was to bring up not pearls from the bottom of the sea bed but this time to bring up huge bronze tudor guns i mean really really heavy things i have no idea how they did it they managed to get quite a lot of artifacts i think a cannon from the operation um that they were involved in this was a very dangerous operation a very dangerous operation judah england is often thought of as a uniformly white society and frostbite is proof that that just wasn't true tudor england was much more diverse than some have thought it included of course scott's irish welsh plus there were minority groups from other parts of the world there were safari jewish people from the ibm peninsula immigrants from portugal and spain and people of african descent so yes this country was multi-ethnic yes the people at the time did talk about it and yes we seem to have forgotten all about them with portsmouth harbor behind me i'm heading on towards southampton but i can't resist stopping off at little wooden a place where i can step back in time it's a recreation of a tudor and stewart village in hampshire and in that period there would have been all sorts of tradesmen who would have made a good living from the shipbuilding industry [Music] this place is amazing thank you very much it's the warmest place in the village david breitmore is little woodham's resident blacksmith is this uh authentic in how it appears absolutely it's very authentic they are good tudor bricks aren't they good i love these bellows they're great they're wonderful so they're made from from hyde and elm the bellows are used to push air into the fire to make it hot enough for the iron to melt we've got a nice um cow holder in here and there's two reasons for that one is some nice grit to hold on to but also as it gets closer to the fire because it's hot fire it doesn't burn as readily as would either so it keeps sort of seeing hold on to it so it's practical and comfortable absolutely imagine that your passing trade might have been lots of sailors what would they stop him for i think it's stopping for all sorts of things they might stop in for a knife for instance are you taking a a rough bit of iron something like this square divine that's been beaten into a square from a billet and you're making it into something beautiful so if trade someone was passing out away maybe a boat builder a sawyer then they might need a assault fixed or there might be some corking irons or a caulking rake or any sort of equipment they might use there are naturally gaps between the planks of a ship which had to be filled to prevent leaks filling those gaps is called caulking they'll use quite often horse hair they'll twist it and then they'll use something called a caulking iron so this is a caulking is quite a small one and that is pushed in between the beams sort of a v shape there whether you're pushing the caulking in you've got a corking hammer and you're pushing the caulking in there and then you tar over the top and then that just seals so it's making it water tight it's making water tight right okay but if you're going to remove some caulking then you need a caulking rake so this is a caulking ring it's basically just a little spike here you can just drag out the old caulking and then replace it with the new would you like to make a caulking break yeah i love it well you need to have some safety so get some bubbles some good tuna glasses and good scooter glasses and a good shooter apron almost every tudor village had a blacksmith so called because they worked with black iron that's a perfect they made everything from nails and doorknobs to swords and armor if you see a lot of hammer marks in work um this is not good workmanship it needs to be as pure as possible everyone used blacksmiths from ordinary villages to the nobility said it wasn't about the strength of my arms and not quite so far this does it just down point it towards the door that's perfect over there knock it over there we go [Music] i like that and just break it off wow one handle onto there there's your caulking rake look at that we made that perfect i'm so pleased with it you should be that's superb i don't know what i can use it for but i'll think of something [Music] from little wooden i've got just two and a half miles to reach the coast once more and my next destination is the beach itself at leon the solent [Music] henry viii and his father did so much to put portsmouth and its navy on the map i mean the proof of the pudding is still there portsmouth's instill the home to the navy but what i find interesting is they did so much more than that what they did to the navy laid the foundations for britain to become a seafaring nation i mean a generation before the spanish and the portuguese had been doing just that think of people like christopher columbus and vasco de gama hernan cortes invading and colonizing other people and funny enough that neither henry vii nor henry viii were particularly outward looking but what they did in creating the navy would shape britain's history for centuries to come [Music] it was under elizabeth the first henry viii's daughter that england began to look outwards and one maritime adventure in particular would transform the country's fortunes [Music] francis drake was a vice admiral in the fleet that defeated the spanish armada he'd also been the first man to captain the ship around the globe [Music] drake came back with so much treasure that elizabeth could pay off the national debt and she knighted him to show her gratitude [Music] tudor sailors thought opportunities to make wealth and to gain status to get power in the americas and the indies just as the spanish and the portuguese had done and bold captains like drake have been lionized as brave explorers but i think there's another side to drake's story hello i'm meeting alice roberts pratt from the national museum of the royal navy who's been looking at the man behind the myth drake actually landed here after one of his biggest expeditions in 1585. england of course i suppose was on the back foot by comparison to the spanish and the portuguese and why was elizabeth keen to get in on the action there were three main reasons firstly there was there was trade she needed to catch up with her european counterparts she also needed to weaken spain so at the time they were growing in power and they had a huge amount of wealth and land now the third reason and probably one of the biggest reasons was money the amount of money that could be had with these raids was vast and queen liz was keen to get her cut yes i bet she was who was funding these voyages because they sound quite expensive elizabeth was helping to fund these voyages for example she gave drake a thousand pounds towards his expedition to the pacific west coast of the americas [Music] these expeditions were to try and find an alternative route to the spice islands but drake was also attacking spanish galleons and treasure towns stealing gold silver and jaws he was what's known as a privateer so essentially a privateer is a a privately owned merchant vessel or an individual and they were actually given commission by the crown which kind of legitimately gave them a free pass to go and raid and capture ships of the enemy once they brought back this wealth they would then divide it between the crew the captains the ship owners and then the government would get percentage back quite a lot like state sponsored piracy to me on the one hand the government backs you and then you're a privateer and if they don't you're a pirate and that's all that's different yeah that is all that's different between those two let's talk a bit about drake obviously since the victorians onwards there's been this idea of him as this national hero there's a bit more to him i mean do you think he was ruthless drake is a very controversial figure on the one hand he was a national hero to the british and he was also going on these raids and bringing back a huge amount of wealth for england but then the spanish hated him he was seen as a pirate he was detested and loathed by them philip ii was spain i think put about a four million pound bounty on him because he hated him so much and we can't ignore the fact that drake and his cousin john hawkins are instrumental in starting the slave trade from africa with england between 1562 and 1567 they took three voyages to guinea and sierra leone and they enslaved between 1200 and 1400 africans what he and hawkins did then was start a transatlantic trade that would run into the millions of slaves definitely [Music] yeah over the next three centuries between 10 and 12 million africans would be sent across the atlantic and would be enslaved but i've been thinking about the way that england has made heroes of people like drake but actually they were quite often more interested in lining their pockets with foreign booty and actually doing so with great violence and often with great predation on other peoples you know we look to drake and people like hawkins for the start of the transatlantic slave trade and i think we should probably remember that just as much as we remember their glorious exploits next i visited a seller tucked away in southampton to find out about a trade that made the city rich wow look at this place far more beautiful and spectacular than i was expecting a vault to be i'm walking along the south coast to discover how england became a naval superpower my journey has taken me from portsmouth to little wooden and lee on the solent and now i've reached my final destination southampton even before the tudors southampton was well protected against the threat of invasion but henry viii would take that to a new level by building a chain of artillery forts around the city that had long been an important trading hub henry vii and henry viii had built up england's seafaring prowess in portsmouth but it was on elizabeth the first that global trade really took off you could think of it as the start of globalization and the trading heart of england at that time was the port city of southampton this city's been a trading post since the romans and for a time after london and bristol it was the most important in the country southampton made much of its money from the wine trade with europe and hidden away beneath this building is an underground warehouse which was used to store this precious cargo look at this place it's amazing oh this is far more well beautiful and spectacular than i was expecting a vault to be we think this was built as a wine showroom rather than just a storage area so the butlers of the rich and powerful will come to southampton to collect the latest vintage and you build this space to impress them that makes sense of the decoration i suppose actually we we're looking at something that looks a bit like a palace itself a vault like this was also practical it was cool and kept the wine in a good condition what sort of wine would they have been drinking in the judah period the latest fashion is sweet wine it's high in sugar and high in alcohol the sort of thing that makes henry viii the stature he had so the wine would arrive here from overseas arrive at southampton and get stored in these vaults and then what was the process after that the process is that you have to buy it wholesale so you have to buy 242 gallons at a time so you then need to bring your own cart and people to carry it back to your castle or your big house feels like i've been doing it completely wrong up until this point buying it in bottles there's still so much of southampton to see above ground hi hello hello and historian dr cheryl butler is going to tell me more about its tudor past so cheryl could you paint a picture for me what would we have seen if we'd been standing here in the later tudor period during the elizabethan times we've been standing right here in tudor times we'd be drowning because the water came up to this point and then you had two main town keys one was at west key and one was the town key and but that was where the main ships would come up and more if it's a big ship it could be here for several months so we've been a hive of industry you've also got ship repairs going on and ship building going on as well and along the key you would have had lots of warehouses to store you know all this material that's coming in so it would have been a really busy place and the population was quite small so at the beginning of the 16th century it was about 2 000 people and if you had you know all these ships arriving your population probably got about 50 percent many of the goods arriving in southampton came from spanish colonies in the americas they would have started out across the atlantic on board spanish ships only to be intercepted by the english [Music] instead of setting up their own colonies they decided it was easier to prey on enemy ships and take the cargos from them during tudor times southampton was a walled city and access was controlled through a series of gates these are pretty impressive walls aren't they i mean yeah so this was the west gate which led out onto the west key so it's one of the most important gateways and keys very heavily defended at this point yeah very impressive england had enemies in europe and there was always the threat of an attack we've got a poor color therapy yeah one here and one there says double pork color what was life like for a sailor in the elizabethan period you know i think they would did quite well if they could get work and there was a lot of work and and so they were away for quite a long time because these voyages took weeks and months and you get a share of the cargo but it also it was dangerous so people often make their wills before they go in case they don't get back to make sure that their relatives get their share of whatever they had of the cargo [Music] my final stop with cheryl is the ruins of a 12th century merchant's house it had a new lease of life in tudor times when it was used as a warehouse and customs house so this is where all the business administration the port is being done by people like the water bailiff who's making sure he's collecting all the taxes people going in and out of the town from town key i love remains like this because i have a particular fondness with fireplaces in walls on second stories yeah there's something quite flawed about them so you have your open hall downstairs where you're doing your business and the family apartments are up there so this is why you get your fireplaces like they're hovering in space i see i see the other thing about southampton of course it has very early fireplaces and very early chimneys sort of dating from the 1100s yeah so they've got the money to have fireplaces they also have a lot of beds which is another way of telling how rich people are so how fascinating so throughout the centuries the port has enriched the town oh yeah yeah and everything is always about the poor yes that trumps everything else that's going on it's been a long and fascinating walk along tudor england's south coast so i'm going to do what any sailor would have done after a long journey and sink and ale [Music] the tudor history of the south coast has proved to be one of complexities and contradictions and have been some surprises in there too it turns out that some of our national heroes don't bear looking at too closely where in other places where we've whitewashed history the truth is actually more diverse and it's been paradoxes there too this is a period in which there was a turning away from europe a building up of fortifications after the break with rome but it's also a period in which we see them looking outwards and the beginning of global trade and globalization when england got a lot richer well there's hope for us there perhaps i'll drink to that [Music] you

Channel: UKHistoryTube

Views: 61,382

Rating: 4.9087591 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 1aG-eoUbLjo

Length: 45min 33sec (2733 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 22 2021