Episode 3 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.

There thee go.

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.

-Here.

-That's the way, nice.

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

Watch those flanks, they're going again.

And get to grips with Tudor technology...

Quite noisy.

Wow, it's a really violent process.

..while immersing themselves in the beliefs...

ALL: Amen.

..customs and rituals that shaped the age.

This is merry England, for heaven's sake, so to speak, let's enjoy it.

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

It's late spring.

The team have been running their Tudor farm for two months.

They've set up a pig enterprise,

breeding Tamworths to pay rent to the monastery...

..sheared their Southdown sheep and sold the fleeces,

a big earner for the monastic farmer...

..and they've mastered driving oxen, the tractors of the age,

to sow a pea crop.

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

Now, they're turning their attention to making the staple foods

of everyday Tudor life - bread and ale.

Records show that it wasn't unusual for a person to consume

a 2 lb loaf and 8 pints of ale a day.

It's amazing how much of the diet bread and beer made up.

Yeah, 80% of Britain's total calorific intake was between bread and beer.

-Yeah.

-You know, grain-based. Which is quite, that's just one,

really it's just one little tiny group of foods providing the main sustenance.

It's your carbohydrates, isn't it? That's your energy to get you through the day,

doing everything you need to do.

And it's going to be cheaper than proteins.

There's going to be the same amount of calories in a pint of beer as half a loaf of bread.

So, when things look like that...

That is a third of your calorie intake, isn't it?

Which, when you consider that many people are on the edge, and that's

pretty much all they're eating, that's an enormous part of the diet.

Tudors drank ale, not just for the calories,

but because water from wells was often contaminated.

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

Dieticians, sort of, analysing this these days would say that

the only thing that's missing from this diet is a bit of vitamin C.

But it doesn't take much, you only have to have the occasional leaf

now and again from something edible -

you know, the, the odd apple,

the occasional bit of cabbage, and you've sorted that problem out.

To produce a daily ration of bread and ale,

six acres of wheat and barley were required,

per person, per year.

Failure of these crops could quickly result in famine.

And, in Tudor England, one in four harvests failed.

People had little understanding of agricultural science,

so, to ensure a good harvest, they were guided by age-old superstitions.

But, most of all, they turned to God.

Prosper the work of those who enable us

to supply the resources of our small world.

ALL: Amen.

Right, onwards and upwards.

It's 40 days after Easter, Rogationtide,

when farm workers processed around their parish boundary,

praying for a successful harvest.

It was known as "beating the bounds".

But there was another purpose to this ritual.

In 1500, parish maps were virtually non-existent,

so beating the bounds reminded everyone of landmarks

that divided their parish from the next.

Folklore historian Professor Ronald Hutton

has come to partake in the ritual.

We have to pass the knowledge down to the younger

members of our parish.

How, how do we get these guys to remember?

Here's the bad news -

it's a mixture of pain and pleasure to make it memorable.

Pain, because young boys were regularly beaten

or hung up and down by their legs and bounced on the ground.

And then, when you'd made them remember bitterly what this place was and why it was special,

you'd give them treats, like cakes, afterwards to cheer them up.

Now, young Edmund, come on.

Right, this has happened to every parishioner,

male parishioner, in the past - they need to remember this tree.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

Look, being dangled upside down!

-There's the tree, see the tree?

-Er, yeah.

-See the landscape?

-Yeah.

-Tree. Going to remember?

-Yes.

-Yes, that's the right answer.

-Raar!

-Ow.

-Ooh.

You think he remembers what's going on, what's the pay-off?

The pay-off is cake. It's fruit cake.

Oh, yummy.

Another generation sorted.

The better-off supplemented their diet of bread and ale with meat.

The Tudor age saw tenant farmers begin to breed pigs

commercially for the first time.

The farmer's under the... the control of the monasteries.

These pigs represented, essentially, a pig factory. The little ones

are ready to go, get the boar in, get them pregnant, carry on.

No longer are we subsistence farmers -

we are now business farmers.

The farm has two sows that will produce around 12 piglets a year

between them, a useful addition to the farm's income.

The piglets are ten weeks old

and should now be ready to wean from their mothers.

Once the sow stops producing milk, she'll be ready to breed again.

-All right, guys?

-Yeah, we're good, thanks, Neil, how are you?

-How are you getting on, all right?

-Yeah, not bad, how are you?

-Right, you ready for it?

-Pretty much.

Farmer Neil Kerswell

is helping the boys lure the piglets away from the sows and into the sty.

The secret to any wean is not to get them too stressed -

if we're calm, they'll be calm. Come on then, in you go, in you go.

Come, this way, Georgie, Georgie, come on.

Look, it's home, what's in there?

-In.

-Four in.

Don't even try and...

Five in. Six in.

Yeah!

Yes, yes, yes. Six small pigs in there.

-Well done.

-Two big pigs over there.

But their joy is short-lived.

-Come on, come on.

-An escapee.

-Are you struggling?

-Oh, no, boys!

Our little piglets have found out that they can burrow

under our makeshift hurdles.

Now another one.

It was close, we almost got there. My mistake entirely.

It's always like this, Peter, and, don't worry,

it never ever goes to plan.

And, do you know what, there's always one.

Look, I'll reason with it, look.

You're currently marking your cards as the one we're going to eat.

You know, that's not reasoning - that's threatening.

You've really, you've really got to go in there.

Finally, after much cajoling, the piglets are separated and taken to the woods.

Come on, piggies. Come on, pigs. Come on, pigs.

In Tudor England, piglets were often fattened on common land, in forests.

Here, they could eat fallen acorns, beech nuts and chestnuts.

This ancient rite was known as "pannage".

Keep calling.

I'm over here.

-You're not lost.

-Tudor farmer, putting his pigs in the woods.

It's... Not only are you clearing that land out, it's essential,

for free... to put on the weight to these guys.

That is exactly what they need. And they'll be up here about...

I don't know, three months or so.

Erm, and get 'em right up to weight, and they'll absolutely love it.

There's loads of things for them to explore.

-Come on, then, guys, come on.

-Hup. Come on. Up you go. Go on.

Come on, greedy pig.

As tenant farmers, Tom, Peter and Ruth

would have employed workers to tend to the animals and crops.

It was the farmer's duty to accommodate and feed his staff,

and the farm would have produced its own bread and ale.

Essential to both was yeast.

It made the bread rise and, in ale, turned sugar to alcohol.

It was made by capturing bacteria from the air.

I've come to see how my plan to capture some wild yeast is going,

and it looks like I might have some success.

The idea is that I'm trying to harvest the wild yeasts

that are in the air all the time.

I mean, they grow naturally on grain,

they also grow on the skins of fruits.

And these can start you off in your brewing and your baking.

So, I've got a bowl of flour and water, and there's tiny,

tiny little bubbles, which suggests that fermentation has begun,

which means there must be yeast present.

Making money from the pig enterprises

relies on a continuous supply of piglets being bred.

With the large litter fending for themselves,

it's time to reintroduce the boar to the sows.

-Come on.

-He is huge.

He is a big boy, he is a big boy.

However, he is only 18 months old.

-Oh, really.

-Yes.

-Wow.

-Yes.

He looks very different, though. Is he, is he a Tamworth?

No, he's not a Tamworth - he's still a very old English breed.

Yeah. A breed called a Oxford Sandy and Black.

Now he's in the pen, you might find there's a...a bit of scrapping,

a bit of fighting going on - it's just them figuring out who's boss.

They'll figure out very, very quickly that he's the boss.

And then, once these girls are pregnant, it's going to be what,

three months, three weeks, three days?

It is, yes, it is. Now she's obviously only just weaned.

She'll probably take about three to five days to come back into heat.

And once the boar takes an interest in her, which he certainly

will once she comes back into heat. Yeah, I think

we're looking at not very long -

three months, three weeks, three days.

-Fantastic.

-You'll be a proud father.

A farm this size would have employed around ten workers,

together drinking up to 300 gallons of ale a month.

The job of producing these vast quantities often fell to women.

The raw ingredient was barley.

The first stage was to turn starches in the grain into sugar,

a process known as malting.

Seeds store their energy, through the winter, as starch.

But, come the spring, a new process begins inside the grain.

And those starches get transformed into sugars,

and it's that sugar we want to capture.

So we actually need to start this grain growing but only just so far.

And then we'll kill it and use that sugar to make our beer.

But I think we've still got a lump there, look.

-Ah, you're a perfectionist, aren't you?

-I am a perfectionist.

Putting me to work here.

Water stimulates growth in the grain.

Having let the grains swell, now what we're trying to do is,

sort of, I don't know, recreate the conditions of spring.

We, they, they've got all the water they need

and then they need a little bit of warmth.

Over the next few days the barley is heaped into a smaller,

deeper pile, to contain the heat.

And you can feel the warmth from it, can't you? And that smell.

Yeah.

They always say, if you start thinking now about what

you're actually making, then you get that really pungent, then...

Absolutely.

Making ale was a time consuming job that had to be

fitted around tending to the crops and livestock.

Despite this, most Tudor farmers had little real concept of time -

they simply worked from dawn till dusk.

Life in a Benedictine monastery, however,

was based around a strict routine.

Tom and Peter have come to meet Abbot Aiden Bellenger

to find out how time was managed.

What would a typical day be like for the monks?

Every day of the year, the monks' gathering have seven services

during the day and one at night.

So, one would be talking about getting up in the morning

as soon as it's light and then carrying on until dark.

And then getting up once during the night for a night prayer,

which is the eighth prayer of the day.

There would be time for silence, time for reading,

time for eating, even time for talking.

So, I suppose, a time-measuring device is, actually, almost essential.

That's right, yes.

Because one of the things St Benedict says the Abbot has to do

is keep everything regular.

To remind monks when to pray, a bell rung out across the monastery,

dictating the rhythm of life.

Monasteries often had their own foundries where bells were cast.

Tom's come to the foundry to help Andrew Lacy

make a new bell for the monastery.

He begins by making a mould.

First, you've got to design the shape of the bell.

So, to do that, we cut a shape like this, OK.

So, you can see the design of the outside of the bell just cut into a piece of wood.

Put it onto a blade like this, which is a strickle, and you literally

get some daub, which is clay, and hair

and sand, and then you just keep

swiping it round until it makes the right shape.

This forms the inside of the bell.

Then Andrew builds up layers of wax, which,

when smoothed off with a larger strickle, forms the outside.

-So, the wax is on top of a initial mound of daub.

-Yep.

-We're going to put more daub on...

-Yep.

So, the thickness of the wax is, effectively, the thickness of our bell.

The wax will be melted and replaced by our bronze.

That's exactly it.

Everything that's wax now is going to be bronze later.

This is the lost wax method, and it's typical of the Tudor period.

The wax is covered in daub then fired in a kiln.

This not only hardens the daub, but it melts away the wax,

leaving a bell-shaped cavity.

This is the mould, this is the bell mould, and it's erm, ooh,

quite a heavy lump.

So, all the wax that was in there that made up the bell has been drained away.

-Right.

-So, there's now a cavity where that wax was.

-Where our metal will go?

-Exactly.

Bell metal, a type of bronze, has been around

for over 3,000 years and is an alloy of tin and copper.

Which kind of composition are we looking for?

Well, ideally, it's going to be 20% tin,

so the rest of it's going to be copper.

And when we mix those two together you get this lovely bronze.

-What kind of temperature are we going to get to?

-About 1,100.

-It's serious heat, isn't it?

-Oh, yeah, yeah.

-I think we're ready to pour, I think we're totally there.

-Right.

I think this is spot-on.

Andrew has just one chance to get this right -

an air bubble in the bronze will ruin the bell.

Bells are so central to religious life that the Abbot would

actually come onto monastic land,

where the bells are being made, and bless the kilns.

Shows how important these were.

Yeah.

-I'm hoping that's perfect.

-It felt good.

You know, when, when it feels right, it, kind of, intuitively,

intuitively, it IS right.

Knowing when to ring the bell was vital.

Early medieval monks relied on sundials or water clocks

to tell the time.

The problem was someone then had to ring the bell by hand.

What was needed was a way of automating the process.

And it was in a 13th-century monastery

that a mechanical clock was invented.

Peter's meeting Alan Midleton,

from the British Horological Institute, to see how it worked.

I suppose we take measurement of time very much for granted.

But this must have been amazing at the time.

It was an enormous breakthrough, the mechanical clock.

Before the Industrial Revolution,

clocks were the most complex mechanisms ever, ever made.

But, at the time, it would have been miraculous.

Completely miraculous, yes.

The key to the mechanical clock was a device called the foliot.

This ensured it ran at a constant rate

so time could be measured reliably.

Er, the foliot's is mounted on what's called a staff -

the staff has two flags or pallets on it, and as the tooth of this

gate wheel drops off one pallet, it lands on the next one,

and, erm, and so it goes backwards and forwards.

And this controls the rate at which it unwinds.

-If that wasn't there?

-The wheels would spin around at high speed,

-and the clock would stop in a couple of minutes.

-Oh, right.

But there was a complication to this system.

In monasteries, religious services were split between those

observed in hours of light and those during hours of darkness.

So day and night had to be divided into 12 hours each,

regardless of the season.

This meant summer daytime hours would be longer than 60 minutes

and night-time hours shorter.

In winter, the reverse was true.

This is the genius of the fellows up here,

because you've got these two weights on here.

As you can see, this is for either

a long summer's day or a long winter's night.

It goes...it goes quite slowly.

By moving the weight in towards the centre of the foliot,

the clock runs faster,

making each passing hour shorter for a winter's day or summer's night.

Erm, that, that is quite a strange concept to me,

in terms of you are actually altering your clock in order

to delineate time based on the seasons.

You're still quite tied into those seasons.

Yes, we are. This is the way in which they operate,

and their clocks had to... had to work to that standard.

It's amazing to think

that need to regulate prayer throughout the day,

the impact that that has had on future societies.

It's absolutely crucial. It's one of the greatest machines ever devised.

Peter's installing a mechanical Tudor clock at the monastery

-to call the monks to prayer.

-Oh, wow!

He's setting it up to automatically ring Tom's bell.

Well, hopefully, it'll sound amazing when it's struck.

I'm really pleased with this, to be honest.

As this goes round, it's going from the one to the two,

then it just kicks the arm round, which rings the bell.

Close to the...

But Peter's installation has disengaged the all-important foliot.

You might be calling all the monks to prayer

a little more often than they want.

Calm down. It's very temperamental.

After some adjustments, the clock is running properly.

That's good.

This clock is set now to ring eight times a day,

calling the monks to prayer -

so seven times during the daylight hours and once at night.

I mean, that is such an important development, isn't it?

But it all started in the monasteries.

Mechanical clocks spread from monasteries to church towers

across the nation, and time became fundamental to people's lives.

Back on the farm, Ruth's producing ale for the farm workers.

The barley's been malting in warm, damp conditions for a week.

Well, it's happened, the barley has sprouted.

I need to stop this straightaway before it sprouts any more.

But the smell has changed too. That is ready for the kiln.

The malting process has turned starch in the grain into sugar.

To stop the process, Ruth's heating it in the bread oven.

I haven't got my oven as hot as I would for bread -

don't need that sort of temperature.

I just need to dry out the grain, to kill all that shoot.

The sugar rich barley is ready to be turned into ale.

I'm not making beer, I'm making ale.

Beer is technically ale plus hops,

and there's going to be no hops involved in this.

Beer was a Continental, particularly a Dutch thing,

that eventually comes over to Britain.

But in 1500, almost all of us are completely drinking ale.

Next, the malted barley is boiled in water to release the sugars.

Water from wells was often contaminated and dangerous to drink.

But this process made it safe.

Now this has to come up to the boil

and then simmer for about half an hour.

And this, of course, this boiling is what makes the beer

so safe to drink - it's sterilising the water.

And then the alcohol that we're going to produce will keep it sterile.

Farmers provided food and drink for their small workforce.

Pop the lid on, come back in half an hour.

Monasteries, on the other hand, had to cater on a much larger scale,

not just to monks but all the lay folk who worked there.

So, their brew houses and bake houses

produced vast quantities of ale and bread.

Peter's helping out in the monastery's bake house.

First, he's sourcing the main ingredient - wheat flour.

Hi, Peter, you all right?

This was ground, on demand, at one of the monastery's mills.

If you wouldn't mind just holding that why I shin up.

Rather you than me.

Peter's come to High Salvington Windmill in Sussex

where miller Peter Casebow begins by setting the sails.

Tie on there.

Although this mill dates from the 1750s,

it's of similar design to a Tudor mill.

-That's it. There we've got it nicely spread, OK?

-Yep.

And that should now catch the wind nicely.

The trouble is with the wind is it can be, I've just taken

the brake off now, OK, and we've lost the wind.

Well, I suppose, you're, you're at the mercy of the wind.

We'll have to turn the mill round and see

if we can find some wind from a slightly different direction.

-So, what we're going to do now is to lift the steps of the mill.

-Right.

-So, I'll do that by pulling up this lever, which will do that.

-Wow.

And the...the steps are now clear off the ground.

So, this, this whole thing is going round.

It's just balancing on a post, then...?

-Well, there's something like 26 tons there.

-26 tons?

See if we can get a bit more power out of her - she's going quite well now.

She is.

The wheat is carried up to the grindstones by a winch powered by the sails.

I'll take that off, and you can see the stones underneath there.

You have one at the bottom called the bed stone,

-and that's wedged tight into the floor.

-So, that doesn't move?

-So that doesn't move.

-Right.

-Er, because there's quite a bit of friction when you're grinding.

And then you have the runner stone, which is the one on the top,

and that runs with a slight gap above the bed stone.

The surface of a mill stone is carved with deep furrows.

Now, the bed stone has them cut in the same as the runner stone.

And when they, sort of, the two come together, you can

-imagine they act rather like a pair of scissors.

-Yeah.

And they shear the grain and create the flour that way.

It's supposed to be better than, you know,

crushed, like the modern mills.

A miller was at the mercy of the wind,

and so far there hasn't been enough to grind.

But Peter's sensed a change in the weather.

-Let's get this thing going, shall we?

-OK.

-Put the brake on.

And that will enable us to then put this in gear.

-That's right. OK, here we go.

-Oh. Is that in?

Yeah, that's in.

I'm just doing up the sprattle. Cor, it's actually... You're going to grind.

We're going to grind on this.

OK, brakes coming off.

Yes, she's running.

We've got some stuff coming through now.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I can see it. Oh, look.

-And we'll actually test the quality of the flour by the rule of thumb. OK?

-Yeah.

I can tell whether it's the right sort of consistency.

So, that's where the saying comes from, rule of thumb?

Yes, and if it's fine enough, then that's it.

I'm no expert, but it feels fairly fine to me.

-Little bit of...

-It's not too bad, here you are.

-A little bit of granular.

I mean, it's like a wholemeal, isn't it?

It is wholemeal, yes. As we say, "Mice and all."

Another commodity required by the monasteries was wax,

essential to make church candles.

Candles represented the light of God,

and those made from beeswax rather than animal fat

were particularly special, as they burned with a pure, clean flame.

To produce a continuous supply, monasteries kept their own bees.

Tom's helping beekeeper Paul Ham

harvest the wax, which came with a useful by-product, honey.

The honey was the only form of intense sweetener that they'd got

in those times, but the beeswax was the only form of wax.

Today, we've got paraffin wax and lots of different kinds of wax.

But then, for making ink, for lost-wax casting for jewellery,

for all sorts of little processes, that was a major industrial product.

You've given me some gear here.

-A little bit of protection.

-A little bit of protection.

This is my overalls, is it?

So, that will cover everything, including your codpiece.

So, that will, sort of, er...

And you've got a wicker mask on there,

which I'm not sure how much you'll see.

But your face is obviously the bit that you want to protect

more than anything else.

We'll just turn them up gently.

Tudor bees were kept in skeps - upturned wicker baskets.

Oh, I mean, that, visually, that's amazing.

This was the way bees were kept for over 2,000 years,

until the invention of the modern beehive in the 19th century.

You can see they're really quite dark bees, almost you'd say black.

But this is the British black bee - this would have been the bee in Tudor times.

-Right, so, this actually has a heritage.

-Oh, definitely.

And it was only in Victorian times that people went off

to Italy and round on their Grand Tour.

They saw their golden bees out there and thought, "Oh, we'll have some of those."

And then we've got different kinds of bees now.

But people are keen to get back to the original Tudor bee,

cos they're very suited to our climate.

The bees build wax honeycomb to contain their larvae

and stores of pollen and honey.

That's incredible.

Goose, just to, sort of, brush them off.

And the goose feather, basically, is like a very safe way...

Well, a brush might get their legs stuck in it.

So, if it's hairy, this has got nothing to catch for the bees.

So, we'll pop that on there and let's see

if we can get a little bit more.

So, why do bees make honey from wax?

Well, this colony and the queen in here,

she could live for as long as nine years.

So, they've got to have enough stores for the winter,

so the honey is their food for the winter.

But bees, they're geared to produce lots of honey,

and, if you give them space, this colony will go on

and produce maybe 40, 50 lbs of surplus honey in a year.

Once the honeycomb has been extracted the two products,

honey and wax, must be separated.

Just break off the comb and pop that into here.

And then you crush that with your hands?

-It just runs out.

-Yeah.

I just want to taste some.

You can see that the caps on there, that's sealed, proper honey.

It's still warm from the hive, and er, to me, that's the best way to...

That's, that's amazing.

My lips are almost stuck together, but...

Cos sugar's lovely and sweet,

but honey has an amazing flavour with it as well,

something really quite magical.

It is fairly stunning stuff.

It's so good.

Peter's brought the flour to David Carter,

in the monastic bake house, where three types of bread were produced -

unleavened Communion bread for use in church,

fine white bread for the Abbot,

and maslin bread for the monks and lay people.

Maslin is a derivation of the French "masseline",

and that means a mixture.

And, hence, what we've got here is a mixture of flours.

To Peter's wheat flour, barley and rye flours are added,

then mixed with salt.

Salt not only flavours and preserves bread, it works with gluten

in the flour to give the dough strength and elasticity.

So pop it in, into the middle.

To make it rise, they're using Ruth's yeast, produced in the barley field.

In Tudor times, yeast was regarded as something really quite magic.

Nobody really understood what it was or why it worked.

And, in fact, in a book from 1469 called The Brewer's Book,

yeast was referred to, in a single word, "God is good."

And it wasn't until the 1800s that yeast

was fully understood as an organism on its own.

-On the board?

-On the board, yep.

Yeast reacts with sugars in the flour to produce carbon dioxide gas.

This is trapped in the gluten of the dough, making it expand and rise.

If it fights back, show it who's boss, Peter.

You're going to eat the bread - the bread's not going to eat you.

The dough is left to rise, or prove,

then knocked back to redistribute gas bubbles produced by the yeast.

Just liberally dust the top with a bit of flour.

I like that flourish -

it's the sign of a good baker, a good flourish.

Great. Lovely, one, two, three, out.

After it's proved a second time, it's ready to bake.

Unveil the magnificent loaf. Hey, wow, look at that.

I'll scrape out the oven.

You scrape out the oven, I'll bring the magnificent loaf.

The oven is heated by lighting a wood fire inside.

Once it's up to temperature, the fire is scraped out...

Let's get this in the oven.

..and the bread bakes using the residual heat.

And we're going to give it a push and a pull. And there we are.

Oh, nicely done, nicely done.

Let me, ooh. Ah, ooh! My feet are hot.

At the farm, Ruth's following an ale-making recipe

that goes back to Neolithic times.

The malted barley has been boiled

to produce a liquid rich in sugars, known as wort.

And I can draw this first batch off.

So, this batch of beer will be the strongest.

And once I've drawn all this water off, I'll put another

load of water on the same grain and boil it up again.

And that will make a much weaker beer.

So, this is more your, sort of, evening drinking,

getting drunk beer, and the next batch would be your, sort of,

daytime drinking beer, when you're thirsty

but you need to still have your wits about you.

Now it's time for the flavourings.

So, in goes my elderflower and in goes a small amount of honey.

Just a little bit.

Stir that through.

And while the beer's still hot like this,

the flavours of the herbs will be drawn out into the liquor.

Now that it's cooled, I'm just straining,

cos, naturally, I don't want any organic matter

which would introduce bacteria into the beer.

Finally, ale balm, a yeast,

is added to turn the sugar from the malted barley into alcohol.

So, a little bit of my ale balm, from the last brew, into that pot,

and the alcohol within the liquid will keep it sterile.

At the monastery, the beeswax has been separated from the honey

and melted, ready to make church candles.

Paul starts by making the wick.

If you go into church, you'll see these impressive candles that,

you know, don't smell bad. They last. yeah.

-And a beautiful, clean, white light.

-Yeah.

I mean, to us, they may look slightly...

but compared to, say, LEDs or something, but compared to yellowy,

spotty tallow candles, the clean light of beeswax,

-it was very clean and very bright.

-Yeah.

The wick is repeatedly dipped into the beeswax,

slowly building up the layers of the candle.

-It's dripping down.

-Yeah.

-That will solidify fairly quickly.

And we want it as straight as possible,

cos that's the centre, the core of our candle.

It is, it's the centre, and if it burns off, then it'll drip down the side, so if you get it nice

and straight, then you'll get a nice clean, even burn.

So that's now almost solid, so then we can dip again.

-Pretty well enough for a light read.

-So, that'll be good enough for the monastery.

Yeah, I think so, they'd got through a chapter, perhaps.

Finally, the ale is stored in butts where the sugar will continue to ferment.

That's another batch in the butt...

in its butt, in the buttery.

And that's what this room is for - it's for storing all my ale

and everything to do with drinking. So all the jugs and the cups

and everything come in here.

And then, next door is my pantry, and that, of course,

is where we store all the bread and things to do with eating -

you know, bowls, spoons, napkins, candlesticks, that sort of thing.

Together, they form the sort of service end of the house.

Ale brewed with malted barley was drunk by everyone,

but the type of bread you ate was determined by social status.

At the monastic bake house, Peter's making some of the finest

quality loaves exclusively for the Abbot - manchet bread.

This is going to be made with white flour.

It is exactly the same as the wholemeal wheat flour

that went into the last loaf, except it's been sieved or bolted.

And it was that sieving process that, in fact, made the flour

so expensive, and that is why it became associated with high status.

Now, that is so much finer against my fingers -

it's like mixing a cloud.

The whole thing about manchet loaves was they were very much lighter,

they were greater in volume,

they were softer and not as hard to eat as the maslin loaf.

This time the raising agent is ale balm,

the same yeasty foam Ruth used to ferment the ale.

-Often the brew house and the bakery were next door to each other.

-Ah.

Because the baker would rely on the brewer to provide him

with the balm to make the bread.

-It is such a tactile process.

-It is such a tactile process.

After proving, the dough is cut into portions for baking.

-Do you think this is ready, then?

-I think so, Pete.

I'm looking forward to this. This is going to be a proper treat.

Meanwhile, the brown maslin bread for the ordinary monks

has been baking for an hour and should be done.

Phwoar, that is fantastic, that looks so appetising.

There's a nice dull, hollow sound, that's definitely baked.

And the baked manchet loaves are ready to be delivered to the Abbot.

Some fantastic bread. I've managed to stop Tommo eating it on the way.

It looks brilliant, it looks enough for two of us for one meal. Very generous.

It's really good.

Tudors drank ale, because water was often contaminated.

They also feared washing with water.

Instead, grease and sweat were removed from the body with just a dry cloth.

This was an era, after all,

in which ordinary people like you and me did not bath.

They were scared that if they water-washed, that it would open up

their pores, allowing infection in.

And if you lived in a world where the Black Death and the sweating

sickness was carrying people off in droves, you too would be pretty

scared about undertaking something that exposed you to disease.

Hair, too, was cleaned without water.

You might think that without shampoo, everybody had filthy, disgusting hair.

You would be wrong.

This is remarkably effective if used regularly, and that's the point.

You do have to comb thoroughly twice a day with a very fine-toothed comb.

I mean, that side's all very well for getting out the knots,

but it's that side that's going to do the cleaning for me.

If you were to do absolutely nothing to your hair, if you were

just to abandon it for three months or so, yeah, the amount of oils

that was produced would slow down, but it would smell disgusting.

Because all the dead skin would be trapped, the oils would be

trapped next to your scalp, it's not a good place to go.

However, if you don't wash it but you do comb it,

you've pretty much solved the problem.

It's early June, Peter and Tom have returned to the farm.

In two weeks, it will be the summer solstice, the longest day.

Hopefully, the boar has done his job and the sows are pregnant.

The cereal crops, essential to make bread and ale, are also thriving.

But all is not well with the peas.

Something's eating our pea crop. Pretty much everything's had a bite taken out of it.

-I think we're talking deer here.

-Deer? You don't think rabbit?

Well, probably both.

Before potatoes reached these shores in the 1580s,

peas and beans were an important source of carbohydrate and vitamins.

-Well, what can we do?

-I mean, in Tudor times, I think you couldn't really do much.

This situation really emphasises the fact that,

I mean, you are at the mercy of nature, you are at the mercy of God.

And you really have to... There's not much you can do, apart from pray.

Tudor trades set up religious guilds to pray for prosperity in business.

The team have established their own guild with St Benedict,

the patron saint of farming, presiding over them.

Masses would have been said to pray for special causes,

like the success of a crop.

As the service is in Latin,

most people couldn't follow word by word what was going on.

But if you attend church one day a week every week of your life,

you quickly get an idea

of the sort of shape of the service.

You know, words you recognise as the cues for when to kneel,

when to look up.

And you can follow the service in a sort of vague form,

even if you don't manage to follow every single word in meaning.

The most solemn part of Mass is Holy Communion.

The priest blesses unleavened bread, the Host.

Medieval Christians believed that this had now transformed it

into the body of Christ, a process called "transubstantiation".

To receive it, you had to be free from sin.

Most people felt they were unworthy,

so they took blessed ordinary bread known as "panis benedictus".

But there was another, more controversial, use of the panis benedictus.

Records show that some farmers took it from the church

and sprinkled it on their crop to ensure a decent harvest.

Accounts at the time thought that this, the panis benedictus,

had magical powers.

I mean, it could perhaps heal the sick

or it could fend off caterpillars from your garden

or, perhaps, it could rejuvenate

your deer-eaten, rabbit-nibbled, weather-beaten pea crop.

Who knows?

And as that sun sinks in the west, and there's no more we can do

to protect this for another night, I'll take all the help I can get.

Peas were an important food crop,

but sheep were the real money-spinner for the Tudor farmer.

-Which way?

-Oh, that one, that one, that one, that one.

Yep. That one.

Woollen cloth accounted for 75% of England's exports.

Should have had her.

The farm's flock of Southdown sheep have been sheared,

and now the boys are giving them a once-over

to ensure they're healthy, starting with their feet.

Pack it in.

Right, what I'm trying to do is, just where the hoof is starting

to fold over, just trying to get rid of that so it doesn't get infected.

Sheep are designed pretty much for living on

quite rocky outcrops and nibbling away at the grass that grows there.

As soon as you move your sheep into

a downland environment like this, they're on quite soft land,

so there's nothing to wear away, effectively, what is their toenails.

So this is pretty much a sheep pedicure.

Although if I had a pedicure like this,

I'd be demanding my money back.

Right, I think it's time to let her go.

OK, going out that way, yeah. Ah.

Right, candidate number two.

Oh, this is going to work well for us.

The main purpose of breeding sheep in the 1500s was for wool,

but any sheep past their prime

would be slaughtered and eaten as mutton.

I'm going to roast the mutton. A bit of a treat, that,

rather than boiling it.

And that trick of boning it out,

which is a much more efficient way of roasting...

You can roast with the bones still in, but there are problems with it.

If you think, yeah, there's the shoulder,

the bones that I've taken out of the shoulder...

And you can see that, you know, that constitutes quite a barrier to heat, moving through

the meat, which makes roasting it evenly a bit of a challenge.

If you take the bones out and roll it into a joint - much easier.

And that's why, traditionally, roast meat is a rolled joint.

So what I need to do is turn this

into that perfect cylinder of solid meat.

Will you give me a hand putting this on the spit?

Okey-doke.

Push up as much as you can.

My spit is on the spit... in front of my brand irons,

where the burning brands are.

And I've built a fire, which is going to give me a sheet of flame,

in front of which I'm going to be roasting.

If you roast over the fire,

the fat from the meat drips into the fire, encourages

huge great fat flames to come up and scorch the outside of the meat.

So you're going to end up - or there's a strong danger of ending up -

with it black on the outside and raw in the middle.

Roasting was always considered to be a really luxury method

of cooking, because it takes so much time, it's so much labour.

To put this much meat in a pot and boil it, well, you know,

I could put it on and leave it, couldn't I?

I could get on with half a dozen other things.

But if I'm going to roast meat, I actually have to be here,

casting an eye every now and again, giving a little turn.

But I also can use that attention, the fact that I need to be here,

to add in flavour during the cooking, and this is the thing

that really marks out the good roast meat of old Britain.

Ruth's basting the meat alternately with its own fat and dredge.

Dredge was breadcrumbs and flour or oatmeal flavoured with spices.

What I should be able to do is build up a really deeply flavoured,

crispy coating around the meat.

It's a week since the guild Mass for the pea crop, and the boys

are curious to see whether there's been any improvement.

I have to say that this pea crop is looking, touch wood, pretty fine.

-It's looking very healthy. I think the weather's really helped.

-Yeah.

But, also, it seems like some of the animals that were attacking it

when it was sort of weaker, smaller...

they've laid off a bit, and we've just got this massive growth.

A little secret - I took a piece of the panis benedictus from the Mass

and I sprinkled it in tiny pieces across the entirety of this crop.

And I have to say, it's worked a treat.

Yes. Sun and rain, might have been in there as well.

But good work.

-Let us be thankful. Amen.

-Amen.

It's 11 in the morning,

and the farm workers have assembled for the main meal of the day.

Having risen at dawn, this would keep them going until evening,

when they would eat just bread and ale.

I don't want the offal. This mutton is absolutely fantastic.

-Oh, I love roast meat.

-And here we are at the top of the table.

Head of our household. Good, isn't it?

And you'll notice that we haven't got any of the mutton on the other tables.

-Not yet, anyway.

-Not yet, anyway. So, it's up to you, really.

If you think somebody deserves a slice of meat,

then you send it to them, and it's a really public message.

Everybody in the room would notice. They'd all know that not only were you giving a reward,

-but it's a very public reward.

-You could also shun someone, couldn't you?

-You could make a marked statement...

-Oh, definitely.

-..in another way -

-that person, that person, but not the person in the middle.

-Yeah.

That's one of the reasons why this whole meal is so formal.

This is the sort of central ritual of household. I mean,

you're making a whole load of social statements.

And this daily ritual of dining reinforces all those positions.

I think we need to curry favour with all you guys, to be brutally honest.

But, in the modern vernacular, I am going to say, ladies first,

-so Helen...

-Yes.

-..if you fancy coming up, please.

-Yeah.

-You could take the whole lot.

Yeah, take the whole lot!

Thank you, thank you. We've obviously been very good.

Working very hard.

It's midsummer's eve. Tomorrow will be the longest day,

and the sun will be at its highest point in the sky.

For thousands of years,

this has been regarded as a special and mystical time.

Peter, Ruth and Tom have come to a nearby hill to celebrate.

They are joined by people from their parish and folklore expert, Professor Ronald Hutton.

The sun rises and sets at different points on the horizon

through the year, which is why days get shorter and longer.

But it slows down at midwinter and midsummer -

and for a few magical days,

it appears to rise and set at the same points on the horizon.

So the laws of nature and the divine are suspended.

Human beings can become magical. The fairy folk can wander among us.

Potential is limitless.

Tonight, the last night of the solstice, midsummer's eve,

you, Tom, can find a fairy mistress.

Tonight, Ruth, you could find your divine opposite number.

And you, Peter, and I can enjoy a drink.

Fire was at the heart of midsummer celebrations,

-and jumping through flames was believed to bring good luck.

-Ruth, would you do me the honour...

-Ooh!

-..of leaping the midsummer fire with me?

-All right, I'll try.

-The rest of you get back a bit.

-Oh, my goodness.

-One, two, three.

ALL: Hooray!

It was believed that at midsummer, evil spirits roamed free

and fire would ward them off.

In truth, it wasn't evil spirits in the air - it was disease.

ALL: Hooray!

Back where we are now, the Tudor period, this is the time

when fleas breed, and fleas brought bubonic plague.

This is the time when mosquitoes breed, and they brought malaria.

Lice brought typhus. The corn is growing,

it can now be flattened by storms or catch disease.

And it's the time when the sea is calm, the rivers are low,

the roads are dry, which means that armies and brigands can move easily.

We are in danger of being plundered.

We're looking at stark, lethal danger, and fire will keep us safe.

There was one fire that was especially effective

at warding off evil - the bonfire.

A fire made entirely of bones is a bone fire,

from which we get the word bonfire. They smell dreadful,

and the pungent smoke drives away evil spirits.

So, Peter's convinced, after a few ales, he's actually seen a dragon.

Certainly scare away evil, traditionally.

And as for seeing a dragon on some ale, can you hear it?

It's a roaring night -

out there in the winds, we hear the voice of the dragons.

As well as warding off evil, fire was also used to predict

the farmer's fortune with a burning wheel.

There's moisture in the air, and the ground's damp -

do you think this will make it to the bottom of the hill still alight?

I have no idea, no-one's done this for decades.

But if you want a wonderful summer, get that darn wheel down that hillside.

-We need all the luck we can get.

-Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!

A cartwheel, wrapped in straw was set alight and rolled down a hill.

If it reached the bottom still burning,

a good harvest was assured. If not, the crops would fail.

LAUGHTER

Pick it up and throw it!

Bloody wheel!

Full marks for trying.

That is what is known as a roaring success.

I think you need a smart lawyer to convince any deity

that was rolling a wheel, but, for sheer ingenuity,

you are the pride of our species.

Next time on Tudor Monastery Farm...

how monasteries made money beyond farming.

From mining lead...

This is hard.

..fishing...

And if it does, I can't!

..and running inns for weary travellers.

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