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Inside the Tower of London (2018) Season 8 Episode 1
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00:00The Tower of London, one of the most iconic and infamous places in the world.
00:09Welcome to His Majesty's Royal Palace.
00:12But what you might not realise is that it's more than a single castle.
00:17It's a vast and sprawling complex of towers, chapels and royal apartments.
00:23Their names as familiar as the famous people who lived and died here.
00:29The white tower. Traitor's Gate.
00:32The infamous bloody tower, give me a boo.
00:36But the tower hasn't always looked like this.
00:40In fact, it began as a military stronghold almost ten centuries ago.
00:46It all started here.
00:47I'm Jason Watkins.
00:49For seven years I've been the voice of Channel 5's Inside the Tower of London.
00:54And I'm fascinated by how this royal palace has changed over the centuries.
00:59Wow.
01:00That is incredible.
01:02I'm historian Tracy Borman.
01:04I've spent my career uncovering the tower's secrets.
01:08It's one of the most terrifying episodes in the tower's history.
01:11Together, we're going to get to the bottom of exactly who built the different parts of this world famous fortress, when they built them and why.
01:21We'll enlist the help of experts.
01:24This was painted by one of the finest artists in England.
01:27And earth amazing documents.
01:29There's nobody in England who's going to be able to do this.
01:32And try out traditional techniques.
01:35Here we go.
01:36As we reveal how this incredible building has been at the heart of ten centuries of British history.
01:49It's late summer and the royal palace is packed with visitors.
01:53Right, we all ready to storm the tower?
01:55And while the beef eaters entertain the crowds, I'm guessing an entirely different view.
02:02Well, there it is.
02:04There's the Tower of London.
02:09I've never approached it from the river like this and it's awe-inspiring.
02:12It's extraordinary to think that back in the time of Henry VIII, the tower would have been utterly intimidating.
02:19Especially if you're about to be locked up inside it.
02:23It would have been terrifying for a prisoner to see this for the first time.
02:27500 years ago, the tower's surroundings were very different.
02:32It's amazing to see it framed against that modern landscape.
02:42While London has grown into a 21st century city, the tower seems to not have changed at all.
02:50But is that really true?
02:56To find out, Tracy and I need to turn the clock back to a time when the fortress doesn't
03:01when the fortress dominated the skyline.
03:06Hello.
03:07Nice to see you.
03:08Nice to see you.
03:09And where better to start than with its most iconic building?
03:14There it is.
03:15The White Tower.
03:16It's hard to believe that it's almost a thousand years old.
03:20To think that 500 years ago, we're talking about Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII and Elizabeth I,
03:25and yet another 500 years previously, this was built.
03:30This originally was known as the Great Tower, not the White Tower.
03:35But the real surprise is, this famous British landmark was actually built by a French king.
03:43William the Conqueror.
03:44In 1066, William the Conqueror wins the Battle of Hastings, becomes king of England.
03:50But nobody wants him here, so he needs to secure London.
03:55And to do that, he needs to build himself a mighty fortress.
03:59And it was no accident that William chose this precise location to construct his castle.
04:07800 years before the Normans set foot on English soil, London was actually a thriving Roman city, protected by a giant wall around two miles long.
04:18When William invaded in 1066, much of that wall was still standing.
04:26Its southeast corner was the perfect location to build a fortress.
04:30So, twelve years after his victory at the Battle of Hastings, work on William's Great Tower began in the 1070s.
04:43Hundreds of tons of limestone were brought over from France by sea, as this was actually easier than transporting British stone over land.
04:51The limestone was used for the walls, which were 15 feet thick at the base, and rose 90 feet into the air.
05:01From the outside, the white tower looks as solid as it did when it was first built.
05:07But I want to see what remains of this thousand-year-old building on the inside.
05:13So I'm meeting a man who knows it like the back of his hand.
05:16Jason.
05:17Hi, Alfred.
05:18Assistant Buildings Curator Alfred Hawkins.
05:21What an amazing place.
05:23So we are stood in William the Conqueror's Keep, the central and most important part of the white tower.
05:29And it's from this point that the entire Tower of London expands and becomes the fortress we know it today.
05:35A keep is the name given to the building at the heart of a castle.
05:41It was designed to withstand a siege by an enemy army.
05:44So the first thing to notice as you were walking in was the actual entrance to the tower, which is a level higher.
05:51With that timber staircase, in the event of a siege, you could chop it down, burn it, get rid of it.
05:58And then because the entrance is elevated, it's much more difficult.
06:02So nobody can get in?
06:03Get in.
06:04The white tower wasn't only a secure fortress, it was also a luxurious royal home, complete with a great hall, private royal chapel and even some cutting edge Norman plumbing.
06:18Oh, yeah, great. So, a toilet. Excellent.
06:25Known as a guard robe, this thousand-year-old loo may have been the height of luxury in Norman times, but it's pretty primitive by today's standards.
06:32All of your material would leave the white tower and end up in a ditch outside.
06:38No danger of being hit, is there?
06:40Well, if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, anything could happen.
06:43But perhaps the white tower's most spectacular feature is the view from the roof.
06:53Welcome to the roof of the white tower.
06:55Wow, look at this.
06:57Well, yeah, it's the four towers that you've seen from below.
07:01They're actually around me at my height, at my level.
07:06A thousand years ago, this modern view would have been a sea of small wooden buildings on the banks of the River Thames.
07:18Looming high over London, the white tower would have dominated the skyline for miles around.
07:25It sent a clear message to Londoners, don't mess with the Normans.
07:30But not only that, the Normans even made the Londoners build it.
07:35There would have been stonemasons from Normandy who were doing the really fine work with the masonry.
07:41But a lot of the grunt work would actually be the pre-conquest Londoners.
07:45So they'd be carrying the lumps of stone from the boats onto the land.
07:50It's an interesting thing to think about that the Londoners were building the object of their own domination.
07:57It gives me a real idea of what this place meant.
08:00I think it's just this feeling of being above everything is the thing that they wanted, wasn't it?
08:06This is just such an astonishing, formidable piece of architecture in itself, let alone what it was like in Norman times.
08:14I want to know how it was built. How can you build something like this?
08:19To find out how such an imposing building was created, I'm heading to one of the few places where, remarkably, the same ancient techniques are still used today.
08:31Canterbury Cathedral.
08:34One of the first Norman cathedrals to be built in Britain.
08:40Wow, this is absolutely astonishing to think that this was built a thousand years ago.
08:55Historic records show that some of the stonemasons who built this place also worked on the White Tower.
09:03The sheer craftsmanship and detail, it's the height that really takes your breath away.
09:10And like the White Tower, Canterbury Cathedral is made from thousands of blocks of French limestone.
09:17Jordan Cliff is one of 11 stonemasons still using the same traditional methods employed by the Normans.
09:30I'm hoping he's going to show me how it's done.
09:33Hi, Jordan. Hello, Jason.
09:35The stone would have arrived from the quarry in rough, uneven chunks.
09:39The sides of each block would have had to have been chipped completely flat before they could be used to construct the building.
09:46This is known as dressing the stone.
09:49This wouldn't be usable yet. With this, you would have to make this surface flat.
09:54Jordan's already smoothed five sides. Now he's letting me have a go at the last one.
09:59You want to be really steady with your hand.
10:01OK, right, OK.
10:04Beautiful.
10:05Very satisfying, isn't it?
10:07A whopping 24,000 of these would have been used to construct the walls of the White Tower.
10:14No wonder it took around 20 years to build.
10:18So what you're doing here is exactly the same as what an apprentice on the first day would have been doing in the Tower of London.
10:25How long would it take to shape this block?
10:27Anywhere between a day to five days.
10:30Well, I've been working carefully for over an hour,
10:35but I'm discovering that one mistake could ruin the whole block.
10:41Oh!
10:42That's good.
10:43Thank you so much, Jordan.
10:44It's been my pleasure. Good first time.
10:46Good. Well, again, if the acting work dries up, you know, I might be knocking on your door.
10:50You never know. With a mallet.
10:52Coming up, I dig into the archives to reveal how one of the tower's most famous features was made.
10:59It really brings it to life, doesn't it? Already this is fascinating.
11:02And I discover how one of my own ancestors met a terrifying fate at the fortress.
11:08Oh, dear. This is not going to end well.
11:19Folks, if you're here for the tour, gather round, that's it.
11:22Tracy and I are back at the Tower of London to investigate the secrets of how this iconic landmark was created.
11:29It was here in the year 1078 when William the Conqueror authorised the building of his first ever royal palace and fortress of its kind in England.
11:39I've discovered how the White Tower began as a single structure a thousand years ago.
11:47But what happened to it next?
11:50Just imagining that on its own looks pretty impenetrable.
11:54It isn't just now the White Tower. It's actually a whole fortress.
11:59The next major phase of building was in the 1200s, and that's when actually the walls that we're standing on was added.
12:06There's this huge wall encircling the whole of the White Tower.
12:11And along this new wall were added a load of new towers.
12:16King Henry III wanted to turn the tower into the most powerful fortress the country had ever seen.
12:23He built a defensive wall which rose 41 feet from the ground and peppered it with 11 massive watchtowers.
12:31Known as the inner curtain wall, it was strengthened even further by a moat running along three sides.
12:39But sadly, the builders who dug it were not up to the job, and the water drained away.
12:46So this is the outer walls?
12:48Yeah. The river came right up to where we're standing now.
12:51So that's why that's called Water Lane.
12:53Exactly.
12:54The king who cracked how to build the tower's famous moat was Henry's son Edward I.
13:02He put in a second, even bigger wall, encircling the entire fortress.
13:08Yet more watchtowers were constructed, among them a brand new riverside entrance, St Thomas's Tower.
13:16And a new 50 metre wide moat was dug along the west, north and east of the tower.
13:23This time it stayed full of water.
13:26That meant the tower was surrounded and defended on three sides by the moat and on the fourth side by the river itself.
13:35Along with the massive walls and moat, weapons were installed along its perimeter.
13:40I'm curious to know exactly what they would have used back then.
13:45So I'm heading to rural Oxfordshire.
13:50I'm going to meet a man who's going to show me a weapon from the 1200s,
13:55the type of which was kept in the tower at that time.
13:59And I'm imagining this is quite a big weapon.
14:03And I'm right, it's enormous.
14:05Named after the French word for overthrow, this is a trebuchet.
14:10And it's been built by historic weapons maker, Todd Todeschini.
14:16Before gunpowder, if you wanted to throw heavy things at something, you had a few choices.
14:20But the absolute pinnacle of that was the trebuchet.
14:23Big things, a long way.
14:26Before cannons arrived in Britain in the 1300s,
14:29armies used trebuchets like this to catapult 900-kilo missiles at their enemies up to 1,000 feet away.
14:38And what would it throw?
14:40You can throw single rocks, you can throw baskets of rocks, even dead cows on occasion.
14:44If it's nicely rotten, splat and send disease everywhere.
14:48Basically biological warfare.
14:50Incredibly, Todd's replica is probably smaller than the trebuchets that were stationed at the tower in the 1200s.
14:55But it works in exactly the same way.
14:58A counterweight, a big bag of rocks or sand, in this case weighing half a tonne, is winched in the air.
15:05When the pin is pulled, the weight drops, flipping the sling and firing the ammunition.
15:10Well, I think it's probably time that we saw it in action. Do you want to go?
15:13I'd love a go, yes, thank you very much.
15:17We won't be firing rocks or, thankfully, dead cows.
15:20Instead, we'll use a seven-kilo bowling ball to give us an idea of the impact of hurling a large stone.
15:28So, two hands.
15:29Two hands.
15:31OK, right, here we go.
15:33OK, OK, chocks away.
15:35It's the moment of truth.
15:36It's like, ahhh!
15:41Whoa!
15:49Wow, how far...
15:51How was that?
15:52That's quite a distance, isn't it?
15:53That's...
15:54Brilliant.
15:55That's incredible.
15:59This is not a full-size trebuchet like they would have had at the Tower of London, for instance.
16:02No, so it would have been bigger than...
16:03It would have gone further.
16:04Yeah.
16:05..match, Todd.
16:08Even if anyone trying to attack the Tower had managed to dodge the trebuchets,
16:13they'd soon have run into a pretty big obstacle.
16:17Now, our third line of defence was the moat or the ditch.
16:21Once filled with water, it goes all the way round the Tower.
16:25At 50 metres wide, the moat was a feat of engineering,
16:30built in the 1270s by King Edward I.
16:35But it was a massive construction project.
16:37How on earth did he manage it?
16:39And what did it cost?
16:41I've come to the National Archives in Kew,
16:46where archivist Dr Catherine Maud has something special to show me.
16:51So this is the end of year accounts for the Royal Government.
16:55These original documents detail government spending every year from the 11 to the 1800s.
17:02That's over seven centuries of accounts.
17:05They're like a 700-year-old spreadsheet.
17:08This one's from 1275.
17:10It's got a lot of details about the building of the Tower of London.
17:13It tells us they had to buy houses and places for the enlarging of the moat.
17:20They're buying up land and houses all around where the tower was to be able to dig that moat.
17:26And presumably people are going to sell because it's the king.
17:29So you don't say no.
17:30You can't say no to Edward I, right?
17:32If Edward I wants a moat, he gets a moat.
17:34To create his perfect moat, Edward needed the right man for the job.
17:40So we get Master Walter of Flanders.
17:43He is an expert from Flanders from what is now the Netherlands.
17:47When we think of the Netherlands even today,
17:49we're thinking of those water canals and the management of water on a very large scale.
17:55That's brilliant. So they're bringing in the expertise.
17:57And he is paid a huge amount of money.
18:00How much are we talking?
18:01So it says here that he's paid 19 pounds for 19 weeks.
18:06So he's paid a pound a week.
18:08So he's paid 20 times as much as the next best paid person on site.
18:12He's absolutely this important consultant brought him from abroad
18:15to make sure this project gets off the ground.
18:19But it seems that Edward was shrewd about his new moat.
18:23The records show he found a way to actually make some cash back.
18:27All of the earth that's dug up from the moat is then sold to tilers to make tiles.
18:34So if there are any medieval tiles that you find in London,
18:37it's entirely possible that those were made from the earth dug up in the process of these building works.
18:43Fantastic. So royal earth, royal soil we might say.
18:46Exactly. And they call it exactly that, the king's earth.
18:50So that's going to go for a premium, presumably.
18:52Absolutely, yeah. Special.
18:54All of this money that Edward spends, all of that effort was worth it
18:57because the moat's still there, you can still see it today.
18:59In fact, the moat remained full of water for over 500 years
19:05until the 1840s when the stink of raw sewage became so overwhelming it had to be drained.
19:12These days, visitors enter the tower along another of Edward I's creations,
19:19the causeway linking the middle and bywood towers.
19:23The causeway was built in the late 1200s and was designed for defence.
19:28The middle and bywood towers were both fitted with portcullises,
19:33heavy gates that could be lowered to protect the tower from enemy advances.
19:38Despite these sophisticated defences, the tower did come under attack.
19:44A century later, in 1381, its walls were breached for the first and only time.
19:51When it happened, King Richard II was on the throne.
19:55He was made famous by Shakespeare for being a better poet than a king.
20:01Richard was desperate for funds and began to implement crippling poll taxes on the people
20:07with disastrous results.
20:11Historic records tell us incredible detail of what happened next.
20:18Thousands of angry peasants descended on London
20:23and about 400 of those rebels managed to storm the tower.
20:27Storm the tower?
20:29They're just peasants, not even soldiers.
20:31How did they get over the walls?
20:33They actually just walked right in through the gate,
20:36which the guards had thoughtfully left open for them.
20:40Well, that was pretty incompetent, wasn't it?
20:44The rebels raced up the White Tower.
20:47They burst through the doors of the chapel where they found two of King Richard's senior advisers
20:57who they blamed for the tax.
21:03Oh, wow.
21:05Yeah.
21:06It's beautiful, isn't it?
21:07It's incredible, isn't it?
21:09Yeah.
21:10So this is the most ancient part of the tower, the White Tower Chapel.
21:14It's like a sort of miniature cathedral almost, isn't it?
21:18King Richard's advisers didn't stand a chance.
21:24It's here that Archbishop Simon Sudbury
21:27and the Lord High Treasurer, Sir Robert Hales, were captured by the rebels.
21:33Sir Hales, I have an ancestor who's a Hales.
21:37It's not Edward Hales, who was lieutenant here of the tower later on in the 1600s.
21:45This isn't, he's not related, is he?
21:47He certainly is.
21:48You have another tower ancestor.
21:50Sir Robert Hales, Lord High Treasurer to King Richard II,
21:55was also one of your direct ancestors.
21:58Robert Hales, Lord High Treasurer to King Richard II in 1381,
22:05was a distant uncle of Jason's relative, Edward Hales.
22:09And he's also Jason's uncle, stretching back 18 generations.
22:14Sir, the masses found them in here, and oh dear, this is not going to end well.
22:20I'm afraid it's not, because the rebels seized Sudbury and Hales,
22:25just dragged them out of the tower and up to Tower Hill,
22:29and there, just beheaded them.
22:33It's one of the most terrifying episodes, really, in the tower's history,
22:36and it could all have been prevented if the guards had closed the portcullis.
22:42Shut the door. You know, it's not difficult, is it?
22:46What are you? I'm a guard, I'm a doorman.
22:47Well, you know, close the door, that's your job.
22:50Oh, it's strange to think all that actually happened here.
22:55So my ancestor could have been dragged on this very spot.
23:01I mean, that's one of the things of the Tower of London, isn't it?
23:04That these incredible events happened where you can stand.
23:07Yeah.
23:08Coming up, I unearth an extraordinary hidden treasure.
23:15It's actually blown my mind.
23:16I mean, that's one of the glories of this place, isn't it?
23:19And I discover one of the most lethal places to work at the Tower.
23:23Very, very hard, dangerous work.
23:27They're risking life and limb, literally.
23:30Jason and I are investigating how kings and queens
23:42have changed the Tower over the centuries
23:45to create the world-famous fortress we can see today.
23:49And there's one king above all
23:51who I think most visitors identify with the Tower.
23:55King Henry VIII. Henry VIII.
23:57Henry VIII.
23:58Henry VIII.
23:59Henry VIII.
24:00But just how did England's most famous king
24:03leave his mark on the fortress?
24:06Well, the most prominent changes he made
24:08were to the White Tower itself.
24:11The wall's over 90 feet tall.
24:13On each corner, we have turrets.
24:16And it was these turrets that Henry had his eye on.
24:20He added the eye-catching onion domes
24:23to celebrate the coronation of his second and most notorious wife.
24:28And Berlin.
24:29They were very high on the skyline, so you would see these more than anything else.
24:37And I suppose that's saying, we're here, aren't we?
24:39We're Tudors, we're here.
24:40Yeah.
24:41All the rage when Henry added them.
24:43And he was always at the forefront of fashion when it came to building his palaces.
24:48And I think you would be impressed.
24:50They'd have been seen for miles around.
24:52Well, what I love is that you could trace the pattern of Henry's marriages in bricks and mortar.
25:01Henry had been making changes to the tower for years.
25:05In preparation for Anne Boleyn's coronation, Henry lavishly refurbished the royal apartments on the south lawn.
25:13Over a decade earlier, he had rebuilt the chapel of St. Peter at Vincula,
25:18designing the roof in honour of his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.
25:23On Tower Green, he built a new home for the Tower Lieutenant, now known as the King's House.
25:30Today, it's one of only a handful of Tudor timber buildings to survive the Great Fire of London.
25:37That's the King's House.
25:42The King's not living there, OK?
25:44You won't see him on the balcony, like, waving at you.
25:52Although Tudor architecture is easy to spot at the tower, not all of it is on display to the public.
25:59I'm about to be shown a secret treasure which is hidden from view.
26:03So I've seen, with Tracy the scale and grandeur of the Tudor era,
26:08so now I'm going to look at something a bit more intricate, I don't know,
26:11but it's a secret, so that's exciting, isn't it?
26:13So these guys, they can't see it, but I can.
26:16I'm rather intrigued to see what this is.
26:19The Bywood Tower is in the south-west section
26:22and was built over 200 years before Henry VIII set foot in the fortress.
26:27It's completely off the tourist trail.
26:30I'm heading for a small room at the top of it.
26:35Revealing its features to me is curator Alden Gregory.
26:39Hi, Jason. Nice to see you.
26:40I think if you look up on the wall, you'll see some clues as to what the Tudors did here.
26:45That's the top of the Tudor rose, isn't it?
26:47Absolutely right, this is the Tudor rose, the badge of the Tudor dynasty,
26:51and it sat on this fireplace.
26:54So we know the Tudors put a huge fireplace in this room,
26:57but someone else had decorated in here first.
27:00I'll draw your attention to the other wall painting that's on this wall,
27:04a much earlier wall painting that we think was painted in the 1390s.
27:08That's amazing, isn't it? The 1390s, goodness me.
27:13Astonishingly, the Tudor fireplace has been plonked directly on top of this stunning 600-year-old wall painting.
27:22We've got this beautiful angel up here. I mean, the wing's all been extraordinary.
27:27You can see just how beautifully the feathers of the wing are picked out.
27:31This is St. Michael the Archangel.
27:34Ah, right.
27:35This lion, is that a lion there?
27:38It is, it's the Lion of England.
27:40And it's so bright, isn't it?
27:42The lion itself is painted with gold leaf.
27:45These are the most expensive pigments that the painter could use.
27:49This was clearly painted by one of the finest artists working in England in the day.
27:56Even before the Tudors built over it,
27:58this incredible gold leaf mural was tucked away from the public.
28:03But why?
28:05The answer lies in what this room was previously used for,
28:08when the tower housed the royal mint.
28:12We think that this was the king's exchange.
28:15So the king's exchange was part of the mint.
28:18This is where gold and silver and coinage was exchanged,
28:21where the raw materials were bought into the mint.
28:24This, in effect, is the kind of head office of the Tower of London's mint.
28:28Ah, that's fascinating, isn't it?
28:30With all the gold passing through this room,
28:32the angel was painted to deliver a serious message to the people working here.
28:37And you can see, if you look very closely,
28:40that St. Michael is holding a set of scales.
28:43Ah, yes, yes.
28:44Weighing the souls of the dead on the day of judgment.
28:47Workers of the mint being reminded that on the day of judgment,
28:51if they transgress from the rules of the mint,
28:54then their souls will be judged.
28:56You know, it's actually blown my mind.
28:58I mean, that's one of the glories of this place, isn't it?
29:01This is one of the treasures of the Tower of London.
29:06The Tower of London has had its own royal mint since 1279.
29:12It's where most English coins were produced for the next 530 years.
29:18To find out more, I'm heading a few yards along the aptly named Mint Street,
29:23and I'm hoping Assistant Buildings Curator Alfred Hawkins...
29:28Hi, Alfred. Hi, Jason.
29:29..can tell me what happened to all that gold and silver
29:32after it left the King's Exchange.
29:36This is just like a place that the Yemen Water would live.
29:39There's nothing remarkable about this particular area.
29:41So why am I here, Alfred?
29:42Well, it's the great joy of the Tower
29:44that there are remarkable things hidden behind almost every wall.
29:48And so I'm going to show you one of the most exciting things
29:51we've uncovered in the recent past.
29:53Intriguing. Oh, follow me.
29:57It's completely unexpected.
29:59I was expecting someone's living room.
30:01What is this?
30:02So you are looking at the standing remains of the Tudor royal mint.
30:07Originally, the mint would have been huge,
30:10taking up almost all the space, 7,000 square metres
30:14between the inner and outer curtain walls.
30:18Now, this is all that is left.
30:21What am I looking at here?
30:23You are looking at the remains of the forge
30:26in which gold and silver would be purified at the royal mint
30:30in the 1500s.
30:31This section here, this is where you would have your fires burning
30:35to heat your metal.
30:36We have an entire building dedicated to the processing of gold and silver.
30:41And then vast workshops going down Mint Street,
30:46where all of the coins would actually be made.
30:48So on a scale which is not seen anywhere else in the future.
30:51And it's like a production line.
30:52Yes, precisely.
30:53By the 1550s, when Henry VIII's three children, Edward, Mary and Elizabeth,
30:59took the throne, every new coin in England was made right here.
31:04Security at the mint was tight, with gates at either end,
31:08sealing it off from the rest of the tower community.
31:11Anyone caught stealing precious metals faced harsh punishment,
31:16including execution and even castration.
31:20There was a good reason for this.
31:22The people who worked in the tower mint literally held the nation's wealth
31:26in their hands.
31:28It's this room that is the beating heart behind the economy of England.
31:33And the economy does not work without this room existing
31:36and without the headquarters of the Royal Mint at the tower.
31:41Working in the mint was one of the most hazardous jobs in history.
31:45But the story of those employed here is often overlooked.
31:49So I've come to see blacksmith Owen Bush.
31:53Hi, Owen. Hello.
31:54To find out what life was like for those making the nation's coins
31:58for Tudor monarchs like Elizabeth I.
32:01It would have been dangerous, toxic fumes, no idea of health and safety.
32:07But I'll show you a smaller version of making a coin
32:10so we can see the process.
32:12Thankfully, unlike Tudor mint workers,
32:14we have modern safety equipment to protect us.
32:18So what are we going to do first?
32:19I'm going to melt up some silver.
32:21I'm using a modern way of doing it.
32:23Historically, it would have been bigger and in a charcoal fire.
32:26Right, I'll stand back a bit then.
32:29Coins were often made in the summer months
32:32when there was more daylight.
32:34I can only imagine the searing temperatures inside the mint
32:38and the toxic fumes of the metals they were working with.
32:41Wow, yeah, there it goes. You can see it.
32:44It's rather beautiful, actually.
32:45It is. It's excess of 1,100 centigrade.
32:48That's incredible.
32:49It wasn't just the heat that was a threat.
32:52I'm going to put a tiny bit of heat into the mould here.
32:56The big risk with this is if there was any moisture in the mould,
33:00then we could actually have a little explosion.
33:02That kind of thing must have happened all the time.
33:04Oh, absolutely, yeah.
33:06Oh, there it is.
33:10Wow.
33:11And it cools down quite quickly.
33:12Oh!
33:14So that's our silver block, our little brick.
33:16That's amazing.
33:21Next, the precious metals needed to be hammered into shape
33:25and punched into discs.
33:27Up until 60 years after the death of Elizabeth I,
33:32it was all done by hand.
33:34It was a risky business.
33:38It seems to me that just a lapse in concentration,
33:41you could easily lose a finger, can you?
33:43Oh, absolutely, yeah.
33:44So here's our punch.
33:45It's a very simple way of just making a disc.
33:47Mm-hm.
33:48So I'm putting it into this little coining press
33:51and I've got a pattern on the top and the bottom of the punch.
33:54Right.
33:55And then it's just a case of hitting it pretty hard.
33:57OK.
33:58In the 1500s, the noise in the mint would have been deafening
34:02as blank coins were hammered.
34:04So I just need to knock the coin out.
34:08Oh, there it is.
34:09And that's our coin.
34:10Oh, that's amazing.
34:12Wow.
34:13Very, very hard, dangerous work.
34:19They're risking life and limb, literally,
34:22but also incredibly important.
34:27Coming up, it's a race against time
34:29to save one of the tower's most unique features.
34:32You're keeping these buildings safe for another thousand years.
34:36And I'm put to the test on a vital renovation.
34:39You can't really go wrong.
34:41What?
34:42What?
34:43Let's see.
34:44Let's see.
34:53Ever since the White Tower was built by William the Conqueror
34:57a thousand years ago,
34:59generations of monarchs have left their mark on the Tower of London.
35:03The whole place is a 950-year-old montage
35:06of building fashions throughout history.
35:08But there are some alterations that were made not on the orders of kings or queens,
35:13but as a result of the tower's newest role as a tourist attraction.
35:18The Victorian era saw an explosion of visitors as people flocked to see the places they'd read about in history books.
35:27From the bloody tower, where two princes vanished, to the exact spot where Queen Anne Boleyn lost her head.
35:35To make sure they weren't disappointed, Victorian builders recreated old parts of the tower that had been previously demolished.
35:43Like a modern day theme park, they hastily threw up ancient looking stone walls and classic castle features such as arrow loops,
35:52narrow slits medieval archers would have fired from to defend the fortress.
35:57But they didn't have to recreate everything.
36:00Hi, Preeti.
36:01Hi, Drizzy.
36:02How are you?
36:03I'm good, thank you.
36:04Well, there's clearly a lot going on here.
36:06The broad arrow tower is on the eastern inner curtain wall,
36:10and incredibly, its original arrow loops from the 1200s survive to this day.
36:16They're so precious that in 2023, a major restoration project was launched to preserve them.
36:23The woman in charge is project manager Preeti Narasimhan.
36:27So this tower is one of the 11 or 12 watchtowers along the inner curtain wall.
36:33This tower is the only tower that retains all of the 1200s arrow loops.
36:37All of the other arrow loops in all of the other towers have been replaced over time.
36:41It was in this tower that the arrows themselves were also made, mended and stored.
36:48So this is one of the five arrow loops that we have conserved.
36:52The fact that these are 800 years old, these features, gives it that much more authenticity and uniqueness.
36:59But it's such a feature, isn't it, of this tower, so I can understand the need to really look after these.
37:04And to protect these ancient features from rain damage,
37:09Preeti has come up with a very simple yet ingenious solution.
37:14We've also been able to introduce this hund at the top.
37:18It's a folded piece of lead, basically, that we have inserted just to slow the rate of deterioration
37:24by making sure the water is falling off of the arrow loops and not washing down on the face of it.
37:31That's very subtle. I don't think I'd have noticed that.
37:34And it's so much care and attention for a single feature in a single tower in a huge site.
37:41You're keeping these buildings safe for another thousand years.
37:46The tower's conservators are careful to use authentic materials for their restoration work.
37:51But when they can't be sourced, there's only one solution. They make them.
37:56I've come to one of the most magnificent buildings in London, Hampton Court Palace, to see how it's done.
38:03I'm here to meet some conservationists who are going to teach me and show me how you cut bricks.
38:09I mean, I'm not even sure what that process is. Here's the clue.
38:12But my first question is going to be to them, how many bricks are there in Hampton Court Palace?
38:17That's what I want to know. I can't wait. One, two, three.
38:21I'm meeting master bricklayer Emma Simpson.
38:25Hi, Emma. Oh, hello, Jason. How are you?
38:28I'm very good. Emma's team repairs the brickwork across many historic palaces, including the Tower of London.
38:35For each restoration project, she must first remove all the original bricks from the location
38:42and assess the damage from centuries of being exposed to the elements.
38:47So if I take this one, for example, then you can see it's quite broken, it's deteriorated.
38:52It's gone very, very sort of, you know, flaky and it's starting to break up.
38:57And that's happening all the time. It is, I'm afraid, yeah. Yeah.
39:00And you have to just... So your job is absolutely crucial.
39:04When recreating bricks, Emma must precisely match the original materials
39:10or the structure of the building will be compromised.
39:15It's a lot of work.
39:17All the bricks we use here are handmade specifically for whichever project we're doing.
39:22So if we were going to be repairing a bit of Tudor walling,
39:25we'd study everything about that particular brick in terms of colour, texture, size, shape.
39:31And we'd give all that information to the brickmaker
39:33and they would make us a brick that would match.
39:36God, that's staggering.
39:37So a lot of it is trying to use similar technology
39:41so you're going to create something that was very similar to when it was created originally.
39:44Yeah.
39:46To replicate the skills of her historic counterparts,
39:49Emma starts out with a brick called a red rubber,
39:53named, as it turns out, for obvious reasons.
39:56It's clearly red.
39:57Yeah, yeah.
39:58Even I know that.
39:59Yeah.
40:00But what's the rubber element?
40:01The rubber element is that it's soft enough to rub.
40:03We can cut them and carve them and rub them.
40:06The bricks that Emma carves are different shapes and sizes,
40:09but they all start life as one of these red rubbers.
40:13She uses the original bricks to make a wooden template called a cutting box.
40:18And then you would put your blank brick in there and you would then cut around that shape
40:23and then it would come out like this.
40:25So you've got a sort of head start, really, in terms of you're not just freehand.
40:30No.
40:31As it happens, brick making is in my blood.
40:34So Emma's letting me have a go at cutting.
40:37After I've got my protective gear on, of course.
40:40OK.
40:42You sort of look down and see where the sides of the box are,
40:46so you can kind of locate the saw correctly.
40:53That off quite slowly.
40:54This is the same technique historic brick makers would have used.
40:59Once Emma's got the job started...
41:01Yeah, OK, there you go.
41:03It's my turn.
41:04So, yeah, OK, right.
41:10It is hard work.
41:12I mean, luckily I am a triathlete, so...
41:16You can't really go wrong.
41:18What?
41:19Let's see, let's see.
41:22Bricks have been used at the Tower since 1276,
41:26when Edward I ordered 243,000 of them to build the Beecham Tower.
41:33It was the first large-scale use of brick in a defensive building in England
41:38since the Roman period.
41:40And actually, I think I might have missed my calling.
41:43Oh, I think I'm getting a bit of a rhythm now.
41:45I think you are.
41:46I think you're doing really well.
41:47Bricks like the one I'm shaping
41:49have ended up at the Tower's iconic Mint Street,
41:52home today to many of the Yeoman warders.
41:55And with a few more cuts of the saw, I'm done.
42:00I mean, this is pretty good, isn't it?
42:02This is very good, isn't it?
42:03That bit, yeah.
42:04All that's needed is a final polish.
42:06Yeah, I mean, this is quite a labour-intensive process, isn't it?
42:12But I suppose if you're in the Tower of London
42:15and you are preserving something ancient and historic,
42:21it's a lifetime's work, isn't it?
42:23Because it's ongoing.
42:25And the brick is finished.
42:28I'm pretty pleased with that.
42:29Thank you very much.
42:30It's a pleasure.
42:32It does make you think what is involved in the restoration
42:36of these sort of places like the Tower of London.
42:39What really struck me was, despite technology
42:42and despite all the advances in making buildings more solid,
42:46that really the best way to do it
42:49is to acknowledge the old ways of making things.
42:52So I have nothing but admiration
42:54and it just shows us the extent of the work
42:56that is necessary to keep this incredible spectacle alive.
43:02We've explored the development of the Tower of London
43:05over a thousand years.
43:07From a single tower to a vast fortress and royal palace.
43:13And of course, world-famous visitor attraction.
43:16It's been quite a journey.
43:18It has been a revelation, hasn't it?
43:20And I suppose it was such a dominating, revered and feared tower.
43:26And since it's been built, London has expanded and grown
43:30and it's now this bustling metropolis of skyscrapers
43:35that loom over the tower.
43:38And you realise that the sheer permanence of the Tower of London,
43:43that it's been here for a thousand years amid all that change.
43:47Absolutely. It still stands as this incredible symbol
43:50of the nation's history, of the world's history really.
43:54Everybody who's lived, worked, reigned here has left their mark on the Tower in some way.
44:03What I like is that it's a continuing story.
44:06It's a story that keeps on evolving.
44:08Exactly. And the Tower remains constant and has done for a thousand years.
44:17It's an incredible thought.
44:19And hopefully for another thousand years.
44:21A very important pooch gets the VIP treatment inside the Four Seasons Park Lane,
44:29brand new Sunday at nine.
44:31Who knew that belly dancing was so popular in Portugal?
44:34Michael Portillo gets swept up in the revelry,
44:37brand new Saturday at 8.15.
44:39Next, Gabby Petito, the murder that gripped the world.
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