Episode 1 Tudor Monastery Farm

500 years ago, England was emerging into a new era.

After years of war, plague and famine,

the kingdom was enjoying peace and prosperity

under the reign of the first Tudor king Henry VII.

A new class of business-savvy farmer was thriving,

boosting food production...

And then over she goes!

..while wool from their sheep was generating half the nation's wealth.

Many of the nation's farms were under the control

of the biggest landowner in England after the King - the monasteries.

Their influence could be felt in every aspect of daily life.

They were not just places of religion,

they were at the forefront of technology, education and farming.

But with the daily lives of monks devoted to prayer,

they depended increasingly on tenant farmers

who worked and tended their lands.

Steady, girl.

Now, historian Ruth Goodman

and archaeologists Tom Pinfold and Peter Ginn

are turning the clock back to Tudor England

here at Weald and Downland in West Sussex,

to work as ordinary farmers under the watchful eye of a monastic landlord.

Gi'away.

That's the way! Nice.

To succeed, they'll have to master long-lost farming methods...

Those flanks are going again!

..and get to grips with Tudor technology.

ALL GASP

MAN: Quite noisy!

-RUTH:

-It's a really violent process!

..while immersing themselves in the beliefs...

customs...

and rituals that shaped the age.

This is Merrie England for Heaven's sake, so to speak, let's enjoy it!

SQUEALS AND LAUGHTER

This is the untold story of the monastic farms of Tudor England.

Ruth, Tom and Peter are travelling to their new farm

at Weald and Downland in Sussex on England's south coast.

In 1500, England was 15 years into the rule

of its first Tudor king Henry VII.

The previous two centuries had seen the country ravaged

by war, economic depression and plague.

The Black Death had cut England's population from four million

to just two-and-a-half million.

But under the new Tudor dynasty the nation was slowly emerging

from the darkest of times.

This is our marketplace.

This is our little town.

What a day to start out on, eh? Look at it - blue skies!

-Welcome to Tudor England, eh?

-Morning!

The early Tudor world is a Catholic world,

suffused with religious thought.

Even very practical stuff, it was always there.

Whatever you did, whatever you talked about, whatever you thought -

there was no other system of understanding the world.

It was undisputed.

In 1500, monasteries were almost as powerful as the state itself.

They exerted their influence over the entire population,

not only in matters of religion,

but in every aspect of daily life.

This was a God-fearing nation.

People believed they risked eternal damnation, even social isolation,

if they didn't attend church at least once a week.

In this period, most people were living in small wooden structures

focal point of these communities were these massive cathedrals

- awe-inspiring, stone built, dominating the landscape.

And this shows how central the church and religion were

to people's everyday lives.

It was a time when religion rather than science

was relied upon to explain everything,

from the weather and the growth of crops

to health and well-being.

Our lives, this country, the values we have, the laws we have,

the way we approach life -

it's all shaped by the past.

I mean, this is one of those periods

that really forges the identity of England.

Professor James Clark, an expert in medieval monastic life,

is introducing them to their new farm.

What was the relationship between monasteries and farms such as this?

By the early Tudor period monasteries are preferring, increasingly,

to put out a large proportion of their agricultural property to tenants.

So we're not employed directly by the monasteries, but rather

a sort of little enterprise paying rent to the monasteries,

and we're taking all the business risks?

Absolutely so.

And it's down to your ingenuity,

and perhaps your ability to read the dynamics of the market,

to make a success of it.

As well as having a good head for business,

monastic farmers needed shelter -

not just for themselves, but also to accommodate and feed their workers.

It's huge!

-Hm. Heating bill's going to be a bugger, isn't it?

-LAUGHTER

Wow!

RUTH: This is a house! Wow!

How many people would've lived in here?

There'd be the tenants and their immediate family,

but there would also be live-in domestic servants.

So, maybe eight to ten in total.

This was the heart of the house, where the farmers would eat,

carry out business, and house extra labourers at harvest time.

Wow, so where do we sleep?

RUTH: Well, that'll be, for us, upstairs.

The upper chamber, called the solar,

was the farmer's private bed-sitting room.

It's started already!

And a pull-out truckle.

-A truckle?

-Yeah, yeah, it's on wheels.

It shoves underneath during the day.

-That's where you'll be, Peter!

-On the truckle.

To pay their monastic landlords,

Tudor farmers had to turn a decent profit.

Their farm has five acres of enclosed fields,

as well as access to hundreds of acres of common land and woods.

They have cows to pull ploughs and carts,

a barley crop, poultry,

and a flock of Southdown sheep.

What kind of farming are we going to be doing then?

Your main focus will be sheep.

And here's where the relationship between the tenant and the monastery

is absolutely central to your productivity.

Your wool crop may well be required by the monastery,

to satisfy the merchants that it's under contract with.

-RUTH:

-But we can't be completely wool-specialist,

we do also have to grow arable crops...?

Yes, certainly, you'll probably have a barley crop, for example.

Also, at this time, we see tenant farmers taking up pig farming -

in a small way - as an additional small enterprise.

Peter, I think we should definitely get some pigs.

Well, if we're getting some pigs we need to place to put them.

This project, right there.

It's spring.

Ruth, Peter and Tom have to get their money-spinning enterprises

up and running as soon as possible.

They have just a few weeks to sow crops,

and get in livestock before Easter.

Wool was central to the early Tudor economy.

It was known as the jewel in the realm,

as it generated half the nation's wealth.

Sheep were the backbone of the British economy -

for clothing, mostly - and not just for us.

British wool was clothing most of Europe.

It was the finest quality.

Come on, girls.

It was all about grazing -

the quality of grass influenced the quality of the wool.

The British system involved quite a lot of moving sheep about.

In the winter months, you wanted them down on your arable land,

nibbling at the weeds, dropping their dung on your fields,

but come spring he moved them up into the hills,

into areas where he can't run a plough.

There the grass has come fresh and lush and will sustain your sheep through the summer

and allow them to grow that perfect coat.

Only when the sheep are sheared in a couple of months' time,

will they know the quality of the wool.

Most Tudor households kept a pig.

Since pigs ate almost anything,

they were a good way of turning kitchen scraps into meat.

But in the early 1500s, monastic farmers began rearing pigs

to sell on a commercial scale.

I suppose, modern age, you've got a lot of pig breeds,

but the closest to the Tudor breed is the Tamworth, isn't it?

Yeah, a little tamer now though, aren't they?

Much wilder, more aggressive back then.

SUDDEN SQUEALING

The monasteries laid down strict rules for their tenants.

It was forbidden for pigs to run free,

as they could destroy crops and attack people.

So Peter and Tom must build an enclosure.

I suppose pigs... I mean, they're forest dwellers,

so to keep them inside, they'd want to get out...

-So it'll be a proper construction project.

-Yeah.

-No messing around.

The monasteries most valuable asset, was their land.

In an age when almost every craft relied on wood,

management of the coppices was essential.

John Roberts looks after this coppice

and is helping Tom cut some hazel to build a pig enclosure.

This is all based around the broadleaf's ability

to regenerate very quickly, isn't it?

Yeah, basically it releases all sorts of hormones

that kids it into thinking it's young again.

So can make it virtually immortal.

After the wood is cut, new branches quickly sprout

and within a few years it will have produced another crop of hazel poles.

As a tenant farmer, how much wood can I actually take?

Well, that would sort of depend on your tenancy, really.

And, like today, you gets what you pays for.

So the more rent you're paying, generally, the more rights you have.

They might restrict you to how many cartloads you can take,

or they might restrict you to how long you can be in there cutting for?

-You're just spending your time basically.

-Time and effort.

-Yes.

Materials gathered, Peter and Tom begin to build the pig enclosure.

Tudor farmers had to master all types of building skills to survive.

These things are never as easy as they look.

They've found an area that's already fenced on three sides,

so they just need to close it off.

We're making good progress with this, Peter.

It's hard work, but it's satisfying.

Between these stakes, the coppiced hazel is woven

to create what is known as a wattle fence.

So you need to start there.

-Yeah.

-OK.

Bob Holman is an expert at building Tudor fences.

-Do you think this will hold pigs?

-Oh, yes! Without a doubt.

-Yeah?

This would hold an elephant by the time we've finished it.

So what we're going to do is put our first wand in there,

and then weave this through these,

pushing it down all the time.

Push it down with your feet.

-Give it a good shove.

-Yeah.

-And that's the first wand in.

-The next one, of course, or go on the other side.

-Right.

So in that one goes - all the butts will then go on the inside.

So we follow that process through,

right the way through to the other end.

Commonly known as cockerel nobbler.

-Cockle nobbler?

-Cockerel nobbler.

To sort of polish a cockerel off, you'd give it a tap on the head.

-Oh, cockerel nobbler!

-A nobbler. Yes.

-Oh, I see.

It's just an expression of speech, but it's good for tapping ends in.

PETER "SQUAWKS" That's right!

The other side of the pig pen

is enclosed with a different type of Tudor fencing.

A dead hedge.

Rotten wood, isn't it? It's just rotted away.

That's just come out!

Ruth and Tom are making some repairs.

Instead of using valuable coppiced hazel

otherwise unwanted twigs could be used.

Basically two rows of posts or stakes, driven into the ground,

then we take all the stuff that, on the face of it, looks like

it's not needed - hawthorns, brambles, a bit of blackthorn there.

Look at the thorns on here -

about an inch long, they're sharp as well - they're going to hurt.

So if you're an animal trying to force your way in,

you've got something to contend with.

-You can't, can you?

-No, it's going nowhere.

-Throwing yourself against it, and nothing happens.

-Exactly.

I think your aim will improve as time goes on, Peter.

-I think that is about there.

-No pig's getting through there, is it?

He he he he....!

After just a day's work, the enclosure is complete.

This fence is as secure as it's going to get.

So, hopefully - pigs contained.

That's the great thing about Tudor building,

it's all about sourcing your materials from your landscape.

To the monasteries, farming was a sideline.

A way of earning money.

Their primary purpose was to perform religious worship

on such a scale that its spiritual power would benefit

every Christian soul.

SPEAK LATIN PRAYER

The oldest of all the monastic orders were the Benedictines.

Established by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century,

they were bound by vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience,

and followed a demanding daily routine of worship, study and prayer.

Peter is visiting Downside Abbey, a Benedictine monastery

to meet its abbot Father Aidan Bellenger.

Hello, Father Abbot.

-Hello, Peter. Very good to see you.

-You, too.

-It always is.

Tudor tradesmen formed religious guilds

to ensure prosperity in this life and safe passage to heaven in the next.

Peter wants advice on setting up a guild for farmers.

Which patron saint do you think a guild of farmers would adopt?

I think, in general, the most likely patron for a farmer

-would actually be St Benedict himself.

-Right, OK.

And one I'd particularly like to think goes in hand with St Benedict

is St Benedict's sister St Scholastica,

who is often seen as the patron saint of good weather.

And I think that must be very important for any farmer.

Every area of life was represented by a different saint.

As illustrated by this medieval prayer book.

They begin with calendars -

and the months are the same as the months we have now -

but many people would identify the day less by the day of the month,

than by the saint of the day.

And some parts of the year are absolutely full of saints,

which gave people an excuse for jollification

and having a good party, but they were also a reminder

of the way in which the Church and God and the saints

intervened in everyday life.

HE CHANTS

The first stage in establishing the guild of St Benedict,

is to create a register of its members.

Inspired by the prayer book,

Peter is commissioning a richly illuminated document.

Monasteries employed lay folk to do domestic work,

like cooking and laundry,

and skilled workers to do stone-carving, bookbinding,

and calligraphy.

Josie Brown has begun the calligraphy on vellum

made from calfskin.

So how are you getting on with our manuscript?

It's coming along very nicely.

I remember making a quill,

but mine had quite a lot of feather on it.

Absolutely.

You very often see the romantic idea of using a pretty quill,

but we don't use them like that.

We cut the ends off, because they get in the way,

and we strip the barbs and use them like that.

Not quite so attractive,

but much more authentic.

Are you squeezing that to suck ink into this,

or are you simply dipping it in?

I'm simply dipping it in,

but that's also why the board is set at an angle,

because if you are writing flat gravity will take over

so you want your pen almost horizontal, to stop the ink flooding.

Once the calligraphy is finished, the document will move on to

an artist within the abbey to illuminate the text.

The Tudor farmer's day began at sunrise.

Brush the grit off my feet -

I don't want a little stone in the bottom of my hose.

Now these are made out of sheep's wool, hence the pure whiteness of them.

The doublet here, is what's going to hold the hose up.

The doublet is just like a jacket essentially.

I sew myself together.

But being laced into clothing, created problems all its own.

The book of manners which essentially tells a page boy

how to dress the squire,

suggests that he first makes sure that the privy is available,

because the implication is that once you're sewn into this

you'd much rather have used the facilities

before you did up all the stitches than afterwards.

And it's certainly something you start considering.

We talk about rhythms of daily life,

well, I've certainly established my own rhythms for my own daily life.

Once in the morning, twice in the evenings,

in case you are wondering.

To preserve modesty, a flap of fabric known as a codpiece

was worn on the front of the hose.

It's not something you're used to coming across in modern life.

And it's tied at the top here

so that you can undo the ties and go to the loo.

It's essentially a fly.

So it's just like the zip on your jeans,

so it's functional and, surprisingly, comfortable.

For the woman of the house,

the first job of the day was to light the fire.

I've got my flint and my steel - struck together they spark.

The trick so is to catch one of those sparks and keep it alight.

Ah, there!

You see it?

A little spark.

Ruth uses charred cloth for tinder

which will catch light from a tiny spark.

Now, we surround it...

and we have fire.

Farmhouses had no glazed windows, because glass was expensive.

To keep warm, a fire was essential.

One of the things you may notice

is that I am not doing this in the middle of a hearth,

you know with a chimney. There are several reasons for that.

Most important, is probably to do with fuel efficiency -

the heating of your home.

About 70% of the heat of a fire goes straight up a chimney.

That means if I wanted to keep a house like this warm,

I would have to have nearly three times as much fuel -

day in, day out, day in, day out - with a chimney,

as I do with a little fire in the centre of the room.

So this is really, really fuel-efficient.

For the men, the first job was to feed the livestock.

Peter and Tom are sourcing water from the farm's well.

-Look at this!

-Wow, look at that.

The water is over 20 feet down.

Blimey, that is...

That is deep.

To reach it, some ingenious Tudor technology is called for.

I think slow and steady wins the race here, Peter.

HE GROANS

Treadwheels were the engines of the day.

Used to power cranes to build cathedrals, monasteries and castles,

as well as to drive machinery.

Slow it down, Peter? I'm applying the brake.

OK, let's get this into the buckets.

OK.

Oh! That was close!

THEY LAUGH

This is going to be ideal water for our cattle, isn't it?

But humans back then...

You've got to keep yourself healthy, haven't you?

So you need to purify the water, and the best way of doing that is making beer.

Which suits us very well, I think.

Yeah, let's get these to our cows.

Since water from wells was often contaminated,

people drank ale all day, every day.

The alcohol killed any bacteria, making it safe to drink.

How are these tight clothes working for you now, Peter?

Animals, on the other hand,

have better resistance to the bacteria in dirty water,

so were less likely to get ill from drinking it.

Perfect.

I like that treadwheel.

It's really cool.

In a world without electric light,

work indoors like writing accounts or mending clothes,

had to be done during daylight hours.

The only illumination came from dim lights

made from rushes and sheep fat.

What I want to do is, end up with pure fat.

So that means I got to cook out

all the little bits of blood vessel, skin...

The easiest way to do this is to just boil it all up.

I want to boil it until all those great big solid lumps of tallow

have dissolved.

The fat needs to boil continuously all morning.

As well as breeding sheep, pigs and geese,

the Tudor farmer also cultivated crops.

The farmer's already growing barley

used for making bread and ale.

Another essential Tudor crop would be peas.

I mean, obviously, peas are a crop you associate with a garden.

Yes, but all the text and evidence that's come down to us

shows that they were using it as a field crop, as well.

On a smaller scale than the barley and the wheat,

but nonetheless something that you have out in the field

-for your livestock and for yourselves.

-I think it's ideal.

In modern Britain we rely quite heavily on potatoes, don't we?

Whereas in Tudor Britain, or Tudor England, there are no potatoes.

That is a good point.

That is a very good point. Yeah.

Potatoes didn't arrive in Britain until the 1580s.

To sow their peas

they are seeking guidance from a Tudor farming manual,

FitzHerbert's Book of Husbandry.

If we're following the advice in this book,

then we're following the ideas and the farming practice of this era.

In Tudor English, spelling was yet to be standardised.

As Peter is discovering.

-"How will you know...

-The "seasonable time".

Yeah. "..seasonable time to go upon the land that is ploughed...

-"and if it...

-"Sing".

-Oh, yes.

"..and if it sing or cry or make any noise under thy feet,

"then it is too wet to sow.

"And if it makes no noise and will bear the horses,

"then sow in the name of God."

You're listening to the land. That's the idea, isn't it?

So if it's absolutely saturated with water, or anywhere in between,

it's going to make a noise - be squelchy or squishy or...

It's going to "sing or cry".

You'll hear sticky noises. Yeah.

But as soon as the noise ceases, that's when you hit it.

That's when you sow.

This certainly isn't singing or crying under my feet.

-Looks pretty darned dry to me.

-Mm.

Before sowing, the land must be ploughed to turn over the soil

and return it to bare earth.

In Tudor times, the plough would have been pulled by cattle,

often oxen, rather than horses.

Gwen and Graceful are one of the only pairs of cattle left in Britain

trained to pull a plough.

But they haven't worked for a couple of years

so the boys will have to break them in again.

Hello, old thing. Hello, biddy.

-Hi, Charles.

-Hi, Peter.

-Pleased to meet you.

They have called on someone with a lifetime's experience

in working with cattle - Charles Martell.

This is Gwen. She's on the nearside.

GWEN MOOS LOUDLY

The short name is on the nearside of a pair of oxen.

And then she's Graceful - double syllable -

so eventually they respond to their name.

They don't actually understand English too well,

but they can hear the difference in the length of the word.

Gwen, Graceful.

For the first time in two years

Gwen and Graceful are being fitted with a yolk.

One yolk.

All right, there you are, so just hold it so she doesn't walk away.

Held in place with oxbows,

the yoke is what the plough will be attached to.

They almost look happy.

This is the easy bit, it's when we get out in the field

and see open grassland, and you might not see them again.

Of course they haven't seen grassland for the best part of winter.

Oh, dear, don't say that. THEY LAUGH

Steady, steady, steady.

It's like the bloody circus, isn't it?

All right, old biddies. It's all right.

That's just got the edge off them now.

We need to convince them to do some work, before they get their food.

Get them into a routine. Here they come again.

Yeah, I don't think we should let them out, actually.

-I'm afraid, that's what they're after - their grub.

-Yeah.

So, because I'm afraid if they do go

they'll think it's a great laugh and we might not catch them tonight.

They can smell their grub there.

That's what it is. That's what it is.

MOOS

So why exactly did people move away from ploughing

-with oxen and cattle towards horses?

-Two things, I think.

First of all, fashion. It played a big part in that.

-Really?

-You go and see a farmer now... Careful what I say -

but the tractor's got to be the latest one,

the modern one, a bigger one,

and oxen were regarded as lowly and poor beasts.

And the other thing is speed.

Horses were more expensive, but they were fast.

So that's why we're in this situation today, where

working oxen in Britain - this is probably one of the only pairs.

And I think it's a great shame.

The sheep fat has spent the morning boiling,

and has been left to cool leaving pure tallow on the surface.

Ruth's reheating it to make the rush lights.

If you think about modern life,

we get sort of fats and oils from a huge number of sources.

Things like olives, sunflower seed, linseed, rapeseed,

as well as crude oil and all its various derivatives.

But if you were living in around 1500,

then the animal fats are pretty much all there is.

And those animal fats have got to do every food job,

every light and energy job, every axle-grease job.

Anything that needs fat has to come from...animal fats.

And this is the other ingredient, rushes.

The sort you want are those that have a sort of solid, pith-like centre.

And what I want to do is to soak the fat into the pith.

And then that little bit of green rind will act as the wick,

which helps that to burn.

Right. All I want to do is to soak that just briefly in the fat.

And that pith draws the fat into it.

That is a rush light. It's really simple, isn't it?

It's the moment of truth for Gwyn and Graceful.

They are about to work for the first time in years.

Whoa!

Once in the field, Charles' fears are realised.

Oh, dear!

But look at them now. You can see they're not the least bit upset.

They had their little run. They're quite fat, so it wasn't very far.

-Just need to work out what stop is, then.

-Yeah.

We've got to get a plough into that soil in the next week or so,

otherwise we're not going to get a crop.

Before the plough is attached,

Charles has suggested letting them pull a much lighter implement.

It's vital that the ploughed furrows are absolutely straight

to ensure every inch of land is turned over.

So Tom and Peter must persuade Gwyn and Graceful

to walk in a straight line.

Move on, move on.

Come on, come on.

-Come on.

-There we go.

Just need to tap them ever so gently and they move. It's amazing.

They look kind of happy. They're earning their food now.

Come walk, come walk. We'll keep them moving.

That's the trick, apparently. Don't let them stop.

(Come on.)

Come on. Oh! Come on.

Come on! Come on! Come on!

Well, there we are, they're working. I'm amazed.

Pete's a bit noisy. You don't need to shout at them like that.

They've got quite good hearing, oxen.

I'll tell him about that in a minute. Hah!

I'm impressed. It's lovely.

And, er...the next stage is ploughing.

Well done, girls. Well done.

As night fell, with the farmhouse plunged into darkness,

the Tudor farmer would go to bed.

About the same as a candle flame, isn't it?

Not much different.

It smells a lot worse. SHE LAUGHS

There ain't much work you can do by rush light.

BIRDSONG

Beautiful day!

It was believed that devotion to a patron saint

through a religious guild was the key to success.

At the monastery,

the calligraphy on the Guild of St Benedict register is complete.

Next, a painter illuminates the text.

As with all trades of the day,

it wasn't only creative skills that were required,

but also craft skills to make the tools for the job.

Artist Mark Goodman begins by making a brush from a feather.

The simple way to get a point on it

is just to cut it through just over halfway.

We've now got a point on our feather.

We can cut the feather off.

We can then...make a tube.

And then we can push the feather through the tube.

And as you see...there we have a brush.

Then the only last bit you've got to worry about is your stick,

which you can get anywhere. And there we have it, a paintbrush.

To paint these very fine details,

the Tudor artist had an ingenious solution.

Just a glass globe full of water.

If it's not full of water, nothing happens with it really.

As you can see there. The trick is filling it with water.

As soon as you fill it with water, it becomes a large magnifying lens.

This one's around about 16 times magnification.

Illumination was a complex and expensive process,

so reserved only for special books and documents, like this register.

After many hours of delicate work, the register is complete.

An indelible record of the Guild of St Benedict's paying members.

The Guild would have funded an altar in the local church

dedicated to their cause.

LAUGHTER

Pre-Reformation churches look completely different.

Look at all the imagery on the walls.

This chapel at St Fagans

has been restored to how it would have been in 1500.

In the late 1520s, Henry VIII broke away from the Roman church

and formed the Church of England.

Beginning a process that would see the monasteries destroyed

and parish churches like this one stripped of their splendour.

This is the side altar of our guild,

the one that we maintain and look after.

And here, we, as ordinary lay folk,

pay for a priest to come and do additional masses

for the souls of all of us within the guild

for now and for ever-more.

These are in need of some TLC, aren't they? Look at that!

Not only covered in wax, but filthy. So that's a job for me.

Tom and Peter have spent the last week

getting the cattle used to working again.

We've got five willing participants at the moment, I believe.

Ruth's happy, Peter's kind of happy.

There we go.

Now they're ready to take the plough for the first time in years.

-OK.

-This is the moment of truth.

These cows are getting restless, they want to get on with some work.

OK, Tommo, we're in your hands. Walk on!

Straight line, Tommo, straight line.

-This is good, I think.

-It's a start.

Yeah. We are...we are experimenting here.

It's vital that Gwyn and Graceful plough in straight lines.

-Gee away. Gee away.

-Gee away!

Now, that's nice! That's good!

Keep that straight line. Gee away.

We're going straight, what are you doing at the back?

Are those cows straight?

-LAUGHTER

-They need a line to follow.

-Really?

-Unfortunately for us...

-LAUGHTER

-Look at it!

-..we've got a bit of spaghetti ploughing.

Spaghetti ploughing? It's worse than spaghetti ploughing.

But the ploughing goes from bad to worse.

Walk on! Oh!

-You all right, Tommo?

-We've got a revolution here.

-Walk on.

-We've got cow mutiny!

-Walk on.

Gwyn and Graceful are exhausted after just a couple of furrows.

Come on!

Oh, dear. The problem is, they're really hating this, aren't they?

They're not used to having the equipment. They're not happy.

Once you've got that pressure of pulling the plough,

when we're trying to go deeper, it's too much work for them.

Walk on!

Getting the peas in the ground within the next week is crucial.

Otherwise, the crop will fail.

Also pressing is the pig concern.

Well, there we go.

Timber!

The enclosure's complete, but now they must build a shelter within in.

Pigs don't like draughts, so if they're to breed successfully,

the shelter must have solid walls.

They're basing the design on medieval buildings

they've excavated as archaeologists.

But constructing the walls without nails is proving tricky.

-This one is high.

-Yeah.

-I might need to get the axe.

-Or we could bash it.

Tom and Peter have rather different ideas as to how it should be built.

You split that timber...

What?

I think, basically, it should be shaped slightly with the axe,

and Peter's just enjoying hitting stuff with a piece of wood.

That one's fat.

-Are you damaging my timber?

-Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, ooh!

Right!

Move that across like that. There we go. Boom!

I'm so impressed by this, Tom. You really have outdone yourself.

-Friendship still intact.

-Just.

It's two weeks until Easter.

For Tudors it was preceded by Lent, 40 days of fasting

and reflection, ending on Easter Sunday.

The church dictated that no meat or fish be eaten,

and in this God-fearing society it was a practice

observed by almost everyone.

Vegetables from the garden were essential for survival.

The whole point of gardening at this period of history is to have

something to eat every day.

And if you look around you, you can see just how hard that could be.

Oddly enough, you might think the hungriest period of the year

is in the dead of winter, but that's not quite true.

It's really sort of now that we call traditionally "the hungry gap".

That part of the year between your supplies, your stores

beginning to run low and the new harvests arriving.

There are just leeks, parsley and a vegetable that's long

since disappeared from the kitchen.

This is alexanders.

I think the Romans brought them over to begin with.

They're very versatile.

These young leaves are edible just as they are,

and these are a real treat.

Can you see the flower heads in here, just forming underneath?

Poach just those, they're absolutely delicious.

This is a real favourite of mine this time of year. Primroses.

Delicious salad.

You just pull the petals,

so you just get that bit out and they are so lovely.

And if the sun's being on them they're really sweet.

Mmm. They're really tasty.

SHE LAUGHS

Here we go...weavy, weavy, weavy...

To construct the pig shelter walls,

Peter and Tom are using a building technique has been around

for over 6,000 years - wattle and daub.

Thin hazel sticks are woven around the uprights to create a fence.

Then a mixture of clay, horse dung and straw is daubed onto it,

creating a solid, draughtproof wall.

Look out easily that just works into the earth, into the wattle.

That's amazing.

The stickiness comes from the manure.

Sorry, this is really quite horrible.

Probably, it can be as strong as bricks.

All the pressure is spread out over all the different bits of wattle.

All this is going to dry, go solid.

You know, it's not hard to work with, it's just unpleasant.

500 years ago, this was the way most houses were built.

Our farm cottage, you can see the timber structures

and the panels in between. They are all wattle and daub.

Beautifully smoothed off.

We're building pigsties in exactly the same way that

that Tudor cottage was built.

Ruth is equipping the farmhouse with utensils and tableware.

In Tudor times these were sourced from local craftsmen

and most villages would have had a dish-maker.

Today, there's just one professional wooden dish-maker

left in Britain, aptly named Robin Wood.

Right, here we go.

-Right, so this is what you're going to make ours out of.

-Yeah.

Out of each log like this I get three dishes.

So we're not making them out of slices that way.

-It's not like that's the bowl?

-Exactly.

All the strength in wood is the fibres running along this way.

So if you just cannot a ring off like this,

then they'd all be very short fibres and it would just break apart.

The dishes are hewn from a hardwood, such as beech.

Nice! Let's see. Let's see what we got. There it goes.

The dish is roughly shaped using just one tool, an axe.

-And these are your chisels.

-Yes. I forge all these myself.

Traditionally, forging your tools would have been

-part of the apprenticeship of the job.

-Right.

Then it's turned, using a foot-operated pole lathe.

It's a device so simple and ingenious that it

saw use from the 10th century right through until the 20th.

-Clunk!

-Clunk! SHE LAUGHS

I love the way it's turning it around.

It really is as simple as that.

Throughout history these wooden dishes have gone

in and out of fashion.

In the Roman period they all ate from ceramic.

And then we had about 1,000 years when people ate from wood.

And then it was really the 18th century when the Stoke potteries

started mass-producing very cheap ceramic,

that we went back to being a ceramic culture.

Oh, there we go.

-There we go, all finished.

-Wow. That is beautiful.

Probably 1,000 years of accumulated knowledge handed down

through the generations has gone into that bowl.

In the 1500s people ate their main meal at 11 o'clock in the morning.

Having risen at dawn,

by then the farm workers would have been ravenous.

Taking pride of place on the Tudor table was the salt.

Without salt, people, for centuries and centuries and centuries,

would have found living in the northern climes nigh impossible.

Salt allows you to preserve meat, it allows you to preserve fish.

Like most things in Tudor life,

even setting the table was laden with Christian symbolism.

You might look at it and think it looks rather like an altar

in a church, and that's what many people in the period thought too.

They made the connection between dining and God's table.

There was something of the sacred

in the daily ritual of eating a meal.

Something of remembering Christ.

Something of an echo of the Last Supper.

And people were quite conscious of that.

They wrote about it at the time. They talked about it at the time.

And they quite deliberately made the most of it.

It's the week before Easter.

If the peas aren't planted now

they won't have time to germinate and grow.

Peter and Tom have spent the week getting

Gwen and Graceful used to working again.

Whoa! Blimey!

-They're fast! They're faster than I thought they'd be.

-That's good.

Go on, girl. Walk on.

Finally, the field is ploughed and harrowed to break up the soil.

I'm just give them a little helping hand here,

taking a bit of the pressure off.

Whoa! Whoa!

Steady!

The peas can now be sown.

Peter's taking advice from the book of husbandry.

"Let thy left foot before... and take a handful of peas...

"And when thou take up thy right foot...

"..thou can throw...

"..thy..." Hang about.

-"Thy peas."

-Just throw, Peter. Just throw.

BOTH: one, two, three...

Hand-broadcasting seed was inevitably haphazard.

It wasn't until the invention of Jethro Tull's seed drill

200 years later that seeds could be sown in regular rows, evenly spaced.

By putting your left foot forward and then throwing to the right,

left foot forward, throwing to the right,

it does mean that you are trying to get them

broadcast as evenly as possible.

Come summer, they should have a crop to harvest.

It's Palm Sunday, marking the last week of Lent.

It commemorates Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem,

when palm leaves were laid before him,

days before he was betrayed and crucified.

Peter has a key role in the celebrations.

Palm Sunday, starting around 1490,

people used to dress up as prophets.

Basically, a yeoman or a respected member of the village,

but a layperson, such as myself,

would don the outfit of a prophet, and the more dramatic the better.

Such as John the Baptist emerging from the wilderness.

Records show that villages would actually hire in beards

so that they could dress up their prophets accordingly.

It wasn't meant to poke fun.

Tis I, John the Baptist!

Right!

I wonder if they will recognise me.

CHANTING

The most important ritual of Palm Sunday was Holy Mass.

HE SPEAKS IN LATIN

Delivered in Latin, the text would not have been understood

by the congregation, but its rituals were.

HE SPEAKS IN LATIN

Central to the mass was the blessing of greenery,

symbolising the palms that were laid before Jesus.

ALL: Amen.

Then the blessed branches were turned into crosses,

symbolic of the crucifixion.

Finally, the congregation processed from the church with their crosses,

which would then be taken home to protect them for the year to come.

Professor Ronald Hutton, an expert on English rituals, explains

the importance of Palm Sunday celebrations in early Tudor England.

You get three things in one.

You get people reminded of what the Christian message

and the Christian story is all about.

You get the greenery, which symbolises spring and hope

and new life, and you get something which is actually going to

protect your house and your family and your farm.

And all this in one symbolised in this procession with a layman -

that's Peter up there, dressed up as a prophet - to dress this up as fun,

make it something people can engage in and which they can make their own.

It's just a totally brilliant way of giving religion to the people

and enabling them to share in it.

By the 1500s there was a new, raucous side to the celebrations.

The truly insanely wonderful thing about Palm Sunday ritual

is that it ended in a kind of spring version of a snowball fight.

And it's a wonderful example of the way in which

religion round about 1500 introduced an element

of just sheer merrymaking at the end of something solemn and profound,

to remind us that we are alive and being alive means having fun.

LAUGHTER

Good shot!

Being a prophet has its advantages.

I'm staying well out of the melee.

This is the last ritual of Palm Sunday,

but it's a really important one.

It's where we take the crosses woven out of our consecrated greenery

and put them over the doorway of your home to protect it for the next

year against witchcraft, curses, demons and general misfortune.

It's the ultimate security system circa 1500.

-Does it work?

-Apparently so, England is still here.

LAUGHTER

Can't argue with that.

Have a nice Tudor Easter!

-Thank you kindly.

-Bye!

Bye-bye.

It's late spring. The pea crop is coming through.

It's a really healthy-looking crop, isn't it? The sun is really helping.

Just look out there, that's very impressive, if I say so myself.

But the pigsties are still not finished.

Without a shelter they can't introduce pigs

and breed them for cash.

This is all we've been doing.

This project could happen like that, but we've got the field to sort out

and we've got the farm to sort out, we've got the animals to sort out.

Everything needs attention, everything requires time.

-We sweated, we bled...

-We've argued.

-We've argued!

We've road-tested not only our skills but our friendship.

From here on in, you and I can do anything. Absolutely anything.

For the roof, they're making shingles, wooden tiles.

That's pretty good, actually. But I think it'll shed water.

Well, they are pigs, so they can't be too fussy.

-It's time to get the pigs in.

-Yeah, I think so.

-Cool!

As soon as Lent was over meat could be eaten once again.

And at this time of year, it's one particular kind of meat.

This is veal.

You have to kill a young calf if you want to have cheese

for the rest of the year, so Easter is all about veal.

Rennet from the calf's stomach is essential in cheesemaking.

With the meat, Ruth's cooking a Tudor favourite, pottage.

This, with its Easter veal, and its fresh, young alexanders

and last year's leeks and last year's beans,

it's just typical of this couple of weeks of the year.

In two or three weeks' time I won't be able to make this pottage.

Half these ingredients won't be around.

So although in some ways a diet in the late-medieval,

early Tudor period can sound a little boring - bread and pottage,

bread and pottage, next day, bread and pottage, next day,

bread and pottage -

nonetheless, those words actually hide quite a lot of variety,

as week by week by week, that pottage changes all through the year.

Local farmer Neal Kareswell is delivering two Tamworth sows

and six piglets.

Tamworths can be dangerous,

but Neil's got some advice on how to move them safely around.

If you try and push a pig from behind,

they're a lot bigger than you, are a lot stronger than you, and if

they don't want to do it, they will just come through the other way.

So, if you try and use psychology more than brute strength,

you'll be a little bit more successful.

The best thing to do is convince them that you're brilliant

and you've got some food.

As you can tell, they are definitely enjoying that.

They're not taking a blind bit of notice of us.

Which is a good sign, Peter.

-It's amazing how much they complete this area.

-Yeah.

It's been quite sterile up until now and all of a sudden it's,

like, "Ah! That's why we've been doing all the work."

Lord, let us remember just how much effort goes into putting

food on the table.

Amen.

ALL: Amen.

By 11 o'clock in the morning, with the livestock fed and watered,

workers would head to the farmhouse for their main meal of the day.

It's not every day you find yourself in a Leonardo da Vinci painting,

-is it?

-The Last Supper!

LAUGHTER

It does, doesn't it, have that sort of religious feel?

-Echoes just how much the church influenced society.

-Yes, absolutely.

It's sort of embedded and ingrained through absolutely everything you do.

Powers have changed, kings have come and gone,

but the church has always been there.

Yes, it was the one way you understood where you came from,

where you were going to, how you related to the natural world.

We should see our farming through that lens,

how the crops grow, what we are doing on the land.

If we want to get into the minds of people in 1500

we should be trying to see that through the lens of the church.

Next time on Tudor Monastery Farm,

the team explore how farms made money to pay the rent.

Oh! That was a good dunk!

By farming sheep...

The question is, are you going to buy our wool?

-As we say in the monastery, you have to have faith.

-We certainly will!

..adopting new technology...

Ruth: Wow!

..and trading their wares.

Geese for sale, people! Anyone want a goose?

If you don't want a whole goose, we've got parts of geese.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd