Episode 4 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.

PIGS SQUEAL

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...

THEY SCREAM

Quite noisy.

Wow, it's a really violent process!

..while immersing themselves in the beliefs...

ALL: Amen.

..customs...

THEY MOAN

..and rituals that shaped the age.

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

THEY CHUCKLE

THEY LAUGH

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

It's July.

Ruth, Peter and Tom are more than halfway through

their time on the farm.

The pea crop has flowered

and very soon, it should be producing a harvest.

I am flabbergasted with just how many peas are on each plot.

It's staggering, isn't it?

The barley cereal crop is also thriving,

as are the sheep and the pigs.

-Are you all right?

-Yeah.

But farming was not the only way monastic land

was exploited to make money.

The monasteries encouraged other enterprises

and would send representatives to meet with tenants

who wanted to expand into new areas.

Professor James Clark, an expert in medieval history,

has come to meet Tom and Peter

to explain the abundant opportunities on the land.

Of course, it's important to remember the monastery's

economic interests are not just confined to farming.

The monastery owns a huge diversity of landscape and it's especially

interested in the natural resources that that landscape contains.

And perhaps the pre-eminent interest in this period in that regard

is lead, lead mining.

Would farmers like us be involved in these commercial processes then?

We know that just prior to the Dissolution,

a number of tenants are beginning to branch off into those areas.

They can't rely for a secure income on the produce of farming alone.

The Church imposed itself on the landscape of medieval England.

Great abbeys and cathedrals were built to stamp the Church's

authority across the country.

Vital to their construction was lead.

Its malleability and resistance to corrosion made it perfect

for roofing, guttering and windows.

This created huge demand for the material.

Following in the footsteps of Tudor farmers,

the boys are heading off to mine their own lead.

Areas around the Pennines, Derbyshire and Shropshire

were the biggest centres of lead mining in the Tudor period.

The mines are now long-abandoned and overgrown.

Tom and Peter are meeting with experts Colin Richards

and Nick Southwick to reopen one.

Right, Peter, here's your lead mine.

PETER GROANS

Brilliant, Colin.

It looks a bit more like a rabbit warren or something.

Yes, we've got to do a little bit of digging to actually get into

the mine, but the mines in this area haven't been operated for 130 years.

Would farmers be doing this sort of thing?

Oh, yes, because, in any age, if you could sort of gain extra money,

you could improve your life, you could get a better horse,

better clothes, better wine...

So it could make all the difference between a subsistence existence

and one where you could have a few luxuries.

I suppose it was a metal very much in demand,

especially with the monasteries, all they were using it for.

You could sell all you could extract,

so, you know, you could turn your labour into money very easily.

Farmers who turned their hand to mining in the summer months

could earn up to £4 in extra income -

the equivalent of buying 80 extra sheep for the farm.

I think it's getting big!

-Shovel this out, Pete.

-Yeah.

-Then I think we can get a body in.

Shall I do that? I'm a bit svelter than you are, Peter.

You are a little homunculus, Tom, we can get you down there.

THEY LAUGH

Here he goes.

Give him a little push.

-It opens up quite a lot, actually.

-Yeah, it should do.

-Is there room for another one?

-I reckon. Just follow on.

Oh, dear...

It widens up a bit, so we'd probably fit that wheelbarrow in,

if you like. Thank you.

-All right, here we go.

-Are you lads OK?

As one of the kingdom's largest landowners,

monasteries owned vast waterways that were full

of another valuable resource - fish.

The Church encouraged people to fast from meat three days a week,

creating a high demand for fish.

Ruth's setting out to catch one of the most popular fish of the day -

eels.

The first job is to make an eel trap

with help from basket maker Simon Cooper.

Whoops! I nearly lost that.

SHE CHUCKLES

-Lovely and soaked and bendy.

-Well-soaked.

Yeah, nice and bendy.

Look at that.

They're using willow, a tree commonly found beside streams.

So we're using the twining technique,

-which means we're using two at once, yeah?

-That's it.

Weaving one over the other around there.

We twist them each time they go around.

Go around...stave, yes.

Just get it tight, otherwise we'll lose anything we might be catching.

The traps are made from two woven cones, one slotted inside the other.

-Oh, yeah, you can see it in that one...

-This is a very open-design one

-and you can see the eel will go in through the front here.

-Right.

So the eel swims in, gets through that gap nice and easily,

but because it's all spiky, it can't turn round and go back through it.

It can't turn round and go out, no.

This method of laying traps for fish is a technique that goes back

thousands of years and it's even mentioned in the Magna Carta.

And, of course, one thing with the eel as well,

it's very easy to keep alive out of water.

As long as it's damp and cool...

So you could transport them in damp sacking.

Sacking or straw, yes, you didn't really need refrigeration

because they almost breathe, can almost breathe through their skin.

-This then is going to be dropped into here.

-Yeah.

And then, we need to...

-Try and weave the whole lot together.

-Weave the whole lot together.

Yeah, I see what you mean about needing to be really firm.

Yeah, we hope our basketwork isn't too open so the eel will

find the way out, cos they're very, very good at finding little holes.

SHE LAUGHS

With the mine reopened, the team are navigating the passages

that should take them to the lead ore.

Monasteries granted leases to those

who wanted to mine for lead on their land.

PETER GROANS

"Come to a mine," you said, Tom.

"It'll be fun."

So, Colin, how far are we going in at the moment?

Well, we need to go in about sort of...300, 400 yards.

PETER GROANS

That is fantastic.

This is a lot bigger than I thought it would be.

So when it was in sort of full production,

there would have been men on platforms all over this space.

This is the first time the mine has been worked for over a century.

So what are we actually looking for, Colin?

You're looking for those silver specks in the rock

which are the sort of galena, the lead,

to see where you've got a concentration,

where you've got the richer soil deposits.

And then, work from there.

Miners worked in pairs

and removed the lead ore by hand using hammers and chisels.

The skill is hitting the chisel without hitting the holder.

-Oh...

-Did you hear that?

THEY LAUGH

Ooh!

THEY LAUGH

-Remember, it's not a race.

-How would I?

The veins of lead ore were often set at 45-degree angles in the rock,

making for tough working conditions.

I feel like we're going quite far in, is this...?

Yeah, I think you've broken off a decent piece there.

The weight of the rock was the key indication

of lead ore being present.

What are you thinking, Tom?

-How does it feel weight-wise?

-No. Have a feel.

It's like a feather.

(I don't think we'd have made very good miners.)

We're just getting our iron.

Oh! Look at that.

That's actually a lot heavier. Feel that.

You can feel the extra weight, can you, compared to the other bit?

What does that look like?

Oh, yeah, that's, that's what we're looking for.

Are we finished then? Is that, is that enough?

THEY LAUGH

You know, when you're looking at about 50 bars of lead a day...

THEY LAUGH

..we've got one lump in the bottom at the moment.

We better pick up the pace.

Let's give that a go.

Oh, no, that's what I'm talking about, Tom.

Look at that, that is a piece of lead ore.

Whole families often worked in the mines.

Every day they faced dangers from flooding

and long-term inhalation of poisonous lead dust.

Every little bit counted,

so, you know, the small children would be down here sort of,

as bits were flying off, putting them in the barrows

and taking them to the surface.

There was, you know, nothing wasted.

Lift with your legs.

Straight back.

CREAKING

Was that a creak in the barrow or you?

It's amazing how much they must have had to have shifted, Colin.

This is hard, hard work.

Why am I doing it and not Tom?

To exploit their natural resources above ground,

monasteries leased out the fishing rights on rivers.

Their traps complete, the next job

is for Ruth and Simon to set them in the water.

It's best to set these traps in the evening,

because the eels through the heat of the day,

they tend just to lurk in the shadows, in the cold,

-cos they don't like getting too hot, really, so...

-Right.

So that just drops in.

That should drop in

and we need to just tie a marker to a reed somewhere.

Eels are drawn to dark places, so the traps must be left in the shade.

I wonder if we perhaps headed off over there under that shady tree,

cos it looks, you know, a good place where eels might lurk.

So we weight these pots so it sits in the bottom, yeah?

Yes, so that the eels can swim straight into it.

That's it, parallel to the bank, that's lovely.

The ends of the traps are filled with dead fish,

an eel's favourite food.

Nice stinky fish. The stinkier the better, so they can smell it.

-My God, that's just...

-That'll attract them.

Wet...

just plugged at the top, so...

..the fish can't get out.

It's not just to keep the bait in,

but it's to stop the eels getting out.

I always want to call them pots,

but that's not the right name for them, is it?

Down here, we tend to call them putcheons,

but I know all around the country there's grigs, weels...

It's almost an indication, really, of a truly ancient craft, isn't it,

when the tools have all these regional names?

Of course. They all had different shapes as well,

depending on the maker, really.

-Down you get.

-It's beginning to sink.

Is this branch going to hold it? I think so.

The lead ore has been brought to the surface of the mine.

Now, it must be smelted to extract the metal from the rock.

This is done by heating the ore to 600 degrees Fahrenheit.

To achieve these temperatures,

the Tudor smelter would make use of their natural environment.

Furnaces were placed on windy hilltops to help fan the flames.

A super fuel known as white coal was used.

It was made by simply drying out wood in a kiln.

So it's like any kind of oven, really, you know,

-like a bread oven or anything?

-Very much.

It's very similar to a bread oven in that you heat the stone up

and then it's the heat in the mass of the oven which dries the wood.

Heating the wood removes moisture and impurities,

allowing it to burn hotter.

That's the one we've been looking for.

The kiln must be airtight, so gaps are filled with clay.

So I'll put a little fire in here

and then, if it's completely sealed,

the only smoke will be coming out the entrance.

Right, if I was you, Tom, I'd get a handful of clay.

I'm not sure I need to, but sure.

I'll indulge you, Colin. OK.

TOM LAUGHS

I think we've got a few gaps here, Tom.

I can still rescue this quickly.

It's very atmospheric.

I might owe you an eel.

The best wood to convert into white coal is oak.

Ooh!

I almost lost my fingers.

-You've got plenty of wood there, I see.

-Here we go.

Is this going to change much colour?

No, it won't change appearance much,

but any residual moisture will be driven off

through the heat in the stones.

To help the lead melt more quickly,

the ore is smashed into small pieces.

Give it a whack!

Put your arms into it.

You have to smelt it.

-There we go.

-See, there you go, brilliant.

-So how much of this is going to be lead?

-80%.

-That high?

-That high.

So it's a good return on that effort.

Absolutely, very good, very good.

The wood, having dried for four hours in the kiln,

is now white coal.

-Is it hot?

-I'm not going to lie to you, it looks pretty similar.

Well, it's incredibly dry.

The next job is to build a furnace to smelt the lead ore.

At the base, Colin is making a hearth where the lead will collect.

So we just need to spread it

so that it goes up the slope a little bit more.

So this clay lining is going to firm up during the firing process

and it will actually be a ball of lead at the end of the smelting.

On top of the hearth, a fire is built by stacking layers of timber.

-And we'll lay these as close together as we can.

-Right.

The furnace is finished with layers of hot-burning white coal

onto which the lead ore is placed.

Crush the ore up, yeah...

-OK?

-That is pretty heavy.

Excellent. Well done, lads.

Gosh, there's some weight in there.

So we just leave it in the sack?

Yeah, look at that, glinting in the sunlight.

We fold this over and we put the white coal over the top.

And that heat wrapped round our ore is going to be the final

sort of almost turbo boost to smelt it and melt it

and be the conclusion of this big inferno.

Eels were staple food in monasteries that owned rivers.

But for lay people,

who needed permission to access these rivers,

they were a luxury.

Simon and Ruth are heading out to check the traps.

Do you have to change the places you put the traps

or do you just use the same spot?

If it hasn't caught anything for a day or so,

we'd look for somewhere else, because after a while,

you tend to find the places where the eels like to run.

-No, I can't see anything there.

-Nothing?

I'm pretty certain that's empty.

One down, six more to check.

Let's hope we have a bit more luck on the next one.

Fishermen were expected to give a proportion of what

they caught to the monasteries.

Anything else, they could keep.

Just there, I can see the string entering the water there.

-We're going to be lucky this time, I think.

-Yeah, that's my hope.

-Oh, gosh, there are! Hurrah!

-Eels, eels, eels?

-Yeah!

Come on out...

-Are they keen?

-There's one, there it is, look!

Gosh, it's hard to see, this one, there it is!

Yes, there's two. Oh, three!

-Oh, my goodness, three!

-Three!

Is it safe in there?

I need something to knock them back! I can't!

SHE YELLS

Sorry, it's too snake-like, I can't. I was going to try to be all hard.

SHE SIGHS

-There you go.

-It was pretty sweet when it came out though.

-No, there was nothing sweet about it!

-He likes you.

Oh, my toes are all curled now.

So you're looking forward to catching some more now, are you?

SHE LAUGHS

-We've only got two more pots left, haven't we?

-I think so, yes, yeah.

Tudor farmers relied on the landscape

to provide them with their tools.

Cotton grass and other dry plants such as moss

were used for tinder on fires.

As night falls,

the natural tinder is put to the test on the smelting furnace.

-So this can light our kiln, can it?

-I would think so.

-Shall we just try it?

-Yeah.

-Whoa!

-That will do the trick. Let's put a good handful in there.

-Look at that. That's amazing.

-It's starting to take hold now, Tom.

It's going to go from 20 degrees up to 600 degrees.

Could we achieve that kind of temperature with just wood?

Not so quickly.

You know, that extra boost with the white coal is going to be

the icing on the cake for that final boost to take it from a rock

to a molten metal.

As the temperature rises, the lead should melt from the rock

and trickle down into the hearth at the base.

I tell you what, this is fierce.

This is one of the fiercest fires I've ever felt.

When you're smelting,

can you tell from the colour of the flame what's happened to the ore?

Oh, yes, very much so.

As it starts to drop down, the various gases come off it.

-Can you see that blue?

-Oh, yes, just forming up on the right-hand side.

Yeah. It's really visible, actually.

But after a promising start, things begin to go dangerously wrong.

That wind coming up the hill,

it's making the fire burn hotter on one side and it's starting to tilt.

We're trying to rectify it with a couple of timbers

but we may not end up smelting all our lead.

If they don't work fast, all their hard work will be destroyed.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't disturb the top.

The fire has been rescued for now.

You know, it's collapsing,

but more or less within its own footprint, which is what we wanted.

It's definitely reducing as well, isn't it?

As they reduce in size, there's greater opportunity for the lead

to actually go through the gaps into our bowl that we've created.

At the moment, I'm quite happy with the way it's going.

The fire will continue to burn overnight.

Only in the morning will they find out if it's worked.

Lead was one of the most important materials in building medieval

cathedrals and churches, and integral to making stained glass.

Christians saw light as symbolic of God's power and aimed to build

churches that would be open to as much light as possible.

Ruth's come to Lincoln Cathedral to meet glazier Richard Still,

who's making stained glass.

-Let's play about with this piece.

-Right.

The first thing that they did was score the glass with a flint.

So we've got a bit of wood, we've rubbed it with powdered chalk

and the design is drawn out with just some charcoal.

So you can just trace through, because glass being

so helpfully see-through.

It is very crude and hard to control.

Then some little moon-shaped crosshatching just to

-encourage the glass to break the way we'd like it to break.

-OK.

Lots of little nibbly sort of...

Actually, when glaziers' workshops have been excavated, they've found

-fragments of glass with these little crosshatch marks on.

-Have they?

So we can be quite sure...

-This really is the technique that was used.

-That really happened.

-OK.

-The next technique is even cruder

and it is simply breaking the glass.

It's a case of using this tool. This is a grozing iron.

Grozing, meaning to crush.

That's really all we're doing, crushing the edge of the glass.

-Nibbling away at it.

-Nibbling away.

-That way up.

-That's right.

Fingers in close to the edge that we've marked and just nibble.

Glass was expensive in Tudor England,

because producing it was so slow and labour-intensive.

I'm doing very tiny nibbles because I'm scared stiff.

You're right to be scared.

You can't really put it back once you've taken it away, can you?

You can't.

It's a once-and-forever process, it's so unpredictable,

so hard to control.

A lot of glass must have been broken

where you didn't want it to be broken.

-I can imagine many an apprentice getting a severely clipped ear.

-Yes.

For breaking an important piece.

And it always breaks just right at the last minute

when you think everything is almost perfect.

-That is looking pretty good, isn't it?

-It was slow.

But it is a slow process. Pretty impressed.

In the 1500's, England was producing up to 500 tonnes of lead a year.

Tom and Peter are returning to see

whether the smelting fire has been successful in producing lead.

-Oh, wow!

-Steady.

Well, this is the remains of our kiln. It's just burnt down to ash.

Our clay bowl at the bottom, I thought was going to break up

in the heat but that's actually just gone solid.

-That's amazing. Look at the colour.

-That is metal.

Look, we've got loads of lead there, Tom. Have you got a bag there?

-I have. I came prepared.

-At least one of us did.

Whoa, look at that. Look at that.

Put that down and get it in the middle.

The lead must now be refined.

Colin has made a refining kiln in the woods.

This process requires a much more controlled temperature

than smelting, so it must be sheltered from draughts.

-Just tip it in?

-Yes.

These are called black-working hearths or black-working ovens

because the lead that you brought, it's got a bit of ash mixed in

and there's a dark tinge to it.

The first burn is taking it from the rock.

Here, we're getting rid of the impurities.

The main impurity that's removed is sulphur,

driven off as hazardous fumes.

OK, Colin. The moment of truth, hey?

It's like Christmas as I unwrap it here. Here we go.

Nice.

While the lead is being refined,

the team make moulds for ingots using wet sand.

I'll be gentle, yes?

Tom is pumping the bellows and we're taking it in turns to get this

furnace absolutely raging, and the lead, it's coming out the bottom.

It's trickling out like a silver stream

and he's collecting it in an iron crucible.

He's just about pouring it into the moulds.

So, you don't want it spilling all over the place

because it burns and it sticks, as well.

Not wishing to put any pressure, but you're in the hot seat.

-OK, there's a fair old weight in this.

-In there?

-Yeah.

-OK.

-Fast and loose with our lead here.

The quality appears so much better.

It looks cleaner, it looks more polished, even,

than it did before it was refined.

In my mind, lead is not silver.

Lead is a dull colour, but I suppose that's oxidisation

with the air, isn't it?

It is, and looking at this though, it's shiny and it's bright

and it looks like it is worth money.

The ingots will weighed just over two pounds and will go towards

making a fother, the unit for just over a tonne of lead.

It was worth up to £8.

Right, I suppose take our ingots out. They might actually be cold.

They're warm.

They've got that kind of rough sand indentation on the side.

This is one of the characteristics of sand-casted metal.

You get that sort of indentation of the sand which gives it

a slightly rougher surface and it's one of the means of identifying

Medieval leadwork really.

That has come from that.

That was hard work. These were tricky, but ultimately a success.

I think we need to get this to the monastery.

At the cathedral, Ruth's shaped the pieces of stained glass

and is returning to complete the panel.

Some of the largest and most elaborate windows

were commissioned during the medieval period,

all held together with lead.

A survey at the time estimated that monasteries held

some 20,000 fothers of lead.

In the 1530s, Henry VIII targeted this valuable material

during the dissolution of the monasteries.

It was ripped out, melted and sold.

-So, here's the panel that we're working on.

-Uh-huh.

We've got our horseshoe nails around.

You've cut this piece, this last piece to go in...

beautifully, I have to say.

So what you're going to do is take a piece of lead

and this is the scaffolding that holds the window together.

Strips of lead made from ingots were then melted and poured over reeds.

-This is called...

-RUTH GASPS

-So soft!

-..lead came, C-A-M-E.

-I know this sounds odd, but it's like modelling in marzipan.

-Yes.

BOTH LAUGH

It's sort of got that...

When marzipan's cold, it seems to behave in much the same way.

-There's a resistance...

-There's a resistance, but not that much.

-..but it will give.

So presumably, I need to get an angle on that corner first.

-You need to take an angle of 45 degrees.

-Just there?

-Yep.

And then...in. It is just so soft.

-Is that close enough as a fit?

-That looks fantastic.

Now, what we need to do...

-Let me help here because I'll put a finger here.

-Right.

-What you're going to do...

-Ooh, nails, yes.

..is use a couple of nails...

-To hold.

-..just to hold. Yep.

-And then we have to...solder it?

-We have to solder it.

To fuse the lead together, it is soldered by melting

another metal onto the join.

Animal fat, known as tallow, is applied to the joints first.

-Yep, perfect.

-Gosh, it's not much, is it?

It's not much, just enough for the tallow to melt

and form a layer between the air and the lead.

-Okey-doke.

-You'll probably find it easier...

-A little bit of warming.

Then touch and let it melt through.

-That's it.

-Ooh, that melted through fairly quickly.

-That's nice.

-Hold...and come straight up.

-Straight up. That's beautiful.

-OK.

-Fantastic.

-Iron back in the fire.

-That's made quite a nice little round bead, hasn't it?

-Yes.

What you've got to remember is that this joint is

an integral part of the structure of the window.

If this comes apart in five years, or ten years,

-or 50 years or 100 years, the window falls apart.

-Disaster.

OK, moment of truth, I suppose. Oooh!

Is it actually going to hold together?

Yeah, there we go.

-RUTH LAUGHS

-What do you think?

Do you like it? Is it a thing of beauty?

It's funny - down flat on the board, it looks rather dead and plain.

-Mm.

-But as soon as you've got light coming through it,

-it seems to come to life.

-Comes alive, doesn't it?

-It does, it's completely different.

-Yep.

And this handmade glass with its ripples and its bubbles

-and its imperfections are a part of that.

-Yeah.

It's not just a slab of transparent stuff,

and that's the beauty of the material.

After three days away at the mine, the boys are returning to the farm.

-That lead mining's knackered me.

-Yeah.

-I'm a broken man.

-Yeah, you and me both. Over we go.

-Over.

Good girls.

On long journeys, travellers would stop to spend the evening at an inn,

where their animals could also be housed for the night.

Monks saw it as their Christian duty

to provide hospitality to travellers.

Monasteries with land on major pilgrimage

and trade routes also seized this as a business opportunity,

building inns which could be leased out for revenue.

Welcome to the inn. What's your drinks order, water? Water?

Water? Ale!

-I think I'll have to come in with you, aren't I?

-You are.

OK, girls. You've done well. Going to the back in a bit.

We're going to see how much parking costs.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

Inns were busy places, bringing together the old and the young.

Sometimes, preachers could hope to capture an audience.

Priests give themselves to feasting and banqueting,

spend themselves in vain babbling.

Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain.

Inns like this were originally designed to be

accommodation blocks, but having built them for that purpose,

they quickly became spaces that really lent themselves

to public speaking, such as our friar is doing,

and to entertainments, too.

And this shape forms a sort of natural auditorium that informs

the architecture of theatres for generations to come.

..are drowned in the delights of this world,

patronise those who cater for their pleasure.

A wide range of social functions would take place at the inn.

From religious to commercial, it was a microcosm of Tudor life.

-Cheers. Cheers, Ruth.

-Cheers.

-Well, it's good to be in a pub.

-It's such a familiar sort of thing to be doing, too, isn't it?

-Mm.

It's like going to a hotel in a pub, all rolled into one.

If you could hire a room at a place like this for your private party,

you could have your wedding reception here,

your christening party... business meetings.

Loads of people came to inns for business meetings

which really makes sense, doesn't it?

I guess they're on the same route as trade, trade routes.

-Exactly, they're on all the major roads.

-So, constant.

They're in the hearts of major towns and market centres

where people are coming together anyway so of course

you have your business meeting at these sorts of place.

It's a conference centre.

Inns were also places to have fun, and drinking games

were popular, such as the puzzle cup.

Can you drink out of that without spilling it?

It looks like men's work!

RUTH LAUGHS

Ooh!

ALL LAUGH AND APPLAUD

-Ha-ha! For a second there I thought...

-You have a go.

-Oh!

-That doesn't work, no.

-No.

-Is there a hole under there as well? There ruddy is.

-OK, so these puzzle cups.

-Yeah?

-Here we go.

-LADY:

-There's a little hole on the side.

-I found that bit.

-You have to cover up with your hands.

-I managed to do that.

-That creates a vacuum.

-Yeah.

-And then...ready?

-We're ready.

ALL LAUGH AND JEER

Ha-ha, you as well!

-Epic fail!

-RUTH SLAPS THE TABLE

Oh, I've got beer everywhere now!

WHISTLE MUSIC PLAYS

PEOPLE BANG TABLE RHYTHMICALLY

ALL BEING TO SING ALONG

# Bring us in good ale

# For our blessed Lady's sake Bring us in good ale

# Bring us in good ale, good ale

# Bring us in good ale. #

CHEERING, LAUGHTER AND TABLE-BANGING

-(Shush!)

-(Shush!)

RUTH GIGGLES

Accommodation could vary depending on your budget,

from communal rooms to private suites.

(Shush!)

-This is nice.

-Oh, no!

-LAUGHTER

-There's only two beds!

-I'm having the little bed.

-One's big and one's little.

-Most inn rooms were

crowded places, and if you were a single chap travelling,

you would expect to share the bed with somebody else,

-who might be a complete stranger.

-If only I had that luxury!

-THEY LAUGH

-Get off!

They're not exactly bouncy, are they, these beds?

They're all right, though.

-What kind of quality are we dealing with?

-This is pretty good

-for an inn, this is.

-How many stars are we looking at here?

-Four.

-Four?

-I can see them through the roof!

THEY LAUGH

-Go on, move over. Move over.

-PETER SIGHS

Very Morecambe and Wise.

DEEP BREATH

Make a wish, Tommo. It's your lucky night.

-Peter, get your knee out of my back.

-RUTH: Shut up, over there!

It's late July, a time when farmers needed to keep a close eye

on their crops as they neared harvest.

Tudor farmers would also use this time for hay-making,

weeding, and checking the progress of young animals who would

provide valuable income later in the year.

The woodlands owned by monasteries were a perfect place

to rear young pigs.

Tenants would seek rights from their monastic landlords

to pasture pigs in the forest, known as pannage.

The team's six piglets have been foraging in the woods

for a couple of weeks.

Peter and big farmer Neal Careswell have come to check

-on their progress.

-Pig-pig-pigs!

-Do you reckon they'll come to our call?

-I think so, I think so.

-Hey, piggies.

-You've got to go, "Piggy!"

-Piggies! Pig-pigs.

-Try up there.

-Look how big they've become.

-They have grown up fast.

-Fantastic! God, they've done well.

-They've done a good job

of clearing this woodland.

Not only do the acorns and roots provide

rich sustenance for the piglets,

but their foraging also clears the undergrowth,

allowing young trees in the woodland to thrive.

That's what they would've used them for.

They're fantastic excavators.

They would've pushed them into land like this

and you've noticed that they've not touched

any of the coppicing wood so they'll clear everything else

and then the woodmen used to be able to come in

and it was ready for them.

Pork was in great demand by both the monasteries

and the lay community,

as pigs were inexpensive to keep and the meat easy to preserve.

Keeping pigs was a useful money-spinner

for the ambitious Tudor farmer.

-Our Tudor farming Bible.

-I see you've got your Bible.

A book of husbandry.

-What does it say, then?

-You tell me! I find it hard to read.

-Right, OK.

-"For it is an old saying..."

-Mm-hmm.

-"..that he hath both sheep...

-"Swine and bees."

"Sheep, swine and bees" - got, got, got. "He may thrive,

"because he hath these things that most..."

"profit of in shortest space of time."

This is basically saying we'll get the most amount of profit

-out of these guys..

-Yep.

-..for the least amount of investment.

By scavenging like this, a piglet could grow quickly,

allowing the farmer to slaughter them young.

So a Tudor farmer couldn't sustain these pigs through winter

on feed, but a Tudor farmer could sustain himself,

-I suppose, on the meat from the pigs.

-Definitely.

They would've looked at trying to get as much slaughtered

and as much preserved, dried, smoked and stored

ready for the winter rather than feed the animal through the winter.

-Yeah.

-Definitely. These guys, I mean...

Are they ready to slaughter yet?

You can check, you can have a feel of their spine.

If you go along their spine and just have a feel

-of the two fillets either side.

-Yeah.

If the spine's very, very protruding,

then you know it's underweight.

-These guys are fine. There's no bones sticking out.

-Yeah?

They're a good size. They're very...boisterous!

That's always a good sign. But no, I think we've got a while to go yet.

-Ow!

-NEAL LAUGHS

Obviously still hungry, though.

I feel a bit like the witch out of Hansel and Gretel.

BOTH LAUGH

-HIGH-PITCHED:

-"How fat are you?"

I call it "going on holiday," so we'll maybe use that term

-from now on so they don't hear us!

-Hey, chaps.

I think we're really, really on target, they're looking fantastic.

The farmhouse was not just where the farmer, his family and staff lived.

It was also a business centre where deals were made

and meetings were held. So Ruth's considering some home improvements.

Appearances were important, and aspirational farmers would want

to emulate the tastes of wealthy Tudors through their decorations.

At the top end of society, people really enjoyed

bold, strong colour and pattern

and they covered their walls in fabrics, in paintings.

The most expensive thing that you could have in your palace,

in your castle, in your abbot's lodging was a tapestry.

So as somebody of more modest means, imitating tapestry

was a really socially upwardly mobile thing to do.

So many people went to the painters or stainers in order to

achieve it, and a stainer is somebody who paints on cloth.

To produce a wall-hanging for the farmhouse,

Ruth's visiting artist Mark Goodman in his workshop.

The materials used by stainers were sourced from their surroundings.

So the pigments, they vary.

So you've got cheap ones.

For example, that's just a red ochre, that's just a clay.

That's actually just dug out of the ground, it's relatively cheap.

Right, so I can have any sort of brown colours for very little?

Yeah, reds, browns, yellows, those sorts of colours

and a more interesting one is lead white.

-So, obviously lead - mined.

-Mm.

But then to get it into that form there, soaking it in vinegar

and making sure it's coated in vinegar steam

for about three to four weeks and then white...

-You get those little white crystals on the top.

-Yeah.

Pigments were mixed with glue made from boiled animal fat

known as size or distemper.

Once the paint has been made, it needs to be kept warm

to prevent the glue from solidifying.

It seems really weird, doesn't it, having to keep your glue,

-your paint hot?

-Mm, yes.

You notice when it's not, cos it just doesn't work.

It doesn't flow, does it?

You are more or less putting one layer on

-and staining the canvas.

-Yes.

You're not sort of building up layers like an oil painter would do.

-So these can be just churned out?

-These can be created very quickly.

Scenes from mythology and folklore were popular on wall-hangings.

Ruth's helping Mark produce a stain of George and the Dragon.

-It's a bit paint-by-numbers, this, isn't it?

-Yes, it's a cartoon.

We're not going to do it so...

We won't try and make it realistic or put a lot of effort

into making it realistic.

That takes time, obviously, and hence it costs more

so this one's just going to be some nice, bright colours.

We'll put a bit of shading in in various places

and that's about it, really.

In the 1500s,

portraiture was moving away from stylised caricatures.

This period saw a transition where more realistic art developed

and flourished during the Renaissance.

It also brought about advancements in technology.

Changes were made to the ancient camera obscura.

Tom is sitting for the artist Sigrid Holmwood

to experiment with this technique.

OK, Tom, so I think you might have to come a little bit closer,

-if you can.

-A little bit closer?

-Yeah...

Oh, no, too close. A bit further away. That's it.

OK, great. Stay still.

OK, so, what you need to make a camera obscure

is firstly a darkened room. "Camera obscura" actually means "dark room".

And then you block out the window and you put a hole in it.

Daylight bounces off Tom and passes through a lens which flips

the image upside-down on to the parchment.

Early camera obscuras used a pinhole to project

the image onto the canvas, but in the Tudor period,

lenses were adopted for the first time,

making the image brighter and clearer.

Even the tiniest movement shows up a lot on this.

I'm going to see how this looks soon,

but I've got a feeling that we might have to try it again. OK, Tom.

-The thing is, you moved a bit.

-Can I move now?

-Yeah, you can move now!

-Just checking!

We didn't manage to get your nose, it's gone all weird.

-Looks a bit like a witch or something.

-Exactly!

And your whole head's a bit compressed

because you probably moved in one direction after I'd done that.

-I've been trying to lose weight.

-SHE GIGGLES

This isn't the way to do it.

They need a way of keeping Tom still.

And we're sure this is my fault, this one?

THEY LAUGH

-Stick that down.

-It's just like Victorian photography,

you need to be as still as possible.

OK, great, that's looking much better now. OK, keep still.

It's like a race against time.

OK, so in this case we've got his nose

and his eyes and his mouth really nicely in focus

but actually his ear and the top of his head

and his hat are kind of receding and quite fuzzy.

You've got this area of focus in the centre

and then this area around the outside which gets out of focus

and this creates distortions in scale.

It's quite controversial amongst art historians

how much the camera obscura was used by artists in the past.

There's a lot of resistance to the idea cos people think it's cheating.

I certainly feel that it was used more than people think.

-STRAINED:

-This is a bit like being at the dentist.

The moment you're told not to move, everything itches,

you can feel insects on your face that probably aren't there.

You want to cough but, er...yeah, it's nice to sit down

on the farm rather than be working. Sort of!

In the last few weeks, the farm's kitchen garden has burst into life.

But unlike modern gardens, the Tudor farmer would have let

the weeds thrive as well because they, too, had their uses.

Now, this little patch here is actually my crop.

It may look like a weed patch, but it isn't. This is cleavers,

and I'm deliberately growing it.

I know for many people who spend half their lives trying to take it

out of their garden, this may seem madness,

but this is my cleavers crop and it's useful because...

Well, you can eat it. Again, it's not delicious

but it's all right. But it's also really useful as a filter or sieve.

If you lay the stems one way and then the other,

you get a really useful filter which you can use in the dairy,

you can use in your brewing, in the kitchen.

Ruth is also letting the weeds flourish amongst her vegetables.

Think about this lovely set of beans.

If only half of them had germinated, and I'd done a really good job

of the weeding, I'd end up with some empty, dead ground.

But I need to eat all year,

I need a meal out of this patch every single day of the year.

Many of the weeds that have grown are edible,

particularly important to the Tudor farmer when the main food crops

aren't yet ready to be harvested.

The fat hen, this one's not just put-up-able with,

this one's actually quite nice. I quite like fat hen.

There's also land cresses in amongst all here.

Quite a lot of land cress, actually.

And the point is that early on in the process,

I allowed the weeds a little bit of leeway.

And only when I know I've got an established crop

will I start taking them out.

The land cress and fat hen Ruth's picking will become a Tudor salad.

With the outline of the image completed,

Sigrid can now paint the portrait.

If the camera obscura doesn't actually give you the whole picture,

as it were, how come you don't just paint me from scratch?

Well, it's a lot easier to correct something

that's already down there than start entirely from scratch.

But, most importantly, is the relationship between your eyes,

your nose and your mouth, and the very subtle little shapes there

that really make the difference in getting your likeness.

So, the camera obscura is almost like a stencil

from which you start your work.

Yeah. It's a starting point.

You really need to still have lots of drawing skills,

lots of artistic judgement, to be able to use it properly.

It's not like taking a snapshot.

It isn't that easy to use.

Painting was viewed as an art rather than craft in Tudor England,

but that would change with the influx of artists from Europe.

So, would artists travel from village to village

looking for work or...?

In terms of portraiture, there would actually be artists

would travel from country to country,

so there were a lot of artists from the low countries that

travelled to London and were commissioned to do portraits.

A good example is Holbein.

So, he's a little bit later than our period,

more active around the 1530s, but he was from Germany and came to London.

And when I look at Holbein's drawings, I think

probably were done using a camera obscura.

There's little telltale signs.

For instance, there's a very large head

and then with incredibly small shoulders coming off it.

During this period, the Mona Lisa was completed.

And artists strove to mirror the soul of the sitter in their work.

During this time, you start to get a shift towards the more

humanist philosophy, where you start to look for God in nature...

and start to look for God in man.

And so therefore it becomes much more important to try

and capture what things look like naturally.

It's actually much more people's views changing

and then it makes their art change.

Art would decorate the walls of Tudor dining rooms

and fish would dominate the tables.

Ruth has brought her eels back to the farm house

to make the most of this delicacy.

Now I've got to get the slime off my eels.

Like all freshwater fish, they have a sort of protective slime coating.

Salt, rubbing and water. I hate this bit. Eww.

SHE SIGHS

I don't know why it is, but the slime on freshwater fish

makes me more squeamish...

I think, than anything else.

Look at that. Eww.

Fresh water fish was hard to come by for people living away from rivers

and was only eaten on feast days.

It's one of those differences, really,

between the monastic community and the lay community.

People like us, eels are an occasional treat.

In the monasteries, they are almost a staple.

For us, fish means salt fish, salt cod.

It means pickled fish. It means pickled herring.

In the monasteries, fresh fish is possible and, indeed,

quite probable on a daily basis.

Ruth is cooking the eels as part of a stew known as bruit.

She makes a sauce from parsley, breadcrumbs and beer,

which gives the dish its name.

Getting the texture right is half the battle.

The eels are cooked separately and added to the sauce later.

Cooked like this, you can see why I've left the skin on.

It gives me perfect, organised little gobbets.

I love that word.

SHE LAUGHS

It is the period word.

The stock from the eels is added for flavour.

It does upset me that when you're watching this

you'll be judging this entirely on what it looks like,

as opposed to what it tastes and smells like.

This isn't posey telly food.

This is real food and it tastes great, and it smells fantastic.

Fresh fish may have been a treat for the farmer,

but pork was widely eaten at both the top and bottom of Tudor society.

Fat was an essential commodity, particularly for monasteries

that used it for cooking, candle making and even shining their shoes.

To make money and keep up with demand,

the farm must have a continuous supply of pigs.

A few weeks ago, their boar Turkish was introduced to the sows.

Does Turkish here have to fancy the pigs he mates with?

No, not necessarily.

A bore will follow his red-blooded primeval instincts.

A sow would be introduced to a boar before reaching a year old

and a farmer would regularly check for signs of pregnancy.

A positive indicator is

when she doesn't show signs of wanting to mate.

This is easily tested by the farmer.

There's the standing heat test... Do you know anything about that?

..which is putting all your weight on their back hips,

which sort of simulates the mounting of the boar.

And they will stand, so they will sort of position themselves,

get themselves in a position where they're ready to be served.

So, shall we give it a go?

We can give it a go, yeah.

Are you comfortable with that?

So, we don't want them to stand if we put our weight here.

Yeah. If you put your weight there and they... Oh.

See, I don't think she is. I mean, she's... Ooh, sorry.

She's not comfortable.

She's looking for her food. She's not really interested in what I'm doing.

Have a go with George. I think George is...

looking a bit more of a sure fire.

-Are you all right?

-Yeah.

What do you think about that then? Eh?

-I'm after your women, Turkish.

-Turkish is a bit confused now.

Competition.

BOTH LAUGH

A sow is pregnant for just under four months,

and the farmer would want her to give birth before winter

to give the piglets a better chance of survival.

Timing was critical.

Oh... He's a good boy, and I think you're probably right.

-I think he's done his job.

-Yeah.

I think he has done his job. Keep an eye on it.

After all their exertions,

the team has returned to the newly decorated farm house.

Supper was usually served at 5pm

and was normally a simple affair of pottage with vegetables,

but tonight the boys are in for a treat.

-Here we go, a bit of a treat, eel.

-Ooh! Freshwater fish.

Freshwater fish.

Got to get involved. Lots of protein - good for the brain.

Yeah. What brain?

Something of a luxury. Here we go.

-This is lovely.

-Yeah, it's good.

-I like bruit.

-It's a nice change.

It is a nice change, and it also represents quite a luxury dish,

really, for lay people.

Because to own the fish, you have to own the rights to the ponds

and the rivers, and tenants very rarely do.

That's all landowners, not tenants like us. Don't you think,

everything we've sort of done in the last couple of weeks,

it's all been under monastic control, hasn't it?

-Yeah...

-Even that inn we stayed at was owned by the monastery.

Yeah. I thought that was one of the best things we've done.

I really enjoyed that. And all the stresses of the farm

and the pressure from the monastery wasn't quite there,

but we were still part of that monastic picture.

Well, I can't help notice that, while I've been away,

you've adorned the place with some beautiful artwork.

Very effeminate knight there.

-Is that you?

-I think I look noble.

-Yeah. Well, you certainly...

You've got that... You're staring off into the distance.

-Thousand-yard stare.

-Thinking about farming.

HE LAUGHS

Next time on Tudor Monastery Farm...

the team go to work for the monastery,

restoring accommodation...

This is going to be a fantastic floor, I can feel it.

..washing their linens...

It's the bashing that does it.

..and learning the art of monastic hospitality.

I want to stress, I did not drop the custard castle.

ALL LAUGH

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