:00:12. > :00:17.The south east of England has a colourful and complicated history.
:00:17. > :00:24.But throughout the ages, one thing has remained totally and utterly
:00:24. > :00:29.consistent. This corner of the country has always been vulnerable
:00:29. > :00:34.to attack. Over the centuries, people, animals and even Mother
:00:34. > :00:38.Nature have all had a really good go at this stretch of coastline.
:00:38. > :00:45.For generation after generation, defending the realm has been a way
:00:45. > :00:48.of life here, and I want to know what that life was like. I am
:00:49. > :00:54.taking a journey through the landscape across more than 1,000
:00:54. > :00:58.years of history to find out how our predecessors coped with life
:00:58. > :01:02.here on the edge of Britain. I want to see this part of the world
:01:02. > :01:07.through the eyes of the common people who lived here before us.
:01:07. > :01:11.They drank too much, they swore, they were uneducated. I want to
:01:11. > :01:15.know what it felt like to live through some of the toughest times
:01:15. > :01:20.in our history. It would have been so hard for these peasant farmers,
:01:20. > :01:25.keeping the sea out would have been the most important part of their
:01:25. > :01:30.daily lives. And how they keped with some of the -- coped with some
:01:30. > :01:38.of the toughest jobs. There were more rats than the dogs could cope
:01:38. > :01:43.with. They were violent times. Somebody suffered sharp force
:01:43. > :01:49.trauma, a knife or other sharp object. Our ancestors left their
:01:49. > :01:54.mark in more ways than one. If you look here, that is someone's finger
:01:54. > :02:04.print. I am setting out to find those people, the people who loved,
:02:04. > :02:14.
:02:14. > :02:19.worked and defended this land and I am Sean Williamson, and it might
:02:19. > :02:24.be hard to believe, but I am not an east ender, I am a man of Kent. I
:02:24. > :02:31.was born here, and I still live in the south east today. Why wouldn't
:02:31. > :02:37.I? It's got picturesque towns, rambling countryside, and a
:02:37. > :02:40.beautiful coastline. But has it always been such a great place to
:02:40. > :02:44.live? To find out, I'm going to travel
:02:44. > :02:48.from Kent to Sussex, making my way across a landscape that is more man
:02:48. > :02:54.made than you might think. I will be travelling along the Royal
:02:54. > :03:04.Military Canal, and finding out why it was built. I will cross the
:03:04. > :03:15.
:03:15. > :03:21.smuggling bad lands of Romney Marsh Inspired by William the Conqueror,
:03:21. > :03:30.that ponion wanted to annihilate England. That done, Europe would be
:03:30. > :03:34.at his feet, he declared. He assembled a grand army of 200,000
:03:35. > :03:38.troops on the north coast of France, an invasion forced focused on the
:03:38. > :03:45.south-east of England and the flat shoreline between Folkestone and
:03:45. > :03:53.Hastings. So the British Government decided something had to be done to
:03:53. > :04:00.defend the country here. The solution was to build a canal. What
:04:00. > :04:05.became known as the Royal Military Canal runs from here at See brook
:04:05. > :04:10.to Cliff End near Hastings. The first soil was dug here on October
:04:10. > :04:14.30th 1804 and over the next six years up to 1500 men made their way
:04:14. > :04:21.westwards dig ago deep trench for the canal and shovelling the soil
:04:21. > :04:24.on to the northern bank to form a high defensive wall. Historian
:04:25. > :04:30.Martin has brought along the kinds of tools that would have been used.
:04:30. > :04:37.But I want to know more about the person who did the spade work.
:04:37. > :04:42.is the poorest, the lowest of the society. He is the slum tenant, the
:04:42. > :04:46.orve an child and the poor Irish who came over in huge numbers and
:04:46. > :04:50.it wasn't just the men. It was their common law wives, they would
:04:50. > :04:55.have called them camp wives, informal relationshipss and their
:04:55. > :05:00.children. Paddling along the canal today it is hard to imagine the
:05:00. > :05:06.scene here when camps of foul mouthed navvies lined the banks.
:05:07. > :05:10.You have a large group of people, often uneducated, very very drunk
:05:11. > :05:14.probably, things like this knocking about, there must have been
:05:14. > :05:18.accidents? Lots and lots. Because they were poor and because they
:05:18. > :05:22.didn't have a National Health Service and medicine was not free,
:05:22. > :05:27.so they would have, if they were lucky, gone to the barber surgeon,
:05:28. > :05:37.who would have been the man that shaved you or if he wasn't around,
:05:37. > :05:44.maybe the local butcher. Good old days. Just how was a canal meant to
:05:44. > :05:51.stop Napoleon's army? There was method in this apparent madness.
:05:51. > :05:55.People have said Napoleon crossed the Rye, what good was our military
:05:55. > :06:01.canal, how was that going to stop him. But it overlooks the fact that
:06:01. > :06:05.we had layers of defence. If the French enjoyed fair winds and made
:06:06. > :06:11.it past the royal nave navy, next they would have encountered these
:06:11. > :06:20.forts we see all along the coast here. 74 towers were built on the
:06:20. > :06:26.beaches of Kent and Sussex with a cannon on every roof. The ones on
:06:26. > :06:32.Michael's innovative 3D model aren't life-sized!
:06:32. > :06:37.Between 8 and 15 cannons could target one ship. Let's say he got
:06:37. > :06:40.through, the men disembark and they have to cross the beach. It was all
:06:40. > :06:47.completely flat and they came under withering fire from the British
:06:47. > :06:52.troops. But let's assume that they do get as far as the canal. They've
:06:52. > :06:58.got to get across it. It's much wider than on this model, it is
:06:59. > :07:04.about 20 metres wide. This is where the next layer of defence comes in.
:07:04. > :07:09.We bring up a cannon. The canal is organised in dog legs and the
:07:09. > :07:14.reason for that is so we can station our cannon on here to fire
:07:14. > :07:22.a long the canal. When you add up all these defences, it's easy to
:07:22. > :07:26.see why Napoleon might have had second thoughts. The next stop in
:07:26. > :07:30.my search for the common folk of history is just along the canal at
:07:30. > :07:34.the Cinque Port of Hythe and here I am going back to medieval times
:07:34. > :07:38.when the town's fishing fleet helped protect the country from
:07:38. > :07:42.French raiding parties long before the likes of Napoleon.
:07:42. > :07:50.There is a place up here where you can literally come face-to-face
:07:50. > :07:55.with the locals from a long time ago. St Len ards church has been
:07:55. > :07:59.here since Norman times and it has more skeletons in its closet than
:07:59. > :08:04.any other church in the country! One of the volunteers who looks
:08:04. > :08:12.after this extraordinary collection of bones is Mike. Who were these
:08:12. > :08:16.people? We believe they were about 13th century and they came from the
:08:16. > :08:20.St Len ared's graveyard when the church was extended and from other
:08:20. > :08:24.graveyards in the area which closed around the same time. One theory is
:08:24. > :08:30.that the bones were removed from graves to clear space for the vast
:08:30. > :08:35.numbers of bodies from the black death of 1348, the the terrible
:08:35. > :08:39.plague brought to Britain by disease-ridden rats on on ships.
:08:39. > :08:42.Deborah is one of a team of scientists examining the bones to
:08:42. > :08:46.see what they can tell us about the lives and deaths of our anest is
:08:46. > :08:51.ancestors. I would like to think most of these good people died
:08:51. > :08:55.peacefully in bed, but some of the marks suggest others wise. We do
:08:55. > :09:03.have examples of people who were helped along their way a bit. There
:09:03. > :09:09.is somebody here who suffered what we call sharp force trauma. Then
:09:09. > :09:14.there is radiating fractures coming down the front. This person did
:09:14. > :09:19.survive the injury, it is starting to heal but didn't extend their
:09:19. > :09:23.life span. They would have lived after that injury? Yes. My word.
:09:23. > :09:33.All of these bones are being kaing logged -- catalogued by Deborah and
:09:33. > :09:38.
:09:38. > :09:42.There is a mix of male and female skulls here and children, too. Many
:09:42. > :09:48.showing marks of malnutrition and illness. These were families living
:09:48. > :09:57.through one of the toughest periods in human history, marked by extreme
:09:57. > :10:07.levels of deadly disease, crime and familiar anyone -- famine. Life
:10:07. > :10:10.
:10:10. > :10:16.Heading west from Hythe, the Royal Military Canal runs behind the
:10:16. > :10:20.trees along the base of these hills. 1500 years ago this would have been
:10:20. > :10:28.the shoreline. But these days the old Saxon shore is separated from
:10:28. > :10:33.the sea by the stark yet beautiful landscape of Romney Marsh. This is
:10:33. > :10:39.the best farmland you can get. That is why our ancestors worked so hard
:10:39. > :10:43.to reclaim it all from the English Channel. There is 100 square miles
:10:43. > :10:48.of marsh land here, so if you think the men who dug the canal had a
:10:48. > :10:53.tough time, spare a thought for the people who took this land back back
:10:53. > :10:58.from the sea. The Romans started the process,
:10:58. > :11:08.followed by the Saxons, using sea walls with a zrainage system behind
:11:08. > :11:14.them, they turned shingle islands into the lush farmland we see today.
:11:14. > :11:19.We are standing on an old sea wall here. So they would have been
:11:19. > :11:23.spending time making this sea wall as good as they can. This was the
:11:23. > :11:30.sea wall. They would have reclaimed all of that, used this as a wall
:11:30. > :11:37.and kept going. The sea would have been lapping there. Remember, all
:11:37. > :11:43.of this was done with hand tools and elbow grease. These days we get
:11:43. > :11:47.a few JCBs in. It sounds like the toughest work ever. What was the
:11:47. > :11:51.typical day of a peasant like? would have been so hard. I would
:11:51. > :11:55.expect a large proportion of his time in the spring, after winter
:11:55. > :12:00.storms, would be repairing the sea walls, taking the water away and
:12:00. > :12:07.maybe again in the autumn, but keeping the sea out would have been
:12:07. > :12:13.the most important part of their daily lives. Throughout Saxon times
:12:13. > :12:18.the marsh was boggy, difficult terrain, Chris crossed by - Chris
:12:18. > :12:22.crossed by dykes, but because the people had worked so hard to
:12:22. > :12:32.reclaim it, they fought hard to defend it. One of the best examples
:12:32. > :12:33.
:12:33. > :12:39.of this was in 1066. William the Conqueror landed here first, at new
:12:39. > :12:42.Romney. I guess as the fleet came over from Normandy, it would have
:12:42. > :12:50.been dispursed, they wouldn't have landed at one point. Those that
:12:50. > :12:56.landed here were repelled, killed. And the story goes, I am sure it is
:12:56. > :13:01.probably, that when the battle was completed one of the first churches
:13:01. > :13:06.that were built by William here was to commemorate his first soldiers
:13:06. > :13:10.that were killed here, so before he started many of them, the first one
:13:11. > :13:16.came here. That is quite logical because it was built in memory of
:13:16. > :13:20.his soldiers, not to the glory of his victory. For centuries the
:13:20. > :13:26.marsh was something to be avoided for fear of Robbie, disease or
:13:26. > :13:35.death. It was regarded as separate from the rest of the civilised
:13:35. > :13:40.world. The world the divided into Europe,
:13:40. > :13:44.Asia, Africa, America, and Romney marsh.
:13:44. > :13:50.Because it was flat and stuck miles out to sea, the marsh made a
:13:50. > :13:53.perfect landing spot for traders and invaders. This made it very
:13:54. > :13:57.important, so in the 12th century, the lords of the marsh were
:13:57. > :14:01.entrusted with the task of maintaining the sea defences. In
:14:01. > :14:04.return they were given the power to impose their own taxes and enforce
:14:04. > :14:10.their own laws. This decision shaped the whole character of the
:14:10. > :14:14.marsh and its people for for hundreds of years, as this author
:14:14. > :14:20.explains. The Government gave this area special privileges. It allowed
:14:20. > :14:28.them to govern themselves and in doing that, a lot of illicit
:14:28. > :14:33.activities took place. One illicit activity was the business of
:14:33. > :14:37.wrecking. Wreckers were people who drew ships to their doom by what
:14:37. > :14:41.you might call creative use of the fire light that was meant to warn
:14:41. > :14:47.sailors away from the land. Locals would not light the fire or would
:14:47. > :14:54.move it, where it wasn't supposed to be and therefore lure ships in
:14:54. > :14:59.to be deliberately wrecked. They would rub aground. The locals had
:14:59. > :15:04.an easy decision to make. Do we say the people off the ship and get a
:15:04. > :15:12.reward, or, more likely than not, just murder everybody and take the
:15:12. > :15:16.cargo. It would be that brute brute? - brutal? There was a law
:15:16. > :15:21.that the survivors of a shipwreck owned the wreck, therefore the
:15:21. > :15:27.locals would make sure there was no survivors. Perhaps it was
:15:27. > :15:37.inevitable this would be the birth police of smuggling -- birthplace
:15:37. > :15:47.of smuggling. When exports were taxed in the 13th centuries, there
:15:47. > :15:52.was money to be made smuggling Romney marsh fleeces. The
:15:52. > :16:02.contraband business became organised gang crime. This church
:16:02. > :16:04.
:16:04. > :16:12.is where author Russell lived. How are you? You look fantastic, really
:16:12. > :16:14.great. These members of the day of sin society are proud of their
:16:14. > :16:20.smuggling heritage and have sympathy for the poor marsh folk
:16:20. > :16:29.who got involved with the violent gangs of the 18th and 19th
:16:29. > :16:38.centuries. Four schillings a week, 20 odd pence, if he could earn it
:16:38. > :16:44.by carrying a couple of bags of tobacco from a to b, he would earn
:16:44. > :16:47.more doing that than working on the farm. Gangs grew increasingly
:16:47. > :16:52.ruthless. They acted like they owned the place and could get away
:16:52. > :17:00.with murder. From time to time, even here justice had to be seen to
:17:00. > :17:05.be done. Smugglers may have considered themselves above the law,
:17:05. > :17:12.but if they were caught they would have been tried in this very
:17:12. > :17:18.courtroom. On the say so of the jury and judge, it's only a short
:17:18. > :17:25.walk over to the jibbit to a swift end.
:17:25. > :17:33.I feel I am doing quite well so far on my quest for personal contract,
:17:33. > :17:40.but it's given me an appetite. So welcome to Masterchef through the
:17:40. > :17:45.ages, with food historian Monica. It is a typical day for an old
:17:45. > :17:55.English picnic and Monica has brought along a feast from the past,
:17:55. > :17:59.
:17:59. > :18:07.starting with root vegetable compote. It is a thick soup, Potage,
:18:07. > :18:16.thickened with split peas or beans. It could contain whatever is around
:18:16. > :18:21.at the time. Whatever there is and whatever is in season. That's good.
:18:21. > :18:25.As you can see from my deportment, I am missing a bit of meat. How
:18:25. > :18:30.much meat would the average person have had in their diet at that
:18:30. > :18:34.time?. It would depend on who urn. Very poor people might not have
:18:35. > :18:40.very much at all. Three days per week were fish days, along with
:18:40. > :18:45.advent, lent and saints days. So that was nearly half the year
:18:45. > :18:50.really. This is the kind of rough bread with occasional gravelly bits
:18:50. > :18:54.our ancestors lost their teeth on. You could also have things like
:18:54. > :19:01.ground up dried peas and beans in there. All sorts of things in there.
:19:01. > :19:05.Yes. In medieval times sheep were prized more for their wool than
:19:05. > :19:10.their meat, but the shep herds here, or lookers as they were known,
:19:10. > :19:16.would have enjoyed some salt marsh lamb from time to time, washed down
:19:16. > :19:26.with freshly smuggled French wine or cider which came to Britain
:19:26. > :19:35.
:19:35. > :19:41.Today the Royal Military Canal is vital to human and wildlife here,
:19:42. > :19:48.because it helps to control the water levels across the marsh. But
:19:48. > :19:53.by the time the canal was completed in 1809, Napoleon had abandoned his
:19:53. > :20:01.plans to invade England, so the canal was considered to be a
:20:01. > :20:05.monumental waste of time and money. The canal may have had its critics
:20:05. > :20:14.but 130 years after its completion it enjoyed a new les of life as a
:20:14. > :20:18.defensive barrier, but this time it would be Adolf Hitler. And pill
:20:18. > :20:23.boxes. Four years before the outbreak of
:20:23. > :20:29.the second world war, the canal was requisitioned by the war department
:20:29. > :20:33.and the banks were lined with concrete defences. This bill box is
:20:33. > :20:37.camouflaged beautifully behind trees, but it doesn't look much of
:20:37. > :20:45.an early lookout post to me. I asked what possible use it would
:20:45. > :20:48.have been at repelling the Nazi war machine. The surroundings have
:20:48. > :20:53.changed dramatically. There would have been very little of this
:20:53. > :20:57.vegetation here. Sitting on the canal, the first structures you
:20:57. > :21:01.come to across the marsh would have been the canal and pill boxes. From
:21:01. > :21:04.this point they would have been able to see right to the coast. Any
:21:04. > :21:09.planes coming in, they are spotted first from these. Who would have
:21:09. > :21:17.manned this, the regular army? all the locals, villagers and local
:21:18. > :21:23.farmers. Dad's Army. Very much so, broom sticks and pitch for example.
:21:23. > :21:27.They had the most to lose, didn't they. The flat open landscape of
:21:27. > :21:34.the marsh made it perfect for airstrips during the Battle of
:21:34. > :21:40.Britain and D-day landings. Fighter planes were placed around here, but
:21:40. > :21:44.being close to Nazi occupied France also made the marsh an obvious
:21:44. > :21:50.place for German forces to land. Barbed wire and bunkers lined the
:21:50. > :21:58.shore, mines were laid and in the event of an attack, there were
:21:58. > :22:02.plans to flood the marsh land and set it alight. Despite the air air
:22:03. > :22:08.raids, the people here kept farming and they got plenty of help from
:22:08. > :22:18.the land army girls brought in to dig for victory.
:22:18. > :22:19.
:22:19. > :22:23.This museum is where the Romney Marsh girls were based. The days
:22:23. > :22:28.seemed to go so quickly, you were up for work and off and then it was
:22:28. > :22:36.bedtime! We used to turn boxes up and play
:22:36. > :22:43.cards when no-one was looking. were always jumping on the rats to
:22:43. > :22:46.try and kill them. This pub in the nearby village is another popular
:22:46. > :22:53.reunion spot for the girls. It is a place that really does take you
:22:53. > :22:58.back to the mash of the - marsh of the 1940s, when Doris was a land
:22:58. > :23:03.army girl. Today she is the land lady and she has been pulling the
:23:03. > :23:10.pumps for 62 years. She still remembers her work on the farm.
:23:10. > :23:17.had to be a scarecrow one day. They gave us an empty oil drum and a
:23:17. > :23:27.couple of skix and -- sticks and we had to walk up and down scaring the
:23:27. > :23:29.
:23:29. > :23:39.birds. All day? Very tiring! One thing you are never far from is
:23:39. > :23:50.
:23:50. > :23:54.your zig zag west along the Royal What the king did was call upon the
:23:54. > :23:57.fishermen of the towns and ports to take arms and protect his realm
:23:57. > :24:01.against the French invasion. Also when they were protecting the Crown,
:24:01. > :24:04.if they took any of the invading fleet they were able to keep their
:24:04. > :24:08.capture and no taxes were claimed on that. There was a tax break for
:24:08. > :24:14.living here? Definitely. It was in payment for making themselves ready
:24:15. > :24:18.and putting their lives on the line. I am going to move down here myself.
:24:18. > :24:26.Would the predominant industry of the town have been fishing? No, it
:24:26. > :24:30.was purely wine imports was the big business. The original port of
:24:30. > :24:35.Winchelsea was washed away in a great storm so the town was rebuilt
:24:35. > :24:40.high on a hill and setback from the coast. It had a grid system of
:24:40. > :24:44.roads and dozens of huge wine cellars. Today 32 of them are open
:24:44. > :24:48.to the public and National Trust are about to add another to the
:24:48. > :24:56.list, a 14th century one, where an exciting new discovery has been
:24:56. > :25:03.made and where I am meeting an oshingologist. - archaeologist.
:25:03. > :25:08.This is what we've got to show you. We have here medieval graffiti.
:25:08. > :25:13.More the artistic sort of thing a medieval Banksy might have done.
:25:13. > :25:23.What you are looking at is a massive series of drawings of
:25:23. > :25:24.
:25:24. > :25:29.medieval ships. Masts, rigging, hulls, flags, cross masts, sails,
:25:29. > :25:36.at least six big medieval ships were inscribed into the west
:25:36. > :25:39.plaster hundreds of years ago. I have seen a lot of ship graffiti
:25:40. > :25:46.and a lot of examples of medieval graffiti, I have never seen
:25:46. > :25:50.anything like this. If you look here, you can that, that is
:25:50. > :25:55.someone's fingerprint. There are more down here. This is really
:25:55. > :25:59.unusual. Why ships? Very good question. Obviously good connection
:26:00. > :26:03.here in Winchelsea with the sea, but we do find these all over the
:26:03. > :26:08.country. Quite often they are in churches, so some of these were
:26:08. > :26:14.devotional in nature, perhaps these are a form of prayer, either thanks
:26:14. > :26:18.for a a voyage or fraying for a voyage yet to come. I love the idea
:26:18. > :26:26.of the finger frint, somebody putting their fingerprint on
:26:26. > :26:32.history, a normal person. If you think about any medieval building
:26:32. > :26:38.you go into, the brasses, the plaster, all those relate to the
:26:38. > :26:45.top 10% of society. Really we are missing the voice of the rest of
:26:45. > :26:50.the medieval population. The other 90ers, the common people. Medieval
:26:50. > :26:56.graffiti has the potential to have created by anyone. It is perhaps
:26:56. > :27:06.these people's only testimony to existence. That fingerprint there
:27:06. > :27:06.
:27:06. > :27:10.is is possibly the only mark that person has left on this world.
:27:10. > :27:16.journey is almost over. Just a couple of miles on from Winchelsea,
:27:16. > :27:21.I am at Cliff End where the Royal Military Canal terminates. You
:27:21. > :27:24.can't help but feel when the navvies dug this bit it wasn't as
:27:24. > :27:29.deep or wide as it should have been, but who can blame them. They put
:27:29. > :27:36.all that effort in, digging 28 miles of canal over six years and
:27:36. > :27:42.Napoleon didn't even have the decency to invade.
:27:42. > :27:47.So the canal was never tested. Not by revolutionary France, not even
:27:47. > :27:51.by Nazi Germany. But the effort that went into planning, designing
:27:51. > :27:56.and building in shows the strong sense of purpose our ancestors had
:27:56. > :28:02.about defending Britain. A sense of purpose, you can trace back to 1066,
:28:02. > :28:05.the last time we were invaded when the Normans overran Harold's
:28:05. > :28:14.English army and subjected the population to a century of
:28:14. > :28:17.servitude. Since that crushing defeat, nobody has crossed the
:28:17. > :28:21.channel to invade these shores, thanks to the efforts and
:28:21. > :28:30.determination of our ancestors, the ordinary folk who lived before us