From the White Cliffs to Hastings The Great British Story: Regional Histories

The south east of England has a colourful and complicated history.

But throughout the ages, one thing has remained totally and utterly

consistent. This corner of the country has always been vulnerable

to attack. Over the centuries, people, animals and even Mother

Nature have all had a really good go at this stretch of coastline.

For generation after generation, defending the realm has been a way

of life here, and I want to know what that life was like. I am

taking a journey through the landscape across more than 1,000

years of history to find out how our predecessors coped with life

here on the edge of Britain. I want to see this part of the world

through the eyes of the common people who lived here before us.

They drank too much, they swore, they were uneducated. I want to

know what it felt like to live through some of the toughest times

in our history. It would have been so hard for these peasant farmers,

keeping the sea out would have been the most important part of their

daily lives. And how they keped with some of the -- coped with some

of the toughest jobs. There were more rats than the dogs could cope

with. They were violent times. Somebody suffered sharp force

trauma, a knife or other sharp object. Our ancestors left their

mark in more ways than one. If you look here, that is someone's finger

print. I am setting out to find those people, the people who loved,

worked and defended this land and I am Sean Williamson, and it might

be hard to believe, but I am not an east ender, I am a man of Kent. I

was born here, and I still live in the south east today. Why wouldn't

I? It's got picturesque towns, rambling countryside, and a

beautiful coastline. But has it always been such a great place to

live? To find out, I'm going to travel

from Kent to Sussex, making my way across a landscape that is more man

made than you might think. I will be travelling along the Royal

Military Canal, and finding out why it was built. I will cross the

smuggling bad lands of Romney Marsh Inspired by William the Conqueror,

that ponion wanted to annihilate England. That done, Europe would be

at his feet, he declared. He assembled a grand army of 200,000

troops on the north coast of France, an invasion forced focused on the

south-east of England and the flat shoreline between Folkestone and

Hastings. So the British Government decided something had to be done to

defend the country here. The solution was to build a canal. What

became known as the Royal Military Canal runs from here at See brook

to Cliff End near Hastings. The first soil was dug here on October

30th 1804 and over the next six years up to 1500 men made their way

westwards dig ago deep trench for the canal and shovelling the soil

on to the northern bank to form a high defensive wall. Historian

Martin has brought along the kinds of tools that would have been used.

But I want to know more about the person who did the spade work.

is the poorest, the lowest of the society. He is the slum tenant, the

orve an child and the poor Irish who came over in huge numbers and

it wasn't just the men. It was their common law wives, they would

have called them camp wives, informal relationshipss and their

children. Paddling along the canal today it is hard to imagine the

scene here when camps of foul mouthed navvies lined the banks.

You have a large group of people, often uneducated, very very drunk

probably, things like this knocking about, there must have been

accidents? Lots and lots. Because they were poor and because they

didn't have a National Health Service and medicine was not free,

so they would have, if they were lucky, gone to the barber surgeon,

who would have been the man that shaved you or if he wasn't around,

maybe the local butcher. Good old days. Just how was a canal meant to

stop Napoleon's army? There was method in this apparent madness.

People have said Napoleon crossed the Rye, what good was our military

canal, how was that going to stop him. But it overlooks the fact that

we had layers of defence. If the French enjoyed fair winds and made

it past the royal nave navy, next they would have encountered these

forts we see all along the coast here. 74 towers were built on the

beaches of Kent and Sussex with a cannon on every roof. The ones on

Michael's innovative 3D model aren't life-sized!

Between 8 and 15 cannons could target one ship. Let's say he got

through, the men disembark and they have to cross the beach. It was all

completely flat and they came under withering fire from the British

troops. But let's assume that they do get as far as the canal. They've

got to get across it. It's much wider than on this model, it is

about 20 metres wide. This is where the next layer of defence comes in.

We bring up a cannon. The canal is organised in dog legs and the

reason for that is so we can station our cannon on here to fire

a long the canal. When you add up all these defences, it's easy to

see why Napoleon might have had second thoughts. The next stop in

my search for the common folk of history is just along the canal at

the Cinque Port of Hythe and here I am going back to medieval times

when the town's fishing fleet helped protect the country from

French raiding parties long before the likes of Napoleon.

There is a place up here where you can literally come face-to-face

with the locals from a long time ago. St Len ards church has been

here since Norman times and it has more skeletons in its closet than

any other church in the country! One of the volunteers who looks

after this extraordinary collection of bones is Mike. Who were these

people? We believe they were about 13th century and they came from the

St Len ared's graveyard when the church was extended and from other

graveyards in the area which closed around the same time. One theory is

that the bones were removed from graves to clear space for the vast

numbers of bodies from the black death of 1348, the the terrible

plague brought to Britain by disease-ridden rats on on ships.

Deborah is one of a team of scientists examining the bones to

see what they can tell us about the lives and deaths of our anest is

ancestors. I would like to think most of these good people died

peacefully in bed, but some of the marks suggest others wise. We do

have examples of people who were helped along their way a bit. There

is somebody here who suffered what we call sharp force trauma. Then

there is radiating fractures coming down the front. This person did

survive the injury, it is starting to heal but didn't extend their

life span. They would have lived after that injury? Yes. My word.

All of these bones are being kaing logged -- catalogued by Deborah and

There is a mix of male and female skulls here and children, too. Many

showing marks of malnutrition and illness. These were families living

through one of the toughest periods in human history, marked by extreme

levels of deadly disease, crime and familiar anyone -- famine. Life

Heading west from Hythe, the Royal Military Canal runs behind the

trees along the base of these hills. 1500 years ago this would have been

the shoreline. But these days the old Saxon shore is separated from

the sea by the stark yet beautiful landscape of Romney Marsh. This is

the best farmland you can get. That is why our ancestors worked so hard

to reclaim it all from the English Channel. There is 100 square miles

of marsh land here, so if you think the men who dug the canal had a

tough time, spare a thought for the people who took this land back back

from the sea. The Romans started the process,

followed by the Saxons, using sea walls with a zrainage system behind

them, they turned shingle islands into the lush farmland we see today.

We are standing on an old sea wall here. So they would have been

spending time making this sea wall as good as they can. This was the

sea wall. They would have reclaimed all of that, used this as a wall

and kept going. The sea would have been lapping there. Remember, all

of this was done with hand tools and elbow grease. These days we get

a few JCBs in. It sounds like the toughest work ever. What was the

typical day of a peasant like? would have been so hard. I would

expect a large proportion of his time in the spring, after winter

storms, would be repairing the sea walls, taking the water away and

maybe again in the autumn, but keeping the sea out would have been

the most important part of their daily lives. Throughout Saxon times

the marsh was boggy, difficult terrain, Chris crossed by - Chris

crossed by dykes, but because the people had worked so hard to

reclaim it, they fought hard to defend it. One of the best examples

of this was in 1066. William the Conqueror landed here first, at new

Romney. I guess as the fleet came over from Normandy, it would have

been dispursed, they wouldn't have landed at one point. Those that

landed here were repelled, killed. And the story goes, I am sure it is

probably, that when the battle was completed one of the first churches

that were built by William here was to commemorate his first soldiers

that were killed here, so before he started many of them, the first one

came here. That is quite logical because it was built in memory of

his soldiers, not to the glory of his victory. For centuries the

marsh was something to be avoided for fear of Robbie, disease or

death. It was regarded as separate from the rest of the civilised

world. The world the divided into Europe,

Asia, Africa, America, and Romney marsh.

Because it was flat and stuck miles out to sea, the marsh made a

perfect landing spot for traders and invaders. This made it very

important, so in the 12th century, the lords of the marsh were

entrusted with the task of maintaining the sea defences. In

return they were given the power to impose their own taxes and enforce

their own laws. This decision shaped the whole character of the

marsh and its people for for hundreds of years, as this author

explains. The Government gave this area special privileges. It allowed

them to govern themselves and in doing that, a lot of illicit

activities took place. One illicit activity was the business of

wrecking. Wreckers were people who drew ships to their doom by what

you might call creative use of the fire light that was meant to warn

sailors away from the land. Locals would not light the fire or would

move it, where it wasn't supposed to be and therefore lure ships in

to be deliberately wrecked. They would rub aground. The locals had

an easy decision to make. Do we say the people off the ship and get a

reward, or, more likely than not, just murder everybody and take the

cargo. It would be that brute brute? - brutal? There was a law

that the survivors of a shipwreck owned the wreck, therefore the

locals would make sure there was no survivors. Perhaps it was

inevitable this would be the birth police of smuggling -- birthplace

of smuggling. When exports were taxed in the 13th centuries, there

was money to be made smuggling Romney marsh fleeces. The

contraband business became organised gang crime. This church

is where author Russell lived. How are you? You look fantastic, really

great. These members of the day of sin society are proud of their

smuggling heritage and have sympathy for the poor marsh folk

who got involved with the violent gangs of the 18th and 19th

centuries. Four schillings a week, 20 odd pence, if he could earn it

by carrying a couple of bags of tobacco from a to b, he would earn

more doing that than working on the farm. Gangs grew increasingly

ruthless. They acted like they owned the place and could get away

with murder. From time to time, even here justice had to be seen to

be done. Smugglers may have considered themselves above the law,

but if they were caught they would have been tried in this very

courtroom. On the say so of the jury and judge, it's only a short

walk over to the jibbit to a swift end.

I feel I am doing quite well so far on my quest for personal contract,

but it's given me an appetite. So welcome to Masterchef through the

ages, with food historian Monica. It is a typical day for an old

English picnic and Monica has brought along a feast from the past,

starting with root vegetable compote. It is a thick soup, Potage,

thickened with split peas or beans. It could contain whatever is around

at the time. Whatever there is and whatever is in season. That's good.

As you can see from my deportment, I am missing a bit of meat. How

much meat would the average person have had in their diet at that

time?. It would depend on who urn. Very poor people might not have

very much at all. Three days per week were fish days, along with

advent, lent and saints days. So that was nearly half the year

really. This is the kind of rough bread with occasional gravelly bits

our ancestors lost their teeth on. You could also have things like

ground up dried peas and beans in there. All sorts of things in there.

Yes. In medieval times sheep were prized more for their wool than

their meat, but the shep herds here, or lookers as they were known,

would have enjoyed some salt marsh lamb from time to time, washed down

with freshly smuggled French wine or cider which came to Britain

Today the Royal Military Canal is vital to human and wildlife here,

because it helps to control the water levels across the marsh. But

by the time the canal was completed in 1809, Napoleon had abandoned his

plans to invade England, so the canal was considered to be a

monumental waste of time and money. The canal may have had its critics

but 130 years after its completion it enjoyed a new les of life as a

defensive barrier, but this time it would be Adolf Hitler. And pill

boxes. Four years before the outbreak of

the second world war, the canal was requisitioned by the war department

and the banks were lined with concrete defences. This bill box is

camouflaged beautifully behind trees, but it doesn't look much of

an early lookout post to me. I asked what possible use it would

have been at repelling the Nazi war machine. The surroundings have

changed dramatically. There would have been very little of this

vegetation here. Sitting on the canal, the first structures you

come to across the marsh would have been the canal and pill boxes. From

this point they would have been able to see right to the coast. Any

planes coming in, they are spotted first from these. Who would have

manned this, the regular army? all the locals, villagers and local

farmers. Dad's Army. Very much so, broom sticks and pitch for example.

They had the most to lose, didn't they. The flat open landscape of

the marsh made it perfect for airstrips during the Battle of

Britain and D-day landings. Fighter planes were placed around here, but

being close to Nazi occupied France also made the marsh an obvious

place for German forces to land. Barbed wire and bunkers lined the

shore, mines were laid and in the event of an attack, there were

plans to flood the marsh land and set it alight. Despite the air air

raids, the people here kept farming and they got plenty of help from

the land army girls brought in to dig for victory.

This museum is where the Romney Marsh girls were based. The days

seemed to go so quickly, you were up for work and off and then it was

bedtime! We used to turn boxes up and play

cards when no-one was looking. were always jumping on the rats to

try and kill them. This pub in the nearby village is another popular

reunion spot for the girls. It is a place that really does take you

back to the mash of the - marsh of the 1940s, when Doris was a land

army girl. Today she is the land lady and she has been pulling the

pumps for 62 years. She still remembers her work on the farm.

had to be a scarecrow one day. They gave us an empty oil drum and a

couple of skix and -- sticks and we had to walk up and down scaring the

birds. All day? Very tiring! One thing you are never far from is

your zig zag west along the Royal What the king did was call upon the

fishermen of the towns and ports to take arms and protect his realm

against the French invasion. Also when they were protecting the Crown,

if they took any of the invading fleet they were able to keep their

capture and no taxes were claimed on that. There was a tax break for

living here? Definitely. It was in payment for making themselves ready

and putting their lives on the line. I am going to move down here myself.

Would the predominant industry of the town have been fishing? No, it

was purely wine imports was the big business. The original port of

Winchelsea was washed away in a great storm so the town was rebuilt

high on a hill and setback from the coast. It had a grid system of

roads and dozens of huge wine cellars. Today 32 of them are open

to the public and National Trust are about to add another to the

list, a 14th century one, where an exciting new discovery has been

made and where I am meeting an oshingologist. - archaeologist.

This is what we've got to show you. We have here medieval graffiti.

More the artistic sort of thing a medieval Banksy might have done.

What you are looking at is a massive series of drawings of

medieval ships. Masts, rigging, hulls, flags, cross masts, sails,

at least six big medieval ships were inscribed into the west

plaster hundreds of years ago. I have seen a lot of ship graffiti

and a lot of examples of medieval graffiti, I have never seen

anything like this. If you look here, you can that, that is

someone's fingerprint. There are more down here. This is really

unusual. Why ships? Very good question. Obviously good connection

here in Winchelsea with the sea, but we do find these all over the

country. Quite often they are in churches, so some of these were

devotional in nature, perhaps these are a form of prayer, either thanks

for a a voyage or fraying for a voyage yet to come. I love the idea

of the finger frint, somebody putting their fingerprint on

history, a normal person. If you think about any medieval building

you go into, the brasses, the plaster, all those relate to the

top 10% of society. Really we are missing the voice of the rest of

the medieval population. The other 90ers, the common people. Medieval

graffiti has the potential to have created by anyone. It is perhaps

these people's only testimony to existence. That fingerprint there

is is possibly the only mark that person has left on this world.

journey is almost over. Just a couple of miles on from Winchelsea,

I am at Cliff End where the Royal Military Canal terminates. You

can't help but feel when the navvies dug this bit it wasn't as

deep or wide as it should have been, but who can blame them. They put

all that effort in, digging 28 miles of canal over six years and

Napoleon didn't even have the decency to invade.

So the canal was never tested. Not by revolutionary France, not even

by Nazi Germany. But the effort that went into planning, designing

and building in shows the strong sense of purpose our ancestors had

about defending Britain. A sense of purpose, you can trace back to 1066,

the last time we were invaded when the Normans overran Harold's

English army and subjected the population to a century of

servitude. Since that crushing defeat, nobody has crossed the

channel to invade these shores, thanks to the efforts and

determination of our ancestors, the ordinary folk who lived before us