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00:02Castles dominated the medieval landscape.
00:06And Britain has some of the finest in the world.
00:09Today, most are decaying relics,
00:12many of their secrets buried in time.
00:19Now, historian Ruth Goodman
00:22and archaeologists Tom Pinfold
00:25and Peter Ginn are turning the clock back
00:28to relearn the secrets of the medieval castle builders.
00:31This is the ultimate in medieval technology.
00:35The origin of our castles is distinctly French,
00:38introduced to Britain at the time of the Norman conquest of 1066.
00:49Here in the Burgundy region of France is Guédelon Castle,
00:53the world's biggest archaeological experiment.
00:59A 25-year project to build a castle from scratch,
01:03using the same tools, techniques and materials available in the 13th century.
01:10It's a lot of hard work at the coalface, because this is industry.
01:14For the next six months, Ruth, Peter and Tom
01:18will experience the daily rigours of medieval construction.
01:22Drop down, get up there.
01:24And everyday life.
01:26How workers dressed and ate.
01:30You can really smell your food, Ruth.
01:33And the art of combat.
01:35And the art of combat.
01:39This is the story of how to build a medieval castle.
01:57Four months into their adventure, the team have been immersed in the building work,
02:01alongside Guédelon's masons.
02:04Perfect.
02:05Oh, good!
02:08They've learned how a castle was defended in times of war.
02:13Every stone has to be in line, because this is going to go up and up and up.
02:18And discovered how lavishly decorated castles were on the inside.
02:22This was about showing your power.
02:25It was about prestige.
02:34Now the team delved deeper.
02:37To discover the secrets of the skilled communities,
02:40whose combined expertise made such mighty castles.
02:47It's just this mass of molten metals.
02:51Castles were not made from stone alone.
02:54Without the mastery of the medieval blacksmiths transforming metal.
03:03And the carpenter's sophisticated grasp of geometry.
03:07Wow, is all I can say.
03:10The castle could never be built at all.
03:14This is one of those moments when everything comes together.
03:17Extremely fast, in quite a dramatic way.
03:27The first castles introduced to Britain by the Normans were mostly built not of stone, but of wood.
03:34Making them quicker and cheaper to construct.
03:37Their favourite design was the modern bailey.
03:42Following the conquest of 1066, they erected hundreds of strategic locations across England and Wales.
03:54One of the first structures completed here at Gedilon is an example of a classic wooden modern bailey.
04:03I can never remember, which one's the mott and which one's the bailey.
04:07The mott is your mound, on top of which you're probably going to end up with a wooden tower like
04:11this,
04:12which in our case in Gedilon goes on to be the great tower.
04:15Your bailey is the area enclosed by your palisade fence, as we can see here.
04:19So this could be your bailey.
04:22So the bailey becomes the courtyard.
04:23The palisade fence comes the curtain.
04:25The walls.
04:25Exactly, that's the evolution of the castle right there really, isn't it?
04:39While most early castles were made of timber, at key sites, the Normans invested in stone.
04:46Expanding on the mott and bailey principle of high tower and defensive surrounding war,
04:51but using materials that were far more imposing and durable.
04:59William the Conqueror built stone castles to make a statement.
05:03Norman rule was here to stay.
05:10The fact so many of these castles are still standing after almost a thousand years
05:15is testament to the precision and skill of their builders.
05:20It's this remarkable standard of craftsmanship they're seeking to recapture at Gedilon.
05:30Most of the walls are built with rubble stones, which are easy to produce in the quarry.
05:38Every ten feet, the masons build levelling courses, rows of carefully dressed flat stones that strengthen the wall,
05:45and also allow the masons to regulate the structure.
05:52It's too irregular. If you're using just blocks that are shaped but not specific,
05:56you'll actually end up with a weak wall.
05:58By putting in the levelling courses, you flatten everything out,
06:02you start building again from a horizontal surface.
06:04And so you'll do that again and again, right up to the top.
06:08And that just keeps the strength of the wall and allows you just to basically balance out and work from
06:14a flat surface.
06:17Tom is helping to extract a particularly large stone from the quarry by the castle, to use in a levelling
06:23course.
06:26Machio Rigo has been a quarryman here for nine years.
06:31At the moment we're just making the small hole, and into that we're going to insert the wedge.
06:35What we want to do is hit that perfectly, and that should actually work its way along a natural crack
06:40in the rock.
06:41So it's not as simple as just smack, smack, smack, there's your hole, put in the wedge.
07:01Each different type of rock has its own extraction method,
07:05and quarrymen's skills were handed down from father to son.
07:17OK, we've got our split now, and we just need to separate these two bits of stone.
07:22So it's over to the crowbar, get that in, I'm going to lift it up, going to apply some more
07:27wedges.
07:29In the Middle Ages, some quarrymen also worked as stonemasons.
07:39Masons were well-paid free men, who enjoyed exceptional status among the workers of the age.
07:45They travelled widely, their skills constantly in demand for building great castles and churches.
08:01On a construction site, the stonemasons' lodge is where they gathered to eat, drink, and discuss ideas and designs.
08:12Lodges became regarded as strongly symbolic buildings, where the closely guarded secrets of the mason's craft were shared and geometry
08:19was torn.
08:24In an age where there was little scientific knowledge and a great deal of superstition,
08:29it's easy to see why a mason's lodge acquired an almost mystical status.
08:40Professor Ronald Hutton is a historian specialising in medieval and early modern folklore.
08:50We're sitting in a mason's lodge, and those words conjure up certain images.
08:55Is that true? I mean, was there any such thing as Freemasonry in the 13th century?
09:01Certainly not. Freemasonry, as we know it, comes along in the end of the 16th century.
09:06Actually, in Scotland, we decided to pull together the mason's skill of understanding geometry and structure in order to try
09:13and understand the secrets of the universe.
09:16And that began this secret society of people dedicated to knowledge, which grew into Freemasonry as we know it.
09:22So it has absolutely nothing to do with this sort of medieval tradition of building.
09:27Well, medieval masonry is the seed and modern Freemasonry is the full-grown plant.
09:33If you're a medieval mason, you are doing God's work, you're building God's houses, the churches and cathedrals.
09:40And as God is the grand architect of the universe using natural geometry, so human masons reproduce that.
09:46They are sub-creators, but are also in a highly mobile, skilled, dangerous trade.
09:54That's why a lodge like this is so important.
09:57If you are a Freemason in the medieval sense, in other words, you're free to go where you like,
10:02to have a place like this, a temporary home from home, where masons can gather, share information, share hot tips,
10:10and simply live, play dice, booze, chill out after the day's work is done, is absolutely essential.
10:19Stonemasons were not the only skilled craftsmen on a castle building site.
10:31Castles required huge amounts of wood, and this called for carpenters.
10:37Roof structures, doors, walkways and drawbridges were all made from timber.
10:47Wood was also key to the building process, from scaffolding and lifting machinery to basic buckets.
10:59Here at Gedilon, the wooden scaffolding is a really visible part of the build.
11:04It's also one of the most precarious and potentially dangerous.
11:07Indeed, we know that in 1138 at Canterbury Cathedral, William Sons, the master builder,
11:13was up inspecting the high vaults when he fell from the scaffolding and was paralysed.
11:25Essential to secure scaffolding are putlogs, the timbers which stick out from the wall for the scaffold planks to rest
11:32on.
11:34The timbers are deeply embedded in the walls in putlog holes, into which the logs are inserted.
11:43By planning putlog holes at regular intervals, the timbers can be continually raised in line with the stonework,
11:49avoiding the need to build a scaffold up from the ground.
11:59Florian Ranucci is the master mason, overseeing all construction on the site.
12:05He's ultimately responsible for workers' safety here at Gedilon.
12:10Obviously, we don't want anybody to die while we're building the scaffold.
12:15So there are certain compromises.
12:17You're having to have some modern health and safety issues with the scaffolding.
12:23How close is the scaffolding you're using to being 13th century scaffolding?
12:29And how much is because you need modern health and safety?
12:33Well, the 21th century technique for us to work is only to put iron and also modern wood.
12:46So when we look around us, the 13th century scaffolding wouldn't have looked very different.
12:52The wood would have been hand-produced, not machine-produced.
12:56And instead of the bolts, what would it have been instead of the bolts?
12:59Ropes.
13:00Ropes.
13:01It would have just been tied.
13:02Yes, so we have to do a...
13:04A little bit of compromise.
13:05A little compromise for our safety.
13:08And for the building in a good way.
13:12Yeah.
13:12But we don't change the way of building.
13:16We have to use wood.
13:25The completed castle will have a chapel built into the East Tower.
13:30where the Lord and his family could practice
13:32their religious devotions.
13:38Even laymen would have heard mass at least once a day,
13:42so a chapel was considered essential.
13:53Nikola Tuchefur is head carpenter here.
13:56They must get the scaffolding in place
13:58to enable the masons to build the next level
14:00of the chapel tower.
14:06The masons have made a potluck hole,
14:08and the carpenters have prepared the wood in advance,
14:13complete with a mortise and tenon joint,
14:15something still favoured by carpenters today.
14:18There we go.
14:23So not only do you have a mortise and tenon here
14:26that can be pegged,
14:27but you've also got a bird-mouth joint,
14:29so the potluck is actually sitting on this
14:32as well as in it to give it maximum security,
14:36and then that potluck goes into the castle wall.
14:41Pegs?
14:41This side.
14:42This side?
14:44It's secured with oak pegs.
14:49More?
14:50No?
14:50No?
14:51No, it's okay.
14:51It's okay.
14:55And that is the scaffolding.
14:58In, and the bill can commence.
15:07As well as the stonemasons being largely dependent
15:10on the carpenters,
15:11both were also reliant on another set of craftsmen.
15:17Blacksmiths.
15:19From hinges on doors to bars on windows
15:21or the chains that raised a drawbridge,
15:24metal was crucial.
15:29At the foot of the castle is a blacksmith's forge.
15:34Martin Claudel produces the tools and metal work
15:37required at Gedelon.
15:44Peter and Tom are helping mix crushed clay
15:46with sand and water.
15:48They're going to help build a furnace,
15:50or bloomerie,
15:51to smelt iron for tool making.
15:58Think about a blacksmith's shop,
16:00you think about all the little bits of metal
16:01that are kicking around,
16:02bits of broken nail,
16:03bits of fragments of iron that have come off
16:06while you're smacking it with a hammer.
16:09And this furnace is a way of melting those all down
16:12and turning them back into metal that can be used.
16:15These big old bellows.
16:28Once the furnace is complete,
16:30they just need to put in the door,
16:32held in with an ash paste,
16:34so they can easily open it.
16:42The giant double bellows are attached to the furnace
16:45to pump air into it when lit,
16:48raising the temperature from 800 to over 1,300 degrees,
16:53sufficient to melt the scrap iron and steel.
16:59It's a lovely, melodic sound of the bellows.
17:03It's respiration.
17:05Breathing in and out.
17:12We've made the bloomerie,
17:13we've made the furnace,
17:14we're going to put in charcoal,
17:16we're going to throw in the scrap iron,
17:18bring it up to temperature,
17:20melt this down,
17:21and hopefully at the bottom,
17:23we're going to get,
17:24at the very least,
17:25reusable iron,
17:27but perhaps we'll get steel.
17:29But that's all about your carbon content,
17:32the purity of the fuel,
17:34and the ability to do a good smelt.
17:45Steel is iron,
17:47with a specific amount of carbon dissolved inside its structure.
17:51When the temperature in the furnace rises,
17:54more and more carbon from the charcoal is absorbed by the iron.
17:59But it's a difficult balancing process.
18:03This was medieval technology,
18:05long before a modern understanding of chemistry.
18:09But hard steel was so useful for tools,
18:12that even small amounts were precious.
18:17Pretty soon,
18:18we'll be ready to crack open that door,
18:21and hopefully have a bloom of steel from which we can make tools.
18:28We've reached that moment.
18:30The iron that's gone in the top has melted,
18:33it's reached the bottom,
18:34it's hopefully turned into a steel bloom.
18:36Clermont is just hacking out that sort of ash and water paste
18:40that Tomo used to patch up that door.
18:43Oh, the door's off.
18:45We can see the bloom,
18:46it's right at the top of that charcoal bed.
18:50It's just this mass of molten metal.
18:53All those scrap bits of metal melted down.
19:08It's amazing to see this happen in a blacksmith shop.
19:11I've never seen that before.
19:12It just means that these guys are self-sufficient.
19:18They need to compact the bloom
19:20to start the folding process for working it,
19:22to shape into tools.
19:30Next, the metal is rapidly cooled,
19:33or quenched in water,
19:36to lock in its hardness.
19:41Martin then tests it with the steel file.
19:44Parts that feel softer than the file are iron.
19:48Harder bits are hopefully steel.
19:54But if we got steel,
19:56we just have to work it to see.
20:01Being able to produce hard steel
20:03enabled blacksmiths to make sharp cutting edges
20:06of tools like axes,
20:07which is what Marta is going to forge later.
20:36In the Middle Ages,
20:37the lords of castles like this one
20:40were part of the driving force
20:41behind the clearance of woodland
20:43to make way for crops
20:44and to provide timber and firewood.
20:52There are more forests in France today
20:54than there were in the 13th century.
20:58The location of Gedelong Castle
21:00was determined in part by the surrounding forest,
21:03which provides large amounts of wood.
21:07This is our tree.
21:09Oh, it has got a good bend on it, hasn't it?
21:11What do you think?
21:13Jean-Michel Luret is the head woodsman.
21:15Relax.
21:16Relax.
21:16Look at the mic.
21:18He gives the team a lesson
21:19in using medieval-style wood axes
21:21to fell a tree.
21:25This can't take us for ages.
21:32Trees were selected with specific uses in mind,
21:35depending on their size and shape.
21:43You're trying to make it look like a big pencil at the bottom.
21:46Sarah Preston, the site administrator,
21:49is helping overcome the language barrier.
21:52Sarah Preston, the site administrator,
21:54is helping overcome the language barrier.
22:14So, Jean-Michel is saying, we're getting to the final stages now.
22:17What he can't tell us is where the tree will fall exactly.
22:21So, it could actually fall back this one.
22:22Potentially.
22:23So, what you're going to do is keep working.
22:25So, you keep working, keep working,
22:27and at one point you will start to hear the tree cracking.
22:29Don't stop.
22:35It's so easy now to go and get you a lump of wood
22:37or get you a bit of stone.
22:39The raw materials of life are easy to acquire.
22:41When you see how much work is involved
22:43in the simplest of things...
22:45And not just that,
22:46it's the tools to get those raw materials.
22:49And you're looking at the complete tool set of the woodsmith.
22:53Yeah.
22:54And it is something that's been forged
22:56in that blacksmith's area.
22:58And it is going to last a lifetime.
23:00And they would have cost a fortune, really,
23:03for an ordinary working man.
23:04I mean, the tools of your trade,
23:05people pass them down in families
23:06because you have to.
23:09They're too expensive to acquire.
23:11This is definitely a spectator sport, I've decided.
23:14It is, yeah.
23:15It's very easy to critique someone's outdoors.
23:17Yeah, it is, isn't it?
23:18I can see a whole new game show coming up now.
23:22Can you hear the crack yet, Tomo?
23:24I can hear it cracking.
23:25I don't know if it's actually the tree or me.
23:34It is always one of the things I like about this experience,
23:37it's seeing how much skill there is in the simplest of things
23:40and how much intelligence and cleverness there is.
23:42Are you calling Tomo simple?
23:45I don't know, sir.
23:46Trying to do that.
23:47Maybe it seems simple.
23:49Maybe that's more accurate.
23:55Part of the woodsman's skill is to plan
23:57so the tree falls safely in the right place
24:00without breaking on impact.
24:22Once the trunk has been squared up,
24:24it will be used by the carpenters up on the chapel tower.
24:36Much of a castle owner's wealth came from exploiting his land and its tenants.
24:44One way of doing this was to build water mills, providing a regular source of income.
24:52These mills would have made a huge difference to the lives of local villagers and labourers.
24:59Producing flour for their bread required up to two hours a day of hand grinding.
25:05But one mill could produce as much grain as around 40 people grinding by hand.
25:13According to the Doomsday Book, in England, as early as 1080,
25:17there were over 5,500 water mills.
25:24Little is known about the mills of this time.
25:28However, one of the most ambitious projects at Gedelon this year
25:32is the construction of a 12th century style water mill.
25:36The castle team and archaeologists have based its design
25:40on the remains of two ancient mills discovered in Jura in the east of France in 2008.
25:54Sophie Windsor is one of a team of carpenters
25:57who have painstakingly worked on the water mill over a two-year period.
26:04Today is the moment of truth.
26:11Today we are going to try to make some flour in the water mill,
26:15so we are going to open this loose, the water is going to run,
26:20and hopefully the wheel is going to turn and grind some grain.
26:27So to be able to do this, you can actually see it working
26:31and relate it back to the evidence you found in the archaeological record?
26:35Yeah, yeah. So this is why it's absolutely experimental archaeology.
26:41That's why we try it several times, and each time we have maybe to change some pieces
26:46and to do some modification.
26:50So I think you can start by opening the sluice.
26:54Get the water down there.
26:55Yes, and then we will need someone to watch if the wheel is all right,
27:00with the paddles and everything stays, so there is an emergency stop here
27:04with somebody, you know, ready to close it,
27:07because if there is something in the mechanism, it destroys everything in a minute.
27:12And that's a lot of work.
27:13Yeah, we can say that.
27:16Emergency sluice.
27:17That sluice.
27:19People making sure those paddles are fine.
27:21Yeah, and checking if there is not big trouble in the gear.
27:26Yeah. Boom.
27:29Stuffing across, bridging it.
27:34Oh, wow.
27:38Better get down to our second station.
27:39Good job.
27:44But there's a problem.
27:46The mill wheel isn't turning nearly as quickly as it ought to be.
27:50It means that we don't have enough pressure.
27:53Right.
27:54So the grain isn't coming out.
27:55No, it's not going down.
27:57It's all from wood, so it's a lot of friction everywhere.
28:03So resistance, and we have to find solutions.
28:08You can hear the noise, can't you?
28:09The noise of the woods.
28:11Yeah.
28:12And also, it's true that the stones have to get a bit used,
28:17and then it will be a bit smoother.
28:19Everything is still new as well.
28:21It needs to be used a bit.
28:23Yeah.
28:27And this is experimental archaeology, so everything that's going on here is all about trying to work
28:33out exactly how these works. I mean, it's easy to think of a water mill in terms of water management,
28:39and the water is coming down the sluice, and it is going into this wheel. But the problem is,
28:44it's not sufficient to drive this mill. There's too much friction currently in the mechanism.
28:52So although the stones are going round, they're only going round because we're helping them out.
28:56So we just need to fine-tune this a little bit more to get this working perfectly.
29:02But we're very close, very close.
29:06Two years of painstaking research and building could be in vain if the problems can't be remedied.
29:15But Peter and Tom are hopeful that some simple modifications
29:20and liberal application of lubricating pig fat will solve the teething problems
29:25and get the mill working properly.
29:55Perhaps the most essential part of the blacksmith's role was keeping the workforce equipped.
30:00The stonemasons' tools become blunt after a few days' work.
30:06Without a blacksmith to sharpen them, all the stone cutting on site would come to a halt in less than
30:11a week.
30:15Because iron and steel was so costly, tools needed to last as long as possible.
30:20But today, the blacksmiths are making a new side axe.
30:24You work together as a team, you hit, Vincent hits, but you don't talk, it's all quiet.
30:29Is that just experience or you're listening to the sound?
30:33Yes, it's experience. We used to work together and we have a code.
30:39When I let my hammer strike on the anvil, it means to stop.
30:47That's it. So all the noise working in the forge, it doesn't actually matter.
30:51It's a visual sign as well. That's it.
30:56A piece of hard steel will be welded onto an iron axe head to make a hard cutting edge.
31:08Blade is starting to taper down and we're going to cut it any minute now.
31:16Wait.
31:17OK.
31:18Tom has a go at cutting steel.
31:25It's not as easy as I thought it would be.
31:27I'm making some progress.
31:39What the guys are doing is just measuring up the steel against the iron axe head.
31:44It needs to be pretty precise.
31:48Until modern times, few methods of accurately measuring temperature existed.
31:54So blacksmiths traditionally judged it by watching the changing colours of the metal.
32:00Once the iron is white-hard, the hard cutting steel can be welded onto it.
32:06It's taken a lot of work to make this axe, but when you think about it, it's a crucial tool
32:10for building the castle, making the water mills, just shaping anything that was required, like scaffolding.
32:18You can't do without an axe. And these guys are working hard constantly to just make sure
32:23those tools are available for the entire site.
32:28The climax of the process, changing the qualities of metals, was one of the medieval blacksmith's
32:34most carefully guarded secrets.
32:38Martin heats the axe to a critical temperature, which changes the steel structure.
32:44He then quenches it in vegetable oil, which locks in this new hardness,
32:48without distorting the blade, as water might.
32:56The side axe is finally sharpened on stone.
33:09Medieval stonemasons may have been revered, but many held the blacksmith's craft as supernatural.
33:18Blacksmiths were intensely magical, because since prehistory, they'd performed this extraordinary
33:25sorcery of conjuring metal from rock and then fashioning it into beautiful things.
33:30Medieval blacksmiths were regarded as great healers.
33:33A pregnant woman afraid of labour, a sick child, an adult with a lingering illness would be laid
33:40upon a blacksmith's anvil, and the blacksmith would pretend to hammer them,
33:44to hammer the illness out of them. And people really believed that, like royalty,
33:49they had the power to heal by touch.
33:51Was that something that was considered to be dangerous magic, or was it just
33:56part of life and nobody batted an eyelid?
33:59It's pretty scary. Blacksmiths are often believed to make pacts with the devil.
34:04Ironically, in which the blacksmith usually comes off better.
34:09For example, blacksmiths are believed to be the only people who can do jobs for the devil,
34:14like shooing his black horses, without paying the price of their soul.
34:19And there are even tales of blacksmiths, some of them saints, who are capable of grabbing the
34:24devil's nose in their red-hot pincers and tweaking it to get rid of him if he's annoying.
34:31How on earth did the church respond to that?
34:34The church canonised some of these blacksmiths. St Dunstan in England is a classic case.
34:40Otherwise, they simply got along with it. Blacksmiths were too useful.
34:44And as long as they went to Nass and didn't have an alternative kind of religion, there's no problem.
34:53Here at Guédelon, carpenters, stonemasons and archaeologists have spent weeks modifying the mill
34:58mechanisms and the water channel. Peter and Tom are going to attempt to grind their bag of grain.
35:06We are going to start with the will. Philippe Delage has been closely involved in the mill project
35:11from the beginning. We are going to turn. And he's going to help them try it out.
35:16Wow. You can hear that stone singing. It's unbelievable how many pieces, man-made,
35:24each one of them, actually involved in this wheel alone, let alone the rest of the actual building.
35:29Yeah. It's a lot of wood. It's a lot of wood.
35:36All right, good. We got enough water. Thomas, maybe you can open the van?
35:43Ah, the sluice gate here? Yeah, that's it. You know, you use this timber.
35:51A bit of leverage. Right, there it goes.
35:54And after you put this one underneath, like this. And now we'll just control the amount of water we let
36:02through.
36:02Yes. So we are going to climb upstairs. Shout out loud when it's time for me to...
36:09You're controlling our power, man. Flower power.
36:21Filled the hopper, Crane. It's ready to be made into flour.
36:25Yeah. I suppose all we need is Tom to open that gate.
36:27Yeah. You are ready, Thomas? Ready.
36:30It can open.
36:31Here it comes. Tom's opening the sluice gates.
36:35The water's coming down. It's about to hit the wheel. It's about to hit the wheel.
36:41Hit the wheel.
36:56The mill has a paddle wheel, eight feet in diameter.
37:01This turns an axle, turning the smaller pit wheel.
37:07The teeth of this turn the lantern wheel, which turns the spindle.
37:13This powers the millstone, over three feet in diameter.
37:19The bottom stone, the bedstone, is fixed.
37:22And the top one, the runner stone, revolves to grind the grain.
37:31The water's turning that wheel, and our stones are going.
37:38Finally, the mill is operating as intended,
37:41recreating an extraordinary feat of medieval engineering.
37:47Right now, I can really appreciate how precise everything has to be.
37:51This isn't pinpoint accurate. It's going to damage it.
37:55So, Peter, how's it going? Have we got flour?
37:58We're getting... Yeah, it's brilliant. It's superb. I mean...
38:02Yeah. Wow. Wow, is all I can say.
38:06You've built this. No, I took it.
38:14I can't believe such a low head. I mean, that water is falling maybe a metre,
38:20going under a wheel.
38:23You're managing to turn a stone that is 200 kilograms.
38:28And you're managing to grind the grain into flour.
38:31This is the beginning of industry, I suppose.
38:36And to have this associated with a castle,
38:39you can free up people from the daily grind to do other things. It's amazing.
38:49Oh, here he comes.
38:51That's some power.
38:54Oh, let's see what we've got.
38:57Is that it?
38:58What do you mean, is that it?
39:00Oh, fantastic.
39:02I believe, are you happy?
39:05I think it's a good start.
39:10I mean, it's just amazing how much work it actually takes to create one mill.
39:15I mean, hundreds and hundreds of bits of woods, these massive bits of stone.
39:19You've got to channel all that power from the water.
39:21Now, this is a big effort, but if you're going to create bread,
39:24you've got to feed families, soldiers, workforces.
39:28It's all worth it.
39:29It's all worth it.
39:30Exactly.
39:30It all comes back.
39:31What does the castle need?
39:33It needs to be fed.
39:35And this is what makes it happen.
39:44And once it was up and running, as well as producing food for the inhabitants of his castle,
39:50the lord could start making money from his mill.
39:53Tenants on his land would have been obliged to use it and pay for the privilege.
40:17The next major project of the castle is to build a wooden walkway,
40:20or gallery, on the inside of the chapel tower.
40:26This would allow soldiers to get from the main building to the castle walls,
40:30without disturbing the sanctity of the lord's chapel.
40:39In the Middle Ages, carpenters used geometry to plan their wooden structures.
40:46They drew on the floor because parchment was expensive and paper still very rare.
40:53The carpenters are planning a section of the gallery by marking out a full-scale plan.
41:01Every piece of wood in Gedlong Castle starts its life here on the tracing floor.
41:06First of all, the plans, they are drawn on the floor to a one-to-one scale.
41:15Medieval units of measurement were not standardised, varying from place to place.
41:21Isn't it interesting watching them work to have few numbers come into it?
41:25It's mathematics, but it's mathematics of proportions, geometry.
41:28It's, you know, two of this, three of that, half it, double it, quarter it, third it.
41:34It's not 0.652.
41:39In French, the word for thumb, pouce, is the same as the word for inch.
41:45Every site would have its own units of measurement.
41:51That's a thumb, isn't it? It's an inch.
41:53The pouce.
41:53The pouce.
41:54The palm.
41:56That's basically the length of your palm.
41:58And the arm.
41:58So that's the hand span.
42:00I like the fact the inch corresponds to the word for thumb.
42:04I really like that.
42:05I rather like the fact that feet and inches in the yards is something that used to be
42:09right across Europe.
42:11You know, we tend to think of it as a very British thing these days.
42:13It's just that we hung on to it when everybody else left it behind.
42:16But it used to be that there were all these little inches, all these little feet all over the place,
42:21everywhere different.
42:22But the system of measurement here at Gedlon is based on a medieval castle that's very close by.
42:27And if we were to turn up there at the start of the build in the 13th century on a
42:31board,
42:31it would say, this is what an inch is on this site.
42:34This is what the hand span is.
42:35Based on one person's body.
42:37We don't know quite which person's body, but based on somebody's body.
42:40And if they were to pass away, those would have been written down to be used until the end of
42:45the build.
42:52It needs to be quite tight.
42:52To make a straight line on the tracing floor.
42:54It needs to be quite tight.
42:56They use string with red ochre powder.
42:58Pull it quite high.
43:01Yep, okay.
43:04Corresponding lines are made on each section of wood,
43:08before matching them to the floor plan.
43:19And then they are leveled out and then they're plumbed up.
43:22So you're constantly jiggling and it's very, very subtle.
43:25Little wedges going in to make sure everything's perfect.
43:35Once everything is lined up, they can cut the joints.
43:43They also chisel carpenter's marks into the wood.
43:48These are a code to identify the pieces of the frame, making it easier to reassemble on the castle walls.
43:56Each team would have had their own code.
44:10This is the gallery.
44:13I mean, I can't believe, from a few simple lines drawn on the tracing floor,
44:18that we have this amazing structure ready to go into the castle.
44:24And here at Gedlon, they almost think that carpentry, it's almost a form of genius.
44:30There's so much thinking involved.
44:31I mean, this line running through all these beams, it's precise.
44:36This can be unassembled by the carpenters.
44:38It can be put to one side.
44:39It can be hoisted up, reassembled outside the chapel tower.
44:43It doesn't need to be the same carpenter, because you've got all the marks here.
44:47It is a flat-packed medieval gallery.
44:49This is going to flip up this way.
44:52My feet would be down here.
44:54This is a handrail.
44:56There will be spindles here.
44:57My head would be here.
44:59And I'd be looking out onto the courtyard.
45:02And this is how you build a castle.
45:16It's thought about 30 people would live in a castle like this.
45:20From the lord and his family, down to servants and guards.
45:28They would have been fed from the castle kitchen.
45:31And bread would have been the staple of all their diets.
45:36Made in the stone bread oven.
45:43So it's sponging quite nice.
45:44Look at that.
45:45Ruth and Tom are going to try making a basic bread with flour from the new mill.
45:50Ruth is using a rising agent, which was popular in the Middle Ages.
45:54Smells a little alcohol-y.
45:55Yeah.
45:57Sourdough is probably the most ancient method of raising bread,
46:01because there's next to nothing involved.
46:03You know, you're just saving a bit from the previous day's batch.
46:06When I made the last batch of bread, I just broke a little bit of dough off and put it
46:09to one side.
46:10And I popped it in some water with a fresh little bit of flour.
46:15And this is the result.
46:16So sourdough is literally sourdough.
46:18Yeah, it is.
46:19There's no trick.
46:20There's no trick.
46:21There's no trick at all.
46:22So I've not added any yeast, and I won't add.
46:25And this is going to be an awesome carbohydrate for us, a real staple diet.
46:28It is.
46:29I mean, this is your real basic working man's bread.
46:33I mean, I'll be honest, at the moment it doesn't look that appealing,
46:35but I guess you've got work for me to do.
46:37Well, do you want to give it a knead?
46:38Go on.
46:39Do I add any of this?
46:40Yeah, add a little bit at a time and just start working it in.
46:43So it is fingers in, like you're mixing lime putty, you know, that sort of thing.
46:49Turning it in.
46:50Turning it in.
46:52That's it.
46:54I mean, it's time to look a bit more how I imagine bread would look at this date.
46:58Bread, that's right, yeah.
46:59I thought I was coming in for a break.
47:01Coming to the kitchen, you said.
47:03Well, it's not my fault you admitted you'd never made bread.
47:06Were these like family affairs or, you know, a proper big business?
47:11How would a baker make his money?
47:13Well, the majority of bread was made at home on a family scale.
47:17Right, okay, so you wouldn't go out and buy, you'd actually have it in-house.
47:22In the 13th century, most of it is being homemade.
47:27Okay, that's behaving much more like a lump now, isn't it?
47:30When you think, you know, work is involved in this at every stage, it's massive effort, isn't it?
47:36It is, isn't it? It is a bit bigger.
47:39So you're happy with that.
47:40So just roll it into a nice loaf shape.
47:43All right, lovely.
47:45Yeah.
47:45And then I want you to make a deep, very fast cross.
47:49That means that it's broken the surface tension, it's easy for the loaf to rise.
47:53Right.
47:53And you also get more high-quality crust for your crumb.
47:56Okay, so two cuts, nice and quick.
47:58Donk, donk.
48:00That's the one.
48:03Burning wood heats the oven and is then raked out before the bread is placed inside.
48:12That's pretty warm.
48:13Do you fancy raking it out?
48:14I can do that.
48:19So what am I doing this, Ruth? It seems incredibly dangerous.
48:22It is incredibly dangerous, you're right there.
48:26But basically we don't need the fire anymore, the fire has done its job.
48:30It's heated the stones, it's brought them up to cooking temperature and now we need to get the oven clean,
48:35ready for the bread to go in.
48:36Right.
48:37And we also want to put a little bit of steam in there so that it will help that final
48:41rise.
48:42Just scrape it all to the side so you've got access to the fire.
48:46That is your 13th century oven health and safety, that little move there.
48:50That's your safety.
48:52Right, next job, we've got a mop that's been soaking, you need to just quickly mop out the oven.
48:57You're not just cleaning, you're also adding steam.
49:01That's some off, is it?
49:01That's some off.
49:02You're going to get it in and throw it around.
49:04Okay.
49:05That's it.
49:06And you can see how that water doesn't just turn to steam, it just sort of seems to have almost
49:10exploded into steam.
49:13Look, the oven's dry.
49:14Your next challenge is to get it on your pail.
49:18Right.
49:19There we go.
49:21Make sure it's sliding on the pail, it is.
49:24There you go.
49:26Sticking it in.
49:27Right, bang in the middle.
49:28Right, bang in the middle.
49:30You see it?
49:31Done.
49:32Oh, look at that go.
49:34Yeah.
49:36I'll give you a shout when it's done.
49:37Okay.
49:38I'll go back.
49:39Back to work then.
50:00While the bread bakes, Tom tries out the side axe Martan made to square up wood, creating
50:08flat faces from a rounded trunk.
50:14This is the weirdest axe I've ever used, is that the balance is all off.
50:18So we've got a cutting edge and a flat side and that actually helps to cut, but also force some
50:23of these fibres apart.
50:26Put the axe down like this, you can actually see the pole is slightly tilted and that allows you
50:31to work along the wood nice and close. But because you're holding it here, there's no risk to your
50:37knuckles or your fingers as you work. But what it comes down to, and what I'm having trouble with,
50:42is that fine tuning. I know what I want to do, I can see what's marked out for me,
50:47but I'll be honest, it's always happening that way.
51:10Okay. Moment of truth, Ruth.
51:14How's your loaf done?
51:17It looks quite a dark loaf, was that the intention?
51:20Dark. You mean burnt?
51:23You mean burnt.
51:24I'm not a baker, so I don't want to make that clean.
51:29Looks like we've got the oven a bit hot.
51:32All right, let's have a whisk her out.
51:39That is definitely burnt.
51:42It's like a sausage at a barbecue, isn't it? You could probably still eat it.
51:46Oh, that's on fire on the bottom.
51:50Oh, it's cooked, definitely.
51:51That sounds healthy.
51:52That oven was too hot. It shouldn't scorch like that in that time.
51:56Oh, well, we'll scrape it off and...
52:00My first loaf of bread. I'm going to eat it.
52:17The wooden gallery is ready to be installed beside the chapel tower.
52:27Are you going to poke it?
52:30Are you going to poke it?
52:31Yeah.
52:33Each carpenter is going to take a post. Myself and Tomo are just here at the handrail,
52:37to make sure it doesn't topple over that way.
52:40They're going to remove the chocks and the three posts are going to sink down.
52:45The mortars and tenon joints will come together and this gallery will be locked in place,
52:50ready to take the final roof section that covers it in.
52:55Here we go.
52:57Truck's out.
53:11And the gallery's in place.
53:19With the basic frame in place, long beams are now needed for the roof section.
53:26Oh, mate.
53:29Sorry, mate.
53:31Push.
53:33Straight up, yeah?
53:34Yeah.
53:36After all that slow work where people seem to work for hours and hours and hours and produce very little,
53:42this is one of those moments when everything comes together extremely fast in quite a dramatic way.
53:50When you are ready.
53:54Up.
53:58Yeah.
53:59Drop down.
54:00Yeah.
54:01Okay.
54:02Yeah.
54:02Are you too long way to go, Mark?
54:04All right.
54:08Up.
54:11With a bit of force, the joints go into place and are pegged into position.
54:23Just need to pop a roof on it.
54:26And there you are.
54:27You've got a link between the great hall and the curtain wall.
54:34It's physical work, but to think when we first saw that drawing of what this was going to look like.
54:39Yeah.
54:39I didn't think we'd actually see this at the end of it.
54:41It was brilliant.
54:53A water mill would also have a mill pond, owned by the Lord, which was a source of fish.
55:00And castle workers might well have been rewarded for their hard work with a fish supper.
55:07That is a scary beast.
55:09It is, isn't it?
55:11Pike was a favoured dish at feasts throughout the Middle Ages.
55:16So freshwater fish was actually quite highly priced.
55:19Yeah.
55:19Yeah.
55:19And pike more so than things like salmon and trout.
55:23Yeah.
55:23That is a medieval fish and all.
55:28Ham full of leaves, fat hen, lovely medieval vegetable.
55:33And you're not doing anything to this pike.
55:35No, just shove him on as he is.
55:37So half an hour, should be done.
55:50Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.
55:52Oh, don't drop the fish.
55:54They smell good.
55:55Okay.
55:56Straight to table, I say.
55:58Straight to table.
56:00The pike is ready for presentation to Sophie,
56:03Philippe, and others who worked so hard building the mill and gallery.
56:09Here we go.
56:10Wow, look at that.
56:12That's very impressive.
56:13Nice catch.
56:14Wow.
56:16I'd love to say I caught that myself.
56:20I want someone to notice I have brought something to this meal.
56:25In honour of the carpenters, you see.
56:29That's no way to treat your first loaf.
56:34Wow.
56:36That's brutal.
56:40See how soft that is.
56:42It's got a good crumb.
56:43Good crumb.
56:44Do you want to break some up for the people over there?
56:47Oh, fantastic.
56:48Thank you, Ruth.
56:50Philippe.
56:51Having worked the mill, what do you think of the bread coming out?
56:55I mean, it's not bad.
56:57Not bad.
56:58Not bad.
56:58Look how solid this pike flesh is.
57:00See, this is why it's one of the king of fish.
57:02You can actually carve it into finger-sized pieces.
57:04Which is the point.
57:06You're supposed to be able to pick it up with your fingers and, yeah.
57:09Wow, that actually is really good.
57:12I mean, genuinely warm.
57:12It's all right, no?
57:13Mm-hmm.
57:14Really nice.
57:16And I always thought pike was really bony and so therefore really hard to eat, but...
57:19Well, it's not particularly, is it?
57:22There's a lot of meat.
57:23And it's quite intimidating looking fish when you think about it.
57:25He's very...
57:25You should have seen it when we're still fresh.
57:27Jeepers.
57:28I think we should drink to the mill.
57:30Yeah.
57:32To the mill.
57:34Santé.
57:34Santé.
57:35A la vôtre.
57:42Next time, the castle's place in the wider world.
57:49With expensive items traded across the globe.
57:52The spices I've got here are worth more than a chest of gold.
57:56And the latest architectural fashions arrive at Gediman.
58:02Black, white, Byzantine-inspired archway.
58:07Now, I'm not sure if that's true the tricky I've ever saw off.
58:18Okay, before that's done all right.
58:21If I could I see myself off then, I can see myself on next question again.
58:21Employee McL microbes said.
58:21May them all and a ship.
58:21Pick the forgiving does not want me to go?
58:21to help me with the thanks for it.
58:23So, this is good news.
58:23No, it seems good.
58:25It seems good.
58:26Bye, it's good news.
58:27Oh, thanks good news.
58:33Bye, everybody.
58:33Bye, everybody.