Episode 5 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.

THEY SHRIEK

Quite noisy.

Wow, it's a really violent process.

While immersing themselves in the beliefs...

ALL: Amen.

..customs...

..and rituals that shaped the age.

THEY CHEER

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.

In the early 1500s, no help for the poor was available from the state.

Those in need relied solely on the charity and hospitality of others.

Hospitality was a vital social virtue -

the measure by which any good Christian would be judged.

And at the heart of this culture of hospitality

and giving were the monasteries.

Beyond their gates they ran almshouses.

And within the monastery, they accommodated

everyone from the destitute traveller to the wealthiest noble.

For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.

-Amen.

-ALL: Amen.

James, can I interest you in some pottage?

Well, I'm sure it's good for the soul.

Monastic expert Professor James Clark

is joining the team for a meal.

Did the monasteries do much entertaining or hospitality?

Absolutely. It's really essential to the monasteries' service to

society, that charity, that is, in the strict sense, loving kindness to

your fellow man, it's really at the heart of the monastic vocation.

At the lower end it would be akin to a kind of backpackers' hostel.

But at the other end of the scale,

for the most distinguished guests, there would be really lavish

accommodation and food would be laid on.

For the monks, hosting an esteemed guest wasn't just hospitable,

it was profitable.

Entertaining nobility was an excellent way to encourage

large donations to the monastery.

The nobles believed that supporting the monastery would

guarantee that they went straight to heaven when they died.

The abbot is planning a feast for a wealthy patron,

and James is enlisting the team's help to prepare for the visit.

Well, I have some particular tasks in mind for you.

There's going to be a lot of preparing of bed linen,

-so that does mean laundry.

-THEY LAUGH

-Lucky, lucky me.

-No escaping the laundry.

And there could well be need for some assistance in the kitchen.

Because lavish meals are expected and, nice as pottage is...

THEY LAUGH

As well as monks and workers, the monastery also accommodated

other members of society on a permanent basis.

Part of the monastery's remit was to provide care for some

of the elderly, their retired staff or their most generous donors.

James is enlisting the team to renovate a room in the outer

precinct of the monastery, as part of something known as a corrody.

A corrody is a grant, which is really like a kind of pension -

it provides an individual with accommodation and food,

over the course of a year.

And the monastery might grant that

to one of their long-servicing lay servants.

And after 20 or 30 years' service, instead of a gold watch,

they're granted this corrody, which is really going to give them

-room and board to live out their days in their twilight years.

-Mm.

So it's going to need a bit of renovation, really.

This floor's in quite a state now.

Yes, this floor is looking past its best.

It's worth remembering, of course, that they expect

something of high quality, this is a valuable retirement home.

I'll have a chat with the boys.

Especially about the floor, see what we can do.

Before the boys set to work on renovations,

they must attend to an urgent matter on the farm.

The pea crop.

Well, if we look closely, we've still got a crop.

-That is fantastic.

-Do you want it?

Oh, yes, please.

That is absolutely beautiful.

Does it taste good?

Tastes of summer.

Peas were important in Tudor England, as both food

and animal fodder.

Unlike garden peas, field peas were left to dry on the plant

until they were harvested. It made them easier to store

but also vulnerable to birds.

This is the thing, if we start drying this crop out here

all the birds are going to be looking at it and going,

they've laid on a pea buffet, let's get in there.

Yeah, it's going to be a proper feast.

Bird control was a serious business.

In the later Tudor period, bounty payments

of a penny for three birds' heads, were offered.

And farmers often employed children

to frighten away the pigeons and rooks.

Tom and I are erecting a bird scarer.

We're putting in hazel poles, I'm going to tie some

string between them,

and onto that string we're going to hang some shells.

Tudor-style wind chimes.

-Be gentle.

-Like this.

A lot of work, that was.

So, we've taken advantage of the wind, making sure all

the shells just bounce off each other, making some noise.

That's the thing, being a Tudor farmer, or being any farmer,

you can't afford to lose a crop.

But especially in Tudor times, these peas were your sustenance.

Right, I'm going to stick another stake in, Tom.

Am I going to get in trouble if I walk across the pea crop?

If you don't walk, the birds will eat.

I'll be delicate.

Oops, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

Ruth has begun preparations for the abbot's feast.

Starting by making butter for table.

Now, the reason I've transferred my milk into these dishes

is to help the cream separate. Anybody who's a little bit older

remembers the days before homogenised milk.

And they remember that in milk bottles it always

used to rise, and you'd get a bit of cream on the very top.

That's what's happening here.

Each day a new bowl of milk was settled.

And Ruth has started to process yesterday's batch.

Look, see how thick that cream is.

Super thick, look at that.

Not only was butter an important source of calories, it was

also considered good for the health and a cure for chest complaints.

Lid on to minimise splashing.

THUNKING AND LIQUID SPLASHING

Hear that?

Knowing what stage you're at is all about listening to the

sounds that it makes in the churn.

And now it's all a matter of time.

A volume of cream like this can turn into butter in as little

as 15 to 20 minutes.

Butter, along with other dairy produce, was known as a white meat,

most commonly consumed by poorer members of society.

After all, everyone had a cow.

The point was you could graze a cow even if you had no land yourself,

you could graze it on the common land, you had a right to

put a cow on the common, which meant that you had access to some milk.

You could make your own butter, you could make your own cream,

you could make your own cheese.

White meats, therefore, were a very democratic food, everybody had them.

And the rich sneered.

But dairy produce wasn't the preserve of the poor for long.

By 1500, landowners were taking back farmland and also common land,

to establish parks for hunting.

It meant peasants could no longer graze their animals for free.

Now, you've got to actually rent a field to keep your cow on.

And that meant that increasingly, from 1500 onwards,

cows and cows' milk

became something associated with the wealthier sort of peasant.

All feels a little bit stiffer. So, I'm really listening now.

WOODEN THUNKING

You can't really predict

whether it's seconds away or another five minutes.

Phew!

We mi..

LOUD THUNK

Did you hear?

Suddenly it sounds wetter.

That noise has changed, hasn't it?

Oh, yes, look at that. Now that looks good.

There we are, look, butter.

The final stage is to squeeze all the butter particles

into a solid lump.

Now, obviously, doing this with your hands, there's a problem -

the warmth of your hands starts to melt the butter.

So, instead one uses a pair of wooden hands.

Once the butter milk is removed, Ruth adds salt,

which is a preservative.

And indeed, if I put enough salt in it

I can even make a product that can survive for a full year

in an edible, not necessarily a tasty, but in an edible fashion.

What kind of trouble do you think Ruth has got us into now?

Well, you never know with Ruth, do you?

Oh, dear.

Peter and Tom are keen to get on with their monastic

restoration project.

And the priority is laying a new floor.

It'll be made from a mixture of lime putty and ash,

known as lime ash, which was strong, flexible and a good heat insulator.

The boys have come to collect some limestone from the forest to

produce their own lime putty.

This is the key ingredient to our floor, it's chalk.

We're going to heat it up, that's going to dry off the carbon dioxide.

We're going to put that in water, that'll turn it into a putty,

then we're going to lay it on our floor.

And as it dries out and reabsorbs carbon dioxide,

it's going to turn back into chalk, back into a stone,

and make our floor absolutely solid.

To turn the limestone into the lime and ash mixture needed

for the floor, it must be roasted at

a temperature of over 900 degrees Celsius.

Just need to make sure that every piece of that chalk hits that

magic number of 900 degrees.

Chalk, or limestone,

was hugely popular as a building material in the Tudor era.

While the Anglo-Saxons had built with wood, the Tudors needed lime

to make mortar for their stone-built castles, city walls and churches.

Lime ash was normally gathered from the bottom of kilns,

where limestone was burnt.

Lime kilns really take off in the Tudor period,

and that's the reason why, in 1500,

there's a massive surge in the fashion for lime ash floors.

However, farmers like us, who might not be too close to a lime kiln,

could make their own, such as this. It's a real crossover in technology.

In Tudor England, the shadow of plague and disease was ever present.

People worked hard to keep a clean living environment.

There were even systems for waste removal.

Centuries before germs were discovered,

cleaning was a surprisingly rigorous affair.

Especially in the dairy.

With the butter made, Ruth needs to wash her equipment.

A Tudor housewife had three lines of defence in her

battle for hygiene in the dairy, and not one of them included soap.

First and foremost came salt.

Used with a damp cloth, it helps to scrub,

but it also, of course, kills bacteria.

She then turned to the second line of defence - boiling water.

All the dairy utensils were finished off by being scalded

over all of their surfaces.

And her last line of defence was sunlight, more specifically,

the UV element of sunlight.

She might not have known why it worked, but she knew that it did.

In fact, the UV kills bacteria.

So, on a nice day like today, you'd have seen a very common sight

outside any woman's dairy -

all her dairy utensils lined up in the sun

getting a good sterilising dose of sunlight.

The limestone has been roasting for three hours,

driving off carbon dioxide and leaving a highly volatile product

called quicklime.

It's then put in water for a process known as slaking.

So, if we just put that in.

-There it goes, look at it. Look, look at that.

-It's amazing.

It appears to have worked.

And if I bring that back up...

There we go, look at that. Oh, that's the dangerous bit.

But that is lime slaking, and it is turning into a putty.

The fire drives off all the carbon dioxide and it makes

the chalk very, very volatile.

When it goes in the water, the water is absorbed

and there's an exothermic reaction.

This isn't the heat from the fire that's doing this, this is

the chemical reaction that's heating up this water, and you can hear it.

And it's slowly turning into a putty.

Look at that. That is lime putty on my shovel.

The lime will continue to slake in the water overnight.

In 1500, the shape of England's waterways

and wetlands was unrecognisable from today.

Before the extensive land drainage of the later 16th century,

these regions provided a wealth of resources -

from fish and wildfowl, to peat used for fuel.

And something without which no Tudor home would have been complete -

rushes.

-Hi, Linda.

-Oh, hi, Ruth.

Ruth has come to meet rush worker, Linda.

The rushes they harvest will be made into floor mats

for the room the team are renovating.

Rushes are a rather ignored resource in modern Britain, aren't they?

-Yep.

-You look at the domestic interiors of the late 15th and early

16th century, and you can spot rushes here, there and everywhere.

In Tudor England they used them for their mattresses,

-their chair seats, their cushions.

-Their flooring.

-The flooring.

-Hats.

-Yep.

-Baskets.

Rushes were commonly cut between May and September,

as near to midsummer as possible.

Because it's a harvest, we've got to do it in a certain four or

-five weeks of the year, that's all we've got.

-Oh, right.

These will all die down,

if you come to the river in October, you won't see a thing.

-Right.

-And you come to the river in April, you won't see a thing.

So, they'll all die down, right back into their rhizome in the mud.

Before Ruth finishes harvesting the rushes,

she'll need a decent floor to put them on.

Peter and Tom are combining their lime ash putty with sand,

clay and flint to give the mixture strength.

This is really good, our lime putty, mixed with the ash.

The boys are adding a special ingredient to bind their floor.

Whoa.

Curdled milk.

Is that smell you, or the milk?

Well, it's a little bit of both, Tom.

And that should go as the floor ages,

so we don't have to worry about it too much.

Used in concretes like this since Roman times,

sour milk contains a protein called casein,

which bonds with the lime to make it durable and waterproof.

We're like tiny little bakers making a giant cake, aren't we?

Once all the ingredients are combined,

they can start to lay the floor.

If we just get it in there and stamp it down.

Then flatten it off later with spades.

Feeling good, feeling good. It's getting there.

I'm glad they're not too heavy.

Yeah, no, good harvest we've got here.

An hour's cutting.

Good boy, good boy.

Before the rushes can be used, they must be dried out.

If we use them straight, they're so brittle,

look, they'll just snap straightaway, like that.

Oh, yeah.

So what you have to do is let the cell structure dry out.

So, here's a couple that I cut about five weeks ago,

and now they don't snap.

And if I try and just tear that, I can't.

To make the floor mats, the rushes must be plaited together.

I'll hold it for you.

-Twist, OK, over, under.

-That's right.

-I like the feel that's developing.

-Yeah.

-That's...

-That's tough, isn't it?

That's strong but it's still got a certain soft and bounciness to it.

Now, if you imagine your mattress might need

about 100 feet of this plait.

SHE LAUGHS

Shall we do a kid's one?

Hygiene dictated that the floor mats be replaced every year.

So there was scarcely a time when plaiting rushes

wasn't on the to-do list.

It's the final push to finish the renovations.

The boys are polishing the floor with milk

to give it a hard, waterproof coating.

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

And Ruth has almost completed the sleeping mats.

I've made loads of the plaits,

I shall probably have to make some more, but still.

And then I'm sewing them together...

Into a mat.

This floor looks so much better.

It's not bad, is it?

-I think you've made a really good job.

-Oh, thank you.

Right, where do you want your mats?

Oh, yeah, stick them out the way for a minute,

-cos I've got the hygiene to sort out first.

-OK.

I've got a whole load of herbs to scatter on the floor.

And they serve two basic functions.

The first thing is about smell - people in this period believed

that disease was carried by evil miasmas, by bad smells in the air.

And, if you breathed that evil miasma, you would get sick.

So, wherever you lived, wherever you were spending time,

you wanted it to smell as sweet and clean as possible.

But then there's also a role for insecticides -

things like my tansy, my wormwood, fleabane.

They're for keeping insects out of the house,

things like flies or ants or, or body lice, fleas.

Anything like that can be driven out.

And it will make the whole living experience,

not only healthier, but much pleasanter.

Do you want to stick those mats down then, I've got a little layer down.

Yeah.

In addition to the room, and a provision of food,

the corrody might include firewood and some cooking equipment.

Is that the last one?

Yep.

I think this floor makes a huge difference.

You know, this is easy to keep clean, to look after,

-to be comfy, isn't it?

-Mm.

-Home, sweet home.

Yeah.

The influence of the church on the people of Tudor England

extended far beyond its role as landlord and welfare provider.

They also controlled the spread of ideas.

Major centres of learning with extensive libraries,

the monasteries were the custodians of knowledge.

Monasteries commissioned deluxe books, costly and prestigious

objects, as gifts for their most distinguished patrons.

And Tom will be making one to present at the abbot's feast.

Historically, books had been written on vellum,

a material made from calf skin.

But by 1500 another medium had taken over - paper.

Expert Jim Patterson is showing Tom how paper was produced.

What we've got in here is a mixture of linen and water,

they are the ingredients for Tudor papermaking.

You would start off with waste rag, it would be a recycling process.

And that's the pulp that would result.

There's no wood involved at all.

None whatsoever. Not till much, much later in history.

-Now I'm going to form a sheet on a hand mould.

-OK.

There we are, by dipping it in, below the surface, go in like that.

-OK, that way.

-That's it, that's it. In you go, below the surface.

Flood the mould and bring it up.

Clear of the vat.

Up. Now, shake it. Forward and back, side to side.

-Forward and back.

-Can you see?

-Right.

Side to side, forward and back,

and you'll see the sheet actually forming.

And it's leaving the fibre on the surface.

A little bit uneven.

THEY LAUGH

Shall I go again?

No, I think that'll pass for Tudor paper. I think it...

And the next stage is couching - from the French "coucher" - to lay.

-Just placing that on there?

-That's right.

-Right.

Bring it upright.

This was the job for the assistant, this was the non-technical work.

-Non-technical.

-Yeah, yeah, right, yeah.

-Fair enough.

-Yeah.

I'm just going to roll that down.

Roll it from one hand to the other, and it should come away.

-Wow.

-Now, you see, you see.

-It's not as easy as it looks.

-Not enough weight. OK, we'll make another one.

-OK.

But more weight next time. Dig in deep.

The first paper mill in England was established around 1490.

But at the time, paper was mainly imported from Europe,

making it extremely costly.

-Firmly and with confidence.

-With confidence, eh.

And manufacturers could be recognised by their watermarks.

-Not too bad.

-There's quite a deep indentation here.

When the paper's pressed,

that would pretty much all come down to the same thickness,

and you really shouldn't be able to see it on the surface.

But when you hold it up to the light,

the displaced fibres will show as a watermark.

OK, about there.

The paper is pressed for an hour.

We'll take the press off now and see what we've got.

Quite exciting, really.

After 50 years, the novelty wears off.

THEY LAUGH

That's the first of our bits of paper.

That's brilliant.

And you can see the watermark.

Paper making, Tudor-style.

THEY LAUGH

Thank you very much.

The daily running of the monasteries required many lay workers,

leaving the monks free for worship, prayer or study.

Usually, these workers were men,

but certain jobs were open to older women.

Considered by the monks to be beyond the temptations of the flesh,

they helped with gardening, cooking and the washing of linens.

Which is what Ruth has been commissioned to do.

My main cleaning chemical, throughout all my housework,

is wood ash.

It's particularly good at dealing with grease,

with dissolving it so that you can wash it away.

But when you're doing the laundry, you don't

necessarily want pure ash in your best napkins.

So, what I'm going to do is filter the chemical within the ash,

out, into a nice clean liquid.

Inside a bucket, with a hole in the bottom,

Ruth makes a filter of river gravel and straw.

And then the ash just goes on top.

And this is, you know, just out of the fireplace.

And then I just need to pour some water through.

And let that seep through.

Leaching out every last bit of chemical

into a really strong lye solution.

The word lye, after all, is just a short form of alkali.

With Tom and Ruth attending to monastic matters,

Peter is keeping the farm running.

The cows have eaten all the grass, and there is a shortage of food.

To source a Tudor solution, Peter has come to meet Ted Green,

who looks after the woodlands at Knepp Castle in West Sussex.

-Hi, Ted.

-How you doing?

-Yeah, not bad. How are you?

I'm really, really pleased because I've just found this tree

which is going to really work for a ladder for us.

-You're making a ladder out of this tree?

-Yeah.

-Oh, Christ.

-Well, there you go. I'll bring the tools.

You bring the tools, I'll bring the ladder.

Straight in front of you.

Ted is reviving an ancient farming practice,

which has existed ever since animals were domesticated.

Harvesting hay from trees.

It's a perfect solution for the dry months.

As trees keep their leaves hydrated,

so the hay will provide a good source of moisture.

It's something which actually predates grass,

it's only in modern times that people start thinking about grass.

Animals never, never ate only grass, we made them eat grass.

Which trees are we looking at cutting?

In this particular case we've got two trees which are ash,

-which they absolutely love.

-Yeah.

It's one of the top trees for animals.

-Right, I've been lugging this ladder round long enough.

-OK.

Where do you want it?

-Well, we're going to try and rest it in that tree.

-Right.

And just see how we go.

Here we go. No, no, no, no, no. Over your way a bit.

Oh, that's it, you're in. Great, I don't mind that.

Go on, try it.

I'm not overly convinced about this.

Erm...

Yeah, yeah.

-OK. Right...erm....

-So you're up.

-Yeah, for now.

-OK.

So, what am I going for here, Ted? What am I looking for?

This year's growth,

which should have leaves right down the stem to near the trunk.

-That's brilliant.

-That one?

And that's a good, that's a good size as well,

that's lovely for, for storing.

These leaves, Ted, they're going to...

Are they going to hold their nutrients?

Yep, yep, because we're cutting them this time of the year.

Obviously, when they fall off in the autumn,

the tree has put all the minerals and nutrients back into itself,

but by doing this, we're trapping them all in the leaves.

Unlike coppicing, where material is cut from the base of the tree,

harvesting tree hay like this is known as pollarding.

The leaves are cut and re-grow above the height of the animal's head.

Which meant farmers could control the crop.

It was one of the earliest forms of woodland management.

Well, Pete, that looks like you've got most of it off, to me.

-Yeah, I think so.

-Wonderful.

As well as laundering the linen for the upcoming abbot's feast,

Ruth is also tackling some more personal garments.

While most lay people had little time for bodily hygiene,

for monks, washing was a matter of religious discipline,

demanded before meals and the duties of the day.

Having clean clothes was essential.

According to the rule of St Benedict,

a monk was supposed to wear his woollen tunic next to his skin.

Then he had his woollen scapular over it -

a woollen gown and a woollen hood.

But by 1500, lay people wouldn't have dreamed of wearing wool

next to the skin.

They all wore linen underwear,

something that could be laundered regularly.

And the monks wanted some of that comfort and cleanliness themselves.

So, there are records of monks buying underwear.

And there were also records of them having it laundered.

I've put a load of sheets in. If I just keep piling up

and up and up and up until the basket's full, it'll all compress

down and I'll have real difficulty getting my lye to move between.

So, once I've got a layer...

I make a shelf.

The shelf will support the next layer of linen,

saving the bottom layer from being crushed.

So, now it's the moment for my extra strong lye.

I pour this lye on, it's going to slowly filtrate its way through

all the greasy, dirty things, dissolving any grease that's there.

So, on it goes.

Tom is overseeing the production of a book,

which the abbot will present to his patron at the feast.

In Medieval England, hand-copied books were still a precious

commodity, mainly the preserve of nobility and the monasteries.

But by the reign of Henry VII, a new technology from the continent

was changing this, the printing press with moveable type.

Developed by a German craftsman, Johannes Gutenberg, the press

allowed individual letters to be set into text and rearranged with ease.

Printing expert Nick Smith

is setting the type for the abbot's book.

So, when you put these letters in you're not actually

putting them in as you would read them?

No, not on the end of the piece of type. It's going to be

upside down and backwards as far as the compositor is concerned.

So he has to be able to read a line like that

just to check that there are no errors in it.

And that, of course, means that when it's turned over, inked

and pressed into paper, it will come out the right way round.

Printers used to refer to these types as sorts.

If you ran out of the stock of a particular character,

you can say you're out of sorts.

Once a page of type is set, it is

carefully transferred to a metal frame called a chase,

and held in place with wedges, known as furniture.

If those letters move even a millimetre,

-it becomes a smudge, it ruins it.

-It does, yes.

You can't afford to have the type moving at all.

In fact, some of the inks we use are so sticky that

if a type is at all loose the sticky ink will actually pull it

-out of position and that...

-In other words, put back.

That could be a disaster.

So these are the ink balls?

These are the ink balls, yeah.

Pick up ink from the ink block there.

Now, a sheet of paper then goes on here.

Now, I'm turning the frisket down.

This is a light metal frame covered in paper,

and this is basically a mask.

Only the areas that want to print are going to touch the paper.

Provide the pressure by pulling on this bar.

We now have to move the press bed in again.

-So it's a double printing process?

-It's a double printing process.

And the reason for that is simply that,

with this simple screw mechanism, it's not possible to develop

enough pressure to print a whole sheet in one go.

And so there's our printed sheet.

Look at that.

So, how many of these sheets would you expect to print in an hour?

They should print 250 in an hour,

but I can't really imagine that they ever managed that

for a long period.

You could make it a little bit faster if you had a boy,

who was known as a printer's devil, taking off the printed sheets,

because that, that required no skill at all.

Well, you've got an unskilled labourer here.

-And we've got a book to print.

-You've done very well.

-So, crack on.

-We'd better get on with the next sheet then. Yep.

This new printing technology was developed by entrepreneurs,

not the church.

As the century progressed, they made more

and more affordable books, which ordinary people might own.

It was an invention that would change the world.

Once the lye has removed all the grease from the laundry,

it's time to wash it.

You could find common washing places like this all over

Britain for hundreds of years.

Every community had to have somewhere to do their laundry.

The key to Tudor laundry was brute force.

It's hard work with this.

But that's the point, that is what does the job for you.

There's no chemicals involved, it is purely mechanical action.

What you're doing is forcing molecules of water,

under tension, through the fibres, and it just physically,

mechanically dislodges the dirt.

It's the bashing that does it.

Once thoroughly wrung out, the laundry is laid on the grass to dry.

The combination of water and sunlight

produces a bleaching effect.

The monastery's sheets are about six shades whiter than ours.

The abbot's book is nearly finished, it just needs binding.

Apprentice bookbinder Eve Goodman is showing Tom the process.

One of the things with printed books is you've got to be really,

really careful to make sure you don't get the pages out of order.

You need to look at the originals

and there are quite a few where a page is upside down.

Where an apprentice has not been quite paying attention.

Once all the papers are folded, they are sliced in half.

It should be one continuous movement.

Bring the knife towards you.

And folded again to form sheets.

Making sure that all the pages are the right way up.

Cor, it's nice stiff paper this.

Oh, it's high quality, I tell you.

This date, the way bookbinding was working,

was you had a bookbinding shop.

And people would come in with their pages, having had them printed,

and hand them over and say, "I want you to bind those."

This is the point at which industrious bookbinding is

happening, where suddenly people can afford to go

and buy their pages and take them to a bookbinder.

I suppose the ability to mass produce books of this type

means that when the Reformation occurred,

Henry VIII was able to print the Bible in English.

And get it out there, making that break from Rome so much easier.

Because, obviously, a lot of the Bibles were printed in Latin

-and he needed to have that separation.

-Exactly.

A small press was used to hold the pages in place.

While their spines were marked out and a series of slits cut.

Right, this is the vital part,

this is the part that holds all of the book together.

This is sewing on the cord. So...

A series of cords are lined up with the slits in the spine.

And the whole book is sewn together.

So, you are, literally, just stitching a book.

Yeah, you're sewing it together.

Have a look.

It's actually very precise, isn't it?

Yeah, it starts to feel like a book at this point, doesn't it?

Yeah, a proper present.

Next, the book needs to be cut to size.

This is called a plough. You see there's a blade here.

And you'll see, as soon as I've got through this lot,

just how silky smooth the edge of the book is.

If you run your finger down there, it squeaks.

That's unbelievably smooth. That's amazing.

The spine is rounded, using a hammer.

-And you can see that there's a curve on it.

-Oh, yeah.

There's a bit of a curve, and all books have got that.

And it's all about making sure that the spine is as stable as possible.

This also forms a ledge for the book's cover to sit on.

So, you can see the rounding over of the spine is

-so that you get this seamless curve.

-Yeah.

Originally covered in plain vellum,

by 1500, luxury books had fine leather covers.

And the craftsmanship required to make a book emphasises, really,

why they were such prestige gifts, doesn't it?

And finally, the book is put in the press to set overnight.

I think the abbot's going to be very proud to give that to his patron.

-Thank you for letting me observe.

-Yeah, that's all right.

Hey, Turkish. Hey, Georgie. Hey, Mildred.

Back on the farm, the pigs are flourishing.

Peter's tree hay is going down well.

She absolutely loves it.

I'm a convert to tree hay.

It's fantastic.

It's your food, stop playing with your dinner.

And with the crop finally dry, it's time to bring in the peas.

Well, our pea scarer has definitely worked.

-We still have a crop.

-I think there's a lot of peas on there.

-There's an awful lot of peas.

-Yeah.

If we were trying to pick these by hand, we'd be here for ever.

The team are using scythes.

First developed in Roman times,

by the Medieval era they had spread throughout Europe.

The smell's amazing, isn't it, Tom?

It is. And they turn out quite easy, as well.

We're loading peas into our wagon, and these dried peas we can

thrash and get the peas out, but the stems we can feed to our cows.

-You're making friends down there, Peter.

-Making friends.

For the Tudor farmer, a good crop would have been a godsend.

Feeding them and their animals, and even making a little cash

if there was extra to sell.

The crop will be beaten with sticks to release the peas,

a process known as thrashing.

-Oh, isn't it fantastic?

-It is.

Standing in a barn so completely full of all of our crops.

Yeah, I know.

Look at that, there are hundreds of peas.

Yeah, this is good.

Well, I don't know if it's the weather or what,

but this has been a really good crop.

I think it's more down to our Tudor farming techniques, to be honest.

Or maybe enough time spent on our knees in church.

THEY LAUGH

The abbot's feast is just days away.

But the elaborate food he will be serving was a far

cry from the simple meals of ordinary monks.

Benedictus benedicat per jesum christum dominum nostrum.

Every meal began with grace.

Talking was forbidden so, instead, the monks communicated

over the dinner table by using sign language.

Each monk had a daily allowance of 2.5lbs of bread,

and a gallon of ale.

And 2lbs of fish, a fundamental part of the monastic diet.

But fish wasn't only important for the monks,

the church decreed that for three days a week,

and on many holy days, lay people should not eat meat, only fish.

Oh!

While the general public had to make do with dried or salted fish,

the monasteries had become expert fish farmers.

They engineered elaborate systems of ponds to grow salmon,

pike and carp, which will be served at the abbot's feast.

Ruth has come to the monastic kitchen to prepare the food,

starting with the carp.

This would have been a luxury food. It's fresh water fish

and for most people, you know, that was, in itself,

a sign of wealth and of privilege.

Only those who had the rights to the fishing could take the fish.

So freshwater fish carried a certain social cache.

You knew if you were served any of the freshwater fish

that you were being given the produce of the owner of the land.

Ruth stuffs the fish with anchovies, bread, herbs and spices,

a valuable commodity in Tudor England.

The monks, obviously, tried to keep a really close eye on what

they were using and spending in their kitchens, just the same way as

they were keeping a close eye on the way their lands were being farmed.

Monks were supervising chefs, they were in charge of the stores,

of keeping count of food going in and food coming out.

Ruth makes a cage to support the fish during the roasting.

The church was instrumental in the advancement of fine dining.

The frequent travels of the clergy meant new ideas

and cooking methods spread throughout Europe.

Ruth is trying out an elaborate pastry dish.

I'm building a pastry castle.

According to a menu from 1500,

the Bishop of London served just such a thing at a dinner.

He had started with a moat of custard and then, within it,

was a great pastry castle.

And in each of the turrets of the pastry castle

there'd be a different filling.

And I rather thought, well, you know, if it's good enough

for the Bishop of London, maybe it's good enough for our abbot.

Peter has turned his attention to drinks for the feast.

In the 1500s, wine was an expensive commodity.

Here we go. Pop that back on there.

One way to make it last longer was to distil it into a spirit.

Distiller Jack Green has made a still -

the apparatus needed to produce brandy.

So, as I blow air into the coals here, they heat up,

that heats the wine, but what happens then?

-You, you need to slowly bring it up.

-Yep.

Until we come to the boiling point of the alcohol,

which is lower than the boiling point of water.

The alcohol evaporates, goes up into the condenser zone here,

and runs down this channel here, and then down the spout.

Essentially, the alcohol evaporates at a lower

-temperature than the rest of the wine.

-Yes.

Little last bit of sophistication is, we put this wet blanket on it.

Oh, like a little tea cosy, but the opposite.

So, rather than keeping it hot, this...

-And that cools it down, you see.

-Right.

-OK, so, we're getting a few drips coming out of here.

-Yes.

The first alcohol that comes over is methanol,

and methanol is the bad stuff.

-What happens if I drink that?

-Well, you'll probably go blind.

Methanol has a lower boiling point than ethanol, so the first

drops that come over are the methanol, and we discard those.

When do you know that you've changed from methanol to ethanol?

-Just have to guess.

-Just have to g...all right, OK.

When the ethanol starts to come through, the spout is

connected to a long tube which is cooled in a bucket of water.

This will help the ethanol fully condense.

-We're getting some already.

-That's fantastic.

-Yes.

So that is now the ethanol coming through.

A bit faster now.

A bit faster?

-It's a very delicate business.

-Right.

-The reason it's called spirit is that this is the body.

-Yeah.

-And the spirit rises.

-Ah!

So, this is the spirit. That why we call it spirit.

-It's like the Holy Spirit, sort of thing.

-Yes. So, carry on.

So the vapour of alcohol is the spirit leaving the body of wine.

-Yes, yes.

-Either way, I'm looking forward to trying it.

Oh, yes, you'll be the first.

I'll put my thumb over the spout and...it smells good.

How does it taste?

Just a little sip. Don't drink it all!

-That's really nice.

-Is it? Oh, good.

-That is really nice.

-Good, good.

The food is prepared, and the brandy distilled,

but there's one more job to do before the feast.

Peter and Tom have been called upon to serve at the banquet,

and they need a lesson in Tudor etiquette.

You have no idea what an honour this is, you know.

This would have been for gentlemen's sons

who had been carefully trained from childhood

in how to be gracious, how to bow beautifully,

how to serve at table with exactly the right etiquette.

They'd have special carving lessons,

so that they could do it precisely, and cleanly, and quickly.

-We've gone up in the world.

-Exactly, exactly.

-Oh, dear.

This is your serving towel, all right.

You put the serving towel on for serving dinner,

it's a symbol of what sort of role you play at dinner.

Because he's going to have slightly different to you.

-You get two towels, because you're carving.

-OK.

Again, badge of office.

-The posher your servants were, the posher you were.

-Mm.

And the better turned out your servants were,

the more it reflected on you.

What are your bows like? Come on, let me see your bows.

-Bow or genuflecting?

-Yeah, it is more like a genuflect, yeah.

You want to be doing a...

Particularly when you're serving the food,

you want to be able to come down with the trays held in front of you.

Yeah, that's the sort of thing.

-You're doing that in two moves, I think.

-Go on, have another go.

-I thought I was pretty good the first time, you see.

-No.

-On my...

-Try not stepping quite so far, just keep it really small

and then that knee can come right into your heel.

It's better.

Look, we're going to go in there, you're going to be elegant,

you're going to be lovely.

-We're going to do you proud.

-You are. Go on.

Go and be gorgeous. THEY LAUGH

It's the day of the abbot's feast,

and the monastery's most important patron will be dining.

More than just an expression of hospitality,

it was a vital chance to win favour and donations.

As a sign of humility, following the example of Christ,

the senior monk would wash the feet of the guests before dinner.

Benedic, Domine, nos et haec tua dona quae de tua largitate sumus sumpturi.

Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

ALL: Amen.

The seating plan was meticulous.

Only the most distinguished guests would sit on the high table

with the abbot.

The further away you sat, the lower your social status.

Each of the elaborate dishes,

Ruth's pastry castle, with a custard moat...

Sugar platters decorated with gold...

And the carp,

along with many other dishes,

would be ceremonially presented to the abbot for approval

before being served.

Carving carp for the monastic table, it's not a case of filleting

the fish, instead I'm running my knife round the outside

of the fish, cutting off the fins and the tail and the head.

And then the body, I'm going to cut it into equal sized portions,

complete with bones.

Because when it's served, it will still look like a fish,

but each piece can be picked up and eaten as bite-sized morsels.

The chef's been preparing for several days now.

The drinks, served in cups, were kept on a board,

the origin of the word cupboard.

They would be offered to the top table, with the server

waiting for the guests to finish before removing the cup.

And Tom's prestigious gift is presented.

As a token of our gratitude I would like to present you with this book,

-A Life Of St Edmund, in English.

-Thank you so much.

Any scraps of food were put in an alms bowl to be given to the poor.

The monasteries were so dominant in the provision of welfare

that it was only after the Dissolution that

the government was forced to confront the issue.

BAND PLAY

With the dining over,

the guests were entertained into the night by musicians.

Revelry was not uncommon, even within the monastic walls.

This has been a real insight into how those above us actually live.

It's really different, isn't it?

I mean, when you think our dining seems quite formal.

We all put our best clobber on and we all sit there

and behave ourselves. But this is a whole scale above.

And also, the sheer amount of food being consumed,

-it's nigh on crazy, isn't it?

-It is crazy.

-I mean, I know everything there gets eaten by somebody.

-Yeah.

-But that initial....

-Mm-hmm.

..huge, groaning board is quite a sight to see.

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

THEY LAUGH

Cos I thought I was going to a couple of times.

Despite how much wine you drank.

THEY LAUGH

But this sort of event, it was what kept the monasteries funded.

Yeah. Well, they're stuffed and so are their coffers.

THEY LAUGH

Next time on Tudor Monastery Farm, it's harvest time.

This has taken us four-and-a-half hours,

and look how much more there is.

Produce a vital Tudor resource.

If you think of salt as a basic ingredient,

having to process it down just adds so much labour.

THEY LAUGH

And enjoy some Tudor entertainment.

INDISTINCT SHOUTS

I always knew that this scythe was meant for more than just

harvesting peas.

From here they shall not pass.

HE LAUGHS

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd