- 2 days ago
Kevin McCloud's Listed Britain - Season 1 Episode 2
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Short filmTranscript
00:01This is what happens when people build for more than just shelter.
00:07When they build for love, for passion, for hope, for faith.
00:13When they build in taste, when they build with imagination and craftsmanship.
00:17When they build out of hope that what they're doing will outlast them
00:22and speak through the generations.
00:25And how do we reward these people?
00:27Well, we reward them and their buildings by listing these places, by making them a grade one.
00:35By ensuring that they will continue to release their energies through the centuries.
00:44I'll tell you what else this building says.
00:46It says we like quite a lot of gold leaf and we like a low level of intimidation.
00:55Actually make that a high level of intimidation.
01:00REGULATIONS
01:00OUT sorry
01:01while scrolling through Yes
01:01Town Theory
01:01Beyondensaomic
01:01Still
01:01And
01:21Do
01:26With
01:26Disciredуд
01:27If you want to know just what human beings are capable of, look at what they build.
01:32It's a magnificent thing.
01:33It is.
01:35Throughout this series, I'm looking at those buildings we've chosen to protect.
01:39Across the UK, the very best of our built heritage gets a special kind of protection.
01:45In England and Wales, they call it Grade 1.
01:48In Scotland, Category A. In Northern Ireland, Grade A.
01:52Different names, but the same idea.
01:55These are the buildings we've decided we can't afford to lose.
02:00131-year-old, Grade 1, listed steel moving through the air.
02:07I'll be looking at structures people had to fight for,
02:10and buildings that changed the way we think about heritage.
02:14So much passion and love for so many of these buildings at the heart of communities.
02:21This time, I'm looking at what power left behind.
02:26Castles, cathedrals, and fantasies.
02:30It does look like something right out of Rapunzel.
02:34These are the status symbols built to impress, dazzle, and dominate.
02:42And yet, long after the money, the influence, and the ego have vanished,
02:47the buildings remain to tell their story.
03:02This is Chatsworth, home to the Dukes and Duchesses of Devonshire.
03:08One of the most politically powerful families in the land.
03:10A family which overthrew a king.
03:13One of them was Prime Minister.
03:15Another was asked to be Prime Minister three times and just turned it down.
03:19This is where power lived.
03:24And Chatsworth was built expressly to convey that idea.
03:34It was finished in 1707, and it is gargantuan.
03:40126 rooms, 105 acres of garden, and 1,000 acres of parkland.
03:47They even moved an entire village out of sight just to improve the view.
03:52It is, of course, built to communicate power.
03:55True on the outside and in.
04:11So, this is the Grand Hall.
04:13The Painted Hall.
04:14The Painted Hall.
04:15For obvious reasons.
04:16Not surprising, because it is.
04:17Yeah, exactly.
04:19To what extent, then, looking at the painting, is it, then, one grand vision?
04:25It's completely one grand vision.
04:29The hall was painted between 1692 and 1694 by the French artist Louis Laguerre,
04:37realising the first Duke of Devonshire, Sir William Cavendish's single, audacious vision.
04:44So, this was designed to be a kind of viewing bucket, a sort of basin in which you kind of
04:50would admire and gawp at this.
04:52Yeah, it's meant to overwhelm.
04:54This is the first room that visitors would arrive in.
04:57And so, it's really, it's making that statement.
04:59It's meant to be kind of, you know, 360 painting, overwhelming messagery that really tells you where you are
05:07and something about the power of the person who's built it.
05:09And you see the paintings, you see the artworks, the console tables, you see the lamp brackets.
05:16It's all part of the same idea, that projection of power.
05:24Chadsworth was built to intimidate even the elite.
05:28Now, it's one of Britain's most visited houses.
05:31Although the Cavendish family still live here in a set of apartments firmly separate from the public areas of the
05:38house.
05:39And I'm trying to break in.
05:43So, what am I looking for here?
05:45So, you are looking for the secret door.
05:48And this door was placed in the 1960s by the Duchess.
05:53I know, you can't tell.
05:55You can see the tiny keys just there.
05:57Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
05:58Which you can open and then you get up into the galleries above.
06:01So, all fake books.
06:02They're not only false books, but the titles are rather hilarious.
06:07Oh, yeah.
06:07So, you can start.
06:08Oh, yeah.
06:09Dipsomania.
06:09Yes.
06:09I must have a swig.
06:11Yes, yes.
06:12If you see here, Knick-Knack by Paddy Wack.
06:16Yes, you can read that one out.
06:18Consenting Adults by Abel and Willing.
06:24Gloucester in All Weathers by Dr. Foster.
06:27It's great, isn't it?
06:28Can you imagine how much fun the family had thinking about the titles?
06:34We dare.
06:35Shall we go, please?
06:37And low.
06:38Have a look.
06:41The door hides stairs leading to the gallery above.
06:46It was installed by the late Duchess, Deborah Mitford,
06:49the youngest of the Mitford sisters who lit up high society in the 1930s.
06:54She was appropriately eccentric, and it was she who also opened Chatsworth House
07:00to the public in 1950, securing its future.
07:04We're up to over 650,000 visitors who pay to come here,
07:08up to a million who then enjoy the free park and the standwoods.
07:13We want Chatsworth to be seen as a place for everybody.
07:15It was built to express status, to impress.
07:21So how do you make somewhere like that democratic and open,
07:26and you do it through the people that work here?
07:35Keeping a place like Chatsworth alive is a vast project.
07:41And few things here demand more care than the Cascade.
07:44It is a 23-step Baroque waterfall, European in style and scale,
07:50and powered by a lake up on the moors to send water rushing down these stone terraces.
07:57But it's not working.
08:00How long have you been without water here?
08:02Nearly two years now, so we had to turn it off.
08:05It just got to the point where we understood the damage it was doing
08:08and the deterioration of the stonework.
08:11So the water, which is the big enemy of buildings,
08:14is working its magic on all the stones,
08:17and here it's just leaked its way, leached its way out.
08:21You can see how many cracks there are in between the stones.
08:27I mean, they've put bitumen and mortar and all kinds of stuff in there.
08:32And over the years, there's been different periods of restoration,
08:35so some of the stone has been replaced.
08:37The pointing has definitely been replaced repeatedly.
08:39However, we have got to that point where it's too late to patch up.
08:44We need to do a wholesale restoration.
08:46So what do you think you're going to spend?
08:47Well, the project to restore the Cascade in total is over £7 million.
08:52Can you justify spending £7 million, do you think,
08:55on repairing this, getting it going again?
08:57So we've been very lucky.
08:58We've secured money from the National Heritage Lottery Fund
09:00for a bulk of the work.
09:01We know our visitors love the Cascade.
09:05They love engaging with it, they love seeing it.
09:06They've been coming back here all of their life.
09:10£7 million is a lot to spend on a broken waterfall,
09:13so is the spectacle really worth it?
09:16Shall I go and switch it on?
09:18Go on.
09:18Open the door and turn some fountains on.
09:20Too good to miss.
09:21OK.
09:21Yeah.
09:23Despite the leaks, the Cascades' feeder fountains still work.
09:31Oh, my, in the sunshine, it's so beautiful.
09:35Oh, now these are starting up.
09:38These guys.
09:39Isn't it absolutely mesmerising?
09:44It's like looking at a cascade of jewels.
09:59It's so good, Steve.
10:02And it's amazing to think, isn't it,
10:03that's been playing like that since, you know, 1700 at least.
10:07Ah, it's fabulous.
10:11I want more.
10:13More water.
10:15More drama.
10:16All of which can be unlocked at the Emperor's Fountain
10:18with the help of a giant key.
10:22Oh, look at that!
10:33This fountain was built in 1844
10:35when the sixth duke heard the Tsar of Russia
10:38was coming to Chadsworth.
10:39It was made for this one event.
10:42The Tsar never came.
10:44Although the fountain remains along with the house,
10:47which tells you something about places like Chadsworth.
10:49They might begin as statements of wealth,
10:52control, taste, and ambition.
10:55But if they're good enough, they outgrow all of that.
10:58They stop belonging only to the age that built them
11:01and start speaking to every age that follows.
11:15When you have all the power
11:17and all the money in the world
11:19and nothing left to prove,
11:21what do you build?
11:22If you're the Marquess of Butte,
11:24you build a fairy tale.
11:31This is Castell Coch,
11:34finished in 1891,
11:36five miles north of Cardiff in Wales.
11:39With the great turrets and the pointed towers,
11:42it does look like something right out of Rapunzel.
11:45I mean, the design of it is,
11:47I suppose what you'd call Victorian Gothic.
11:51There's a banqueting hall painted floor to ceiling.
11:56A drawing room with a vaulted dome,
11:59with Aesop's fables on every wall,
12:02and all watched over by statues of the three fates.
12:07The money to pay for all of this came from coal.
12:11Cardiff docks were owned by the Butte family,
12:13headed by the third Marquess of Butte,
12:15John Crichton Stewart.
12:18He decided to spend,
12:20to enjoy the whims and his fancies,
12:23which included his love of everything historical,
12:26particularly the medieval period.
12:28He did so with an architect who shared his vision,
12:32William Burgess.
12:33He smoked opium, kept parrots,
12:36dressed in a medieval costume,
12:37and was so short-sighted,
12:39he once mistook a peacock for a man.
12:40His friends called him Ugly Burgess,
12:44and Butte allowed him to let his imagination run unchecked.
12:55Every medieval castle needs a hall,
12:57and this is where William Burgess chose to build his vision
13:01of what a medieval hall might have looked like.
13:03It's extravagant, it's wild,
13:05but it does draw on some medieval sources.
13:09So, for example, the walls have got this wonderful design on it,
13:12which makes it look like they are made with ashlar stone,
13:15with little designs of flowers in the centre.
13:18Now, that's quite a common design that you come across
13:21when you actually go to real medieval castles.
13:24But then, as you go higher up,
13:26he's let his imagination run with these wonderful friezes,
13:30which show the stories of the life of St Lucius.
13:33So, together, it brings this wonderful vision
13:36of what he felt a medieval hall might have looked like.
13:42Burgess's imagination makes the decoration in the medieval hall compelling.
13:47In Lady Butte's bedroom, he needed restraining.
13:50Around the edge, what people always like looking at
13:53are these cheerful monkeys in all sorts of different poses.
13:56Some of them have got glasses on,
13:58some of them are just looking down.
13:59And it's been said that Lord Butte was a bit concerned about the monkeys
14:03and that looking down on his wife while she slept,
14:07and he made sure that they were carefully concealed within the vines
14:11so that it wouldn't look as if she was being stared down on
14:14by too many monkey monkeys.
14:22Amazingly, Castelcourt survived two world wars unscathed
14:26until Clement Attlee came into power.
14:29He passed the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act,
14:32in which historic buildings were protected from demolition and willful alteration.
14:38Although, Attlee's government almost destroyed the viability
14:42of so many of those same historic houses with an 80% inheritance tax.
14:48The outcome for the Butte family is that the coal money dried up,
14:52and so they gave Castelcourt to the government, who've maintained it since.
14:59My parents told me this is where the Tuff Fairy lived,
15:02and I still believe that the Tuff Fairy lives here,
15:06and it is a wonderful place, you know,
15:08the fairies, the story, the history of it,
15:11it's, you know, the paintings, the drawings.
15:14It does feel like a truly special place.
15:22A fairytale castle was always going to be a strong contender for heritage listing.
15:28Protecting the smaller and quieter historic buildings
15:31has always been much more difficult.
15:35When we started listing buildings,
15:37we started with the obvious contenders,
15:39the palaces, the castles, the cathedrals, yeah.
15:44And the rest of the built historical environment,
15:46well, sort of had to fend for itself.
15:48So we ended up bulldozing a load of it.
15:51I mean, things like working men's clubs,
15:53amazing factories, historic pubs.
15:56Liverpool went that way.
15:59It managed to lose a great number of its buildings,
16:02just by accident.
16:05Except it didn't lose this one.
16:11This is the Philharmonic pub,
16:14also known as the Phil,
16:16in the centre of Liverpool.
16:18It got listed grade two star in 1966,
16:22before a great swathe of pub demolitions in the 1970s,
16:25and thank goodness.
16:28In 2020, it was promoted to grade one.
16:35Hey, Gareth.
16:36Hi.
16:37How are you?
16:37Yeah, good, thank you.
16:38Yeah.
16:39Do you look after this building?
16:40Yeah, it's probably the most unique one that I look after.
16:44Beautiful, wrought iron.
16:46Yeah.
16:46Gilded.
16:47This is with gold leaf.
16:49I mean, this is not your cheap metal leaf,
16:50and it's not gold paint for that matter either.
16:53I think it's been described as the finest
16:54au nouveau metalwork anywhere on a pub in this country.
16:58That is, for a pub.
17:00Yeah.
17:01You don't see much metalwork like this on any pub, really.
17:04So we go in?
17:05Yeah.
17:08What delights await.
17:14There are almost too many to take in.
17:18Gareth, it's very rich.
17:21Whoa, there's so much.
17:22Look at this mosaic.
17:24There's so much going on.
17:29The richness of what's been saved here is extraordinary.
17:34Historic England describes it as exceptional,
17:38not least because its magnificent interior has survived as a whole.
17:42And all this timber, and the plasterwork, and the glass, and the copper panels, and the leather, and the fireplaces.
17:51I mean, it's a bar, and then there's the bar, right?
17:55It's like, let's take every detail we like from every historic building ever, and let's try and put it into
18:01a pub, and see what happens.
18:04Yeah, there's so many different parts of this pub.
18:06It's great.
18:07Different areas, different snugs.
18:09What excites me is the number of hand pumps, also.
18:12Because you can...
18:12A few more than probably what it used to be.
18:14Yeah, but presumably you can't swap all these out for some modern things.
18:18No, no, no.
18:19Now it's grade one, you have to, you know, you stick with what you've got.
18:22You can, you potentially add stuff to it, but screwing into the bar, drill into the bar, you just cannot
18:26do now.
18:26You've got to maintain what's there.
18:31This is just everything.
18:34Yeah.
18:34It's phenomenal.
18:36It is amazing any of this is still here.
18:45During the May Blitz of 1941, Liverpool was the most bombed city outside London.
18:51St. Luke's Church, just down the road, took an incendiary bomb and burned through the night.
18:56Its clock stopped at just before 20 to 4 in the morning.
19:00It's been a ruthless shell ever since.
19:06The Phil, 400 metres away, survived without a scratch.
19:14How many people understand the Brahms and Liszt reference?
19:16It being Cockney rhyming slang, right?
19:18Not many, to be honest with you.
19:20You could put Lennon and McCartney up, couldn't you?
19:23In the same typography.
19:24It's listed now, so we can't.
19:26Yeah.
19:27Not that anybody would say I'm going out to get Lennon'd.
19:30No.
19:34One of the exquisite highlights of this place, though, is hidden away.
19:39Tourists come from far-flung islands to witness its incredible beauty.
19:47This place is the Sanctum Sanctorum.
19:51One of the reasons this place is in fact listed is for its urinals, all carved by hand in rose
19:59marble.
20:00It's exquisite.
20:01Bill Bryson said this is one of the most beautiful places in the world to have a wee.
20:04I would agree, never before have I been so architecturally uplifted by a toilet.
20:18But that is what great architecture and design does.
20:24The fill was built between 1898 and 1900 by a Liverpool brewer called Robert Cain,
20:31who decided his customers deserve better than four walls and a bar.
20:35He wanted them to feel like royalty.
20:39Do you know what, Kevin?
20:40This pub is warm and inviting, and when you walk in through those doors,
20:45it's like somebody throws a big blanket around you and says, come on in.
20:49Just kick back and just enjoy.
20:51Just kick back and enjoy.
20:53There's no pressure.
20:54It's opulent.
20:55It's grand.
20:56But it's inviting.
20:57It's warm.
20:58And it's a place to enjoy and experience.
21:01The plasterwork here wasn't thrown up by a decorator.
21:05It was modelled by sculptors and fine artists from the University's School of Art,
21:09the people who carved monuments across the city.
21:12Cain didn't commission a pub interior.
21:15He commissioned public art.
21:17He just happened to put it in a pub.
21:20Looking back, say, to 1900 or 1920 or 40s, whatever period you choose,
21:26it was built for a more formal time, a more hierarchical time.
21:29When this pub was built, it would have been built for that sort of clientele.
21:33And these days, you know, it's open to everyone.
21:35You can just be anyone.
21:36And you find here all sorts of people, visitors, tourists, academics, students, locals.
21:42It's a real melting pot.
21:46It strikes me that that view has got every ingredient that I want in my pub.
21:55Generous bar, some hand pumps, mosaic.
21:59Decoration.
22:00Light.
22:01Warmth.
22:02Yeah, warm.
22:03It is saying to you, come on in, have a drink, make yourself a hoe.
22:11That is the cleverest thing about the film.
22:14All this grandeur, but none of the stiffness.
22:17It was built for a more stratified world, yet somehow became a room that now can still absorb everyone.
22:28This beautiful, enormous room was a billiard room.
22:33Not just any old billiard room.
22:35A billiard room in which you could look up and enjoy gilded floral decoration.
22:40In which you could play billiards under the gaze of Apollo, being crowned by the muses.
22:47Robert Cain didn't want his customers here to just come and drink.
22:52He wanted them to come and drink under the gaze of the gods.
22:59Amidst all this art, whether they noticed it or not.
23:05He did want them to drink there.
23:10The reason why this building is listed is because it isn't about the ordinary everyday.
23:15It is about the magnificent everyday.
23:33Some listed buildings scream power in an obvious way.
23:38Huge walls, heavy stone, no messing.
23:41Others are less bullying.
23:44Stokesy Castle in Shropshire doesn't just shout power, it performs it.
23:50It borrows the look of a fortress, the swagger of a stronghold.
23:55Not because anyone's expecting a siege, but because power, at its best, needs a bit of theatre.
24:03So we've got something here that's very much a fortified manor house that's got the trappings of a castle.
24:11There were hundreds of these once, houses that looked like castles, built by men who wanted to look like lords.
24:18Almost all of them are gone.
24:20This one isn't.
24:21Historic England put it forward for listing as England's finest and most picturesque medieval fortified manor house.
24:29It was built mainly by Lawrence of Ludlow in the 1280s.
24:34Lawrence of Ludlow was not aristocracy.
24:37You know, he was merchant and made a great deal of money, and this is him perhaps announcing to the
24:43world that he had arrived.
24:49Lawrence got permission from the king to crenellate, that is, add battlements, as a social status symbol.
24:56The military illusions look a little shaky when you look closer.
25:03We're now in the Great Hall.
25:05I think one of the things that's most interesting about it, the windows here.
25:09These are huge, enormous windows.
25:13This points towards the idea that whilst it might look a bit like a real military defensive structure,
25:20you really couldn't get away with windows this size if you were actually trying to defend this from really sort
25:26of committed attackers.
25:28It really hints at the fact that this is a domestic structure.
25:32Lawrence of Ludlow built Stokesay to project power.
25:35In 1641, William Craven spent a fortune on a fancy new gatehouse to project taste and to show off.
25:43This fantastic, highly ornate timber frame structure is absolutely redolent of the 1640s,
25:51and very similar in style to some of the buildings that you find in Ludlow.
25:55Unfortunately, this was built in 1640s, 1641, and only about a year later, the civil wars erupted.
26:04This is not a great defensive structure.
26:07And we find that the castle was besieged.
26:12The gatehouse was even less defensible than the original castle, and was captured without a fight.
26:18It slipped into disuse, and by the 1700s was used as a barn and granary.
26:24There were reports from visitors to the castle at that time that they described the building as being in decay
26:30and in ruin.
26:31It was in a period of decline in the early 19th century and wasn't in good condition.
26:37Then, John Darby Allcroft, a glove manufacturer, stepped in to save it.
26:42While William Morris was writing manifestos about how old buildings should be gently saved,
26:48John Allcroft was attempting just that.
26:51He never intended to live here, but he was a good owner in that he repaired the castle, but didn't
26:57restore it.
26:58I think if it hadn't had an owner like him, they could have lost a lot of the earlier fabric,
27:03or it could have gone the other way and ended up becoming more ruinous.
27:13These timbers, this remains structure of the stairs, they're contemporary with the construction of the hall itself.
27:20So they're more than 700 years old.
27:24Something of this age, we're used to seeing these things in a glass box.
27:27These are remarkably old, and they're still used for exactly the same purpose that they were constructed for.
27:35And so every time I go up and down there, apart from worrying a little bit about the height,
27:39I feel a real connection to the building as a whole.
27:45That connection we feel to historic sites comes from authenticity, not fakery.
27:51Listing protects that.
27:54Vigorously in the Palace of Westminster, where the UK Parliament meets.
27:59A royal palace stood on this site from the 11th century, until fire tore through it in 1834.
28:07What rose in its place was a Victorian reimagining of what had been lost.
28:13But this great Gothic revival landmark is now in serious trouble.
28:21The building's falling down, and has been for decades, to the extent that successive governments have just kicked the problem
28:29of its repair and renovation down the road.
28:33The complex network of buildings is fed by a complex network of pipes and cables and ducts,
28:42which run for miles and miles underground, and they're all there and retained because actually nobody quite knows which one
28:50of them is redundant, which ones need to be kept.
28:54The Palace of Westminster is more an estate than a single building, sprawled across eight acres with over 1,100
29:01rooms and 100 staircases.
29:04The basement alone covers an area the size of 16 football pitches, and is filled with a century of obsolete,
29:11decaying infrastructure.
29:13The stonework is falling off the building, and there is asbestos in 1,000 known places.
29:20Just trying to stop it from getting worse costs up to £2 million a week.
29:24To fully repair it could take 40 or 60 years, and cost 35 or 40 billion, a staggering amount.
29:33Money that has to come from the taxpayer.
29:36Anna Key from the Landmark Trust has been campaigning all her life to save historic buildings from ruin.
29:43What happens on those great national projects, the big ones, which results maybe from a fire, like Windsor Castle, for
29:52example,
29:52or from a structure, a building falling into such decrepitude, and yet it's powerful in the nation's mind.
30:00How do you justify the expense of those huge projects when smaller ones are crying out for money?
30:09Well, you know, do we as a nation ascribe value to them?
30:12Let's remember about the Palace of Westminster.
30:14It's a World Heritage Site.
30:15The single biggest building on that site, Westminster Hall, was built by William the Conqueror's son.
30:21It was the biggest building in Europe when it was put up.
30:24It is an absolutely astonishing structure. Charles I was tried in that building.
30:29So, you could not come up with a collection of buildings that had greater value.
30:35Putting aside, you know, how we might all feel about politicians on a Tuesday afternoon,
30:40I think that these are sacred spaces for us as a nation.
30:46But can we justify spending 40 billion pounds, more than the UK spends on policing in an entire year,
30:54money that would pay for the salary of every nurse in the NHS for more than two years?
31:00What do we do?
31:02What should happen?
31:04Do you want to see democracy crumble?
31:06Do you want to see all vestiges of it disappear,
31:09turn to a pile of dust?
31:11Or do you want to repair it?
31:13Keep it going.
31:17It's an important question,
31:19and something that we, as a nation, have to collectively decide.
31:36Leeds Castle in Kent
31:36Leeds Castle in Kent is a very old expression of power.
31:41Beautiful, fortified,
31:43and with just enough water to keep the riffraff at bay.
31:48It stood here for 900 years.
31:51It was first built as a wooden structure
31:54by a Saxon chief called Leed in 857.
31:58In 1119, it became a Norman stronghold.
32:02Then, in 1278, a Spanish queen, Eleanor of Castile, transformed it.
32:11When she arrives in England, she's nearly 13.
32:14She looks different, she sounds different.
32:17She would have experienced a fair amount of xenophobia.
32:21Even though she's incredibly young,
32:23she is a phenomenal businesswoman.
32:25She introduced stained glass,
32:28carpets and tapestries,
32:29and also a love of fine dining.
32:32She's also credited for introducing
32:34the use of forks into the English court.
32:39We have actually recreated or reimagined
32:42Eleanor using AI technology.
32:46She doesn't suffer fools gladly.
32:49You can now talk to her and ask lots of personal questions.
32:54Can you tell us about your love affair with your husband, Edward I?
32:58I had little time for sentimentalities when there was business to be done.
33:05Eleanor died in 1290,
33:07and the castle passed from queen to queen,
33:10five of them until it left royal hands altogether.
33:16By the 1920s, it was a wreck
33:19until it was bought by the Anglo-American heiress,
33:22Lady Bailey.
33:23She purchased it for the princely price of £180,000,
33:29which was roughly the same as around £14 million today,
33:32and she spent nearly another £7 or £8 million renovating it.
33:38She bought it for the history,
33:41but wanted modern comforts.
33:43This room is the salon in Leeds Castle.
33:46It's one of the most incredible rooms
33:48that Lady Bailey transformed in her time as owner.
33:51This is where the lavish parties took place
33:53with live music, flowing champagne,
33:56and even an ebony-sprung dance floor
33:58for her guests to enjoy themselves on.
34:04Some of the biggest names of the 20th century
34:07in entertainment were here.
34:08Noel Coward, Errol Flynn, Charlie Chaplin,
34:12and the list goes on.
34:14And when the marvellous parties got too much...
34:17Of all of Leeds Castle's secrets,
34:20this one has got to be my favourite.
34:21It's the secret staircase that leads from the salon
34:24into Lady Bailey's private apartments.
34:27She would often escape up to her apartments
34:29and have a bit of a relax
34:30when the party got to be a bit too much.
34:35Lady Bailey died in 1974
34:37and left the castle to a foundation to maintain.
34:44Their work is constant, repairing and renovating stonework.
34:49We have to keep meticulous records
34:51about the changes that we make
34:52and preferably ensuring that they are reversible
34:55if necessary,
34:56so that we can make sure that the history of the castle
34:59is as important to us as its future.
35:07Leeds holds power the old-fashioned way.
35:10High walls, deep water, sharp arrows.
35:13But near the Welsh border,
35:15there are more subtle and effective ways to do it.
35:19We often recognise power in buildings
35:23through violence, in fact.
35:26Historically, this part of our country,
35:29between Wales and England,
35:32that blurred boundary,
35:33was full of castles and defensive structures
35:37in order to try and achieve a balance of power.
35:44These structures were full of dungeons and murder holes.
35:48They had battlements and arrow slits.
35:51And you knew where you stood with them,
35:53which was usually in a ditch, wasn't it?
35:54Out of the way of the arrows.
35:56But what have I told you
35:58that the most powerful building in Hereford,
36:02in that line of castles,
36:06has no arrow slits?
36:11This is Hereford Cathedral,
36:13started in 1079,
36:16after the Normans conquered Britain
36:18with less than 10,000 soldiers.
36:21Ruling Britain was a different story.
36:23With a population of almost 2 million people,
36:26the Normans didn't have the manpower
36:28to physically police the place.
36:30So what do you do
36:31when you are so massively outnumbered?
36:34Well, of course, you build.
36:35You build things which are big.
36:37And powerful.
36:38Which make statements
36:39which represent your institutions
36:41and govern for you.
36:43They seem, of course, inevitable.
36:46They are intimidating, these buildings.
36:49And what they say to the population is,
36:52we can build something better than you can.
36:55We can make it last longer
36:57than anything you can build.
37:00And if you want to know whose side God is on,
37:04it's ours.
37:05And you better get used to it.
37:09The great rounded Norman arches
37:12are almost all that's left of the early building.
37:14In the 18th century,
37:15the West Tower collapsed.
37:17The years after,
37:18saw the stone vault replaced with plaster
37:20and the walls scraped back
37:21to bare stone by the Victorians.
37:24What's grade one listed here
37:26isn't a Norman cathedral.
37:28It's a time capsule.
37:31Its caretaker is the cathedral's architect,
37:33Robert Kilgore.
37:35Good to meet you.
37:35Good to see you.
37:36Very good to see you.
37:38You must adapt and survive
37:41because if you just pickle a building,
37:43you say, right, that's perfect.
37:45We're just going to leave it as it is.
37:48It's lost its kind of raison d'etre then,
37:50hasn't it?
37:51It's a bit like the Hippocratic Oath for a doctor.
37:53You do no harm within reason.
38:00Hereford Cathedral was listed in 1952.
38:03Any change to it is, however small,
38:06a long process.
38:08Changing the door took the best part of two years.
38:11A lot of your work here involves
38:15negotiating institutions, bodies,
38:18interested parties,
38:19people like Historic England.
38:20It is a bit like designing by committee
38:22at some points
38:24because everybody thinks
38:25that their point is the most valid one.
38:28It's moving everybody sort of glacially
38:31towards a common purpose.
38:35The door took a very long time to arrive.
38:38The argument about the font
38:40has been fomenting for decades.
38:42The font was an interview question 20 years ago.
38:45It was the last trick question for the candidates.
38:47So, what do you think of our font?
38:50And I was able to say,
38:51well, it's a lovely font,
38:52but it's not in its original location.
38:55Liturgically, it would be better
38:57if it was centralised.
38:59And that got me the job.
39:00How long has it stood there now?
39:05Five months.
39:06So, it's taken your entire career here.
39:08Yes.
39:0820 years.
39:09From the day you arrived,
39:10when they interviewed you,
39:12to get it where you want it to be.
39:14Correct.
39:16It seems completely appropriate,
39:18as though it's always been there.
39:20Yeah.
39:20Which is usually a good sign, isn't it?
39:26Robert changes the building to keep it alive.
39:30But alive for what?
39:32Can you tell me about
39:33what the foundation of this cathedral is?
39:36In my mind,
39:37there's no doubt what the foundation is.
39:39It's a place for the community
39:41to come and see something
39:44that is not everyday,
39:45where you can encounter the divine,
39:49a safe haven, peace.
39:52So, the stones resonate.
39:53One of the glories of this place, for me,
39:55is the sense of it being a repository
39:58for the emotions and the passions
40:01and the prayers and the loves and the hates
40:03and the joys and the sorrows
40:04of 900-plus years' worth of people.
40:08Put it like that, it's a very powerful idea.
40:10And we throw these places away at our peril.
40:17You will have visited churches,
40:19redundant churches,
40:20deconsecrated places, no doubt.
40:22Is there a distinction
40:23in terms of the energy of the buildings?
40:25I mean, you can go and get
40:26a gothic-looking building
40:27if you go to the Natural History Museum,
40:29can't you, in London?
40:30Ooh!
40:31But it doesn't feel like this.
40:33And you could put a carpet warehouse in here,
40:36and it would be nothing more
40:38than a carpet warehouse.
40:39Yes.
40:39These places were built for purpose,
40:43and while that purpose lives,
40:44the buildings live.
40:45If that purpose dies,
40:47the buildings become something other.
40:54If the congregation
40:56is the beating heart of this building,
40:58its lungs are mechanical bellows.
41:02Sitting in front of any organ,
41:05and especially an historic one like this,
41:09is like being asked to sit
41:11in the captain's seat of an aircraft,
41:13as well as the Clarabelle flute.
41:15We're all familiar with that one.
41:17Or the Lieblich Gedacht,
41:19or the Gemshorn,
41:20or the Spitzflut.
41:22There's also some more recognizable instruments,
41:25the concert flute,
41:25the clarinet, choranglais,
41:28the Glockenspiel.
41:30Gotta try that one.
41:44It's like an E.T. go home, that one, isn't it?
41:46And the tuba.
41:50That sounds like the Queen Mary's
41:54just arrived docking in Hereford Cathedral.
41:5832 double open bays.
41:59That means that the pipe is 32 feet long,
42:02which means that the sound it makes
42:03is very low indeed.
42:09That is a real close encounter
42:11of the third kind, that, isn't it?
42:15The organ is a very good reminder
42:18that heritage isn't meant
42:19to sit there quietly behaving itself.
42:22The places we keep
42:23are the places that still do something to us,
42:26still surprise us,
42:28still move us.
42:29Stillmakers want to fight for them.
42:32Outside, Simon,
42:34the cathedral mason,
42:35is doing just that.
42:38Hello, Simon.
42:40Hi.
42:41Is suitable mason weather, this?
42:44This is a course of
42:46pinnacles stone
42:47from right at the very top,
42:48170 foot up.
42:50Right.
42:50When we got up there
42:51and inspected it with the architect,
42:52we could actually physically move it,
42:54which was not a good sign.
42:56There were iron cramps tying it together,
42:58which worked,
42:59but they had rusted.
43:01Yeah.
43:01They were only quite flimsy
43:03and so they weren't doing anything,
43:04so it's very unsafe.
43:06The programme have worked.
43:07You know,
43:08when will you be done?
43:08It is perpetual.
43:10That's my legacy
43:11about training young lads now
43:13to take over from me
43:14and it's great
43:15watching them start off at 16,
43:17coming to me
43:17with very little qualifications
43:19from school
43:19but learning how to use tools
43:21with their hands
43:22and as soon as you tell them
43:23to put the phone down,
43:24you usually get an idea
43:25that they're going to come back tomorrow.
43:26I mean,
43:28in the same way
43:28a medieval kid
43:30would have done the same thing.
43:34Of course,
43:35not every fight for a place
43:37happens up a scaffold.
43:39Sometimes,
43:39saving a building
43:40means raising the cash,
43:42rallying support
43:43and making enough noise
43:44to stop it being lost
43:45before anyone can repair it.
43:50I'm very aware
43:51that campaigning
43:53to try and save a building
43:55or a place
43:56so that a lot of negative energy
43:59can be expended.
44:01What's the alternative?
44:03How do we fight
44:03to protect the things we love?
44:05I think the answer
44:06might lie
44:08in something more positive,
44:10something that adds
44:11to the story of a place,
44:13in celebration,
44:14in championing
44:15the virtues of somewhere.
44:18How do we do that?
44:19Well, I mean,
44:20you could make tea
44:22on a Thursday evening
44:23for some action group.
44:24You could maybe paint
44:26the placards
44:27rather than
44:27campaigning with them.
44:29You could
44:30just say thank you
44:31to somebody
44:32when they're knocking
44:32on the door
44:33raising funds
44:33to save somewhere.
44:35You could organise
44:37a sausage sizzle
44:38and a pop-up bar
44:39on a Friday evening.
44:40Or
44:42go on a walk
44:43with some friends
44:44to a place you love
44:45that's threatened
44:46and have a picnic there
44:49and just remember it.
44:50I mean,
44:52we make films.
44:53You could write.
44:55You could do something
44:56on social media.
44:57Actually,
44:57I suspect there's
44:58maybe a hundred thousand
45:01separate creative ways
45:02in which we could all
45:03celebrate the places
45:04we love.
45:05And here's the thing.
45:07If we don't fight,
45:10campaign,
45:12sign the petitions,
45:13do the sausage sizzle,
45:15celebrate,
45:17champion the places
45:18that we love,
45:18then eventually,
45:19with time,
45:21all of them,
45:22all of them
45:23will disappear.
45:32Next time,
45:33I'm looking for
45:34those buildings
45:34that wouldn't exist
45:35if people hadn't
45:36fought for them.
45:37Whether it's the designer,
45:39all this craftsmanship
45:40works because
45:41the architect
45:42took a meddling interest
45:43in everything.
45:45The craftsman.
45:46Are you up there,
45:47Warren?
45:47I am.
45:48Oh, what a beautiful world
45:50you work in.
45:51Welcome to my crib.
45:52Or the people
45:53who just care.
45:55If I can't help
45:56pull this off,
45:57I will personally
45:58have failed.
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