Castles dominated the medieval landscape...
and Britain has some of the finest in the world.
Today most are decaying relics,
many of their secrets buried in time.
- Now, historian Ruth Goodman... - Whoo!
...and archaeologists Tom Pinfold and Peter Ginn
are turning the clock back
to relearn the secrets of the medieval castle builders.
This is the ultimate in medieval technology.
The origin of our castles is distinctly French -
introduced to Britain at the time of the Norman Conquest of 1066.
Trois, deux, un... tirez!
Here in the Burgundy region of France is Guédelon Castle,
the world's biggest archaeological experiment...
...a 25-year project to build a castle from scratch,
using the same tools, techniques and materials available in the 13th century.
It's a lot of hard work at the coalface because this is industry.
For the next six months, Ruth, Peter and Tom
will experience the daily rigours of medieval construction...
Drop down. Yeah, there.
...and everyday life. - Looking really good.
How workers dressed...
Oh!
...and ate... - You can really smell your food, Ruth.
(Ruth laughs)
...and the art of combat.
Oh!
This is the story of how to build a medieval castle.
Ripped By mstoll
(Birdsong)
It's March.
Tom, Ruth and Peter have travelled to Saint Fargeau,
100 miles south of Paris,
where Guédelon Castle is being built.
They're now 17 years into a 25-year project,
and over the next few months its most defining features - the towers - will take shape.
That is just something else.
- Look at those things up there. - Oh, my goodness.
Makes you dizzy.
The team are meeting members of Guédelon's workforce -
master mason Florian Renucci,
and site administrator, Sarah Preston.
This is amazing!
Thank you so much for coming so far to see our castle in the making.
I'd like to introduce you first of all to Florian.
Florian is our master mason, so he'll be guiding you throughout your stay here.
You oversee this entire project. That is amazing. That really is.
Well, it's really simple.
(Laughter)
I just have to know very well the castle.
You're almost like the puppet master.
You have the people working in the quarry, the people working as masons, the carpenters.
You've got to control everyone.
Well, I prefer the image of a musical er... conductor.
We have to be in the same time working.
This is very important.
- The rhythm. - Find a rhythm.
Yeah, the rhythm. So it's like music.
Well, if you're the conductor and you've got the strings over there,
and the percussion over there, and the tympani over there,
I can play a triangle.
(Triangle tings)
Building Guédelon is an enormous undertaking.
It will require some 30,000 tons of stone
that must be quarried, shaped and lifted into position without modern machinery.
There are also teams of woodcutters and carpenters
constructing scaffolding, roofing and doors...
...blacksmiths making ironwork and tools...
...as well as tile-makers...
...and carters.
In the13th century,
English workers crossed the Channel to hone their skills in France.
France is where architecture is happening - castles, churches.
We're looking at their built environment and thinking,
"Wow, they're really good at that,"
and we're importing all those ideas into Britain.
As a military historian, you're used to reading the theories behind how castles are made,
but hopefully, as an experimental archaeologist,
we can actually test some of those theories, put them into practice.
13th-century life, there's a lot of questions surrounding it.
There aren't that many records.
So by the actual act of building this castle,
it's almost like creating a window through which we can observe
what 13th-century life might have been like.
(Rooster crows)
Building a medieval castle began with a wooden model.
So what is this model used for?
In medieval times, they don't have a paper plan.
- Right. - So they used to have a wood model.
And I guess this is a way of the lord saying,
"This is what I want my castle to look like."
Yes, and the lord, he can change things with a model.
- It's very easy for him. - (They laugh)
So I suppose on medieval building sites like you have here,
you can easily have over a hundred masons,
they all can look at this and know the angles they need to be doing
and the... and the wall that they're working on.
Guédelon's design is typical of the 13th century.
Many British castles, such as Harlech, Conwy and Caernarfon, have a similar layout.
Castles were not only for defence.
They were a show of strength,
a lord putting his stamp on the landscape.
Inside the walls there were grand houses with great halls, kitchens and even chapels.
A thick wall surrounded by a dry moat protects an inner courtyard...
...which itself is protected by six towers.
Wow! This is the Great Tower.
This is what Florian wants us to work on.
When completed, the Great Tower will be almost 30 metres high,
providing a lookout for approaching enemies.
And, with walls four metres thick, it's the castle's ultimate stronghold.
So if we were the wall...
I'll stand here. I'm inside.
You're inside.
- That's four. - I mean, that's massive.
It just brings home how many tens of thousands of tons of stone
will be in this castle when it's finished.
Back then the only way of transporting stone over land was using horse-drawn carts.
Minimising the distance it had to be moved was paramount.
So, like many castles of the time, Guédelon is actually built in a quarry.
In the quarry we have the sandstone, the primary building fabric.
We also have the sand and the water. That can be used to make the mortar.
We have ochre, which again can be used for making pigments.
We're on a clay lens here, and the clay can be used
for firing tiles - roof tiles, floor tiles.
And we're surrounded by forests, which is a source of timber.
It's a source of fuel, so it can keep the blacksmiths going.
Almost everything we need to build a castle is just a stone's throw away.
The boys are put to work extracting blocks of sandstone
under the watchful eye of a stonemason who's worked here for 16 years, Clément Guérard.
- The first job. - Hm.
- (He speaks French) - Yes.
(Speaks French)
"Make the small stone."
That's very good. You're learning.
Clément's teaching the boys how to cut huge stones from the quarry
into usable building blocks...
using just a hammer, a chisel and a wedge.
I don't think I've got the skills to do this. I'll give it a go.
The pressure's on. I'm glad it's you and not me.
I'm making this hole to fit the wedge snugly.
But obviously Clément, with his years and years of experience,
knows exactly how to orientate this
so the wedge goes into this one hole,
you hit it and that's gonna cause a fracture in the already pre-existing sediment lines
and it'll split in half.
- Clément, looking good? - Oui. (Speaks French)
- (Clinking) - Bonne musique.
- Good music. - Good music.
- And now a sledgehammer. - (They laugh)
Wow, you can just see the fracture starting to appear.
This is not about brute force. This is about listening.
It's about looking. Precision engineering.
Listen. Good.
Perfect.
This is a good omen, Tommo.
The hardness of the sandstone varies considerably...
depending on its iron content.
The more iron, the harder the stone.
So the medieval mason had a system of grading it.
You got three categories of stone here - the piff, the paff and the puff.
You got the piff, this sort of black, high-iron content sandstone,
and that's used for the major load-bearing parts of the castle.
The paff, this more reddish sandstone,
and the soft one, the puff, sort of very yellowy crumbly sandstone.
It's almost like we're shopping for stone.
We're coming out here, we're looking at the colours,
and we can actually get what we want for the particular task we're about to do.
These stones will form the main building blocks of the castle.
Just as important as the stone... were the workers.
In the woods surrounding the castle, Ruth's setting up home.
Building a castle involves such a lot of people and they've all got to live somewhere.
So you get a sort of temporary community setting up at the edge of the building site,
as all these different people come and go with their various skills.
And, naturally, over time that begins to become a bit more permanent, a village in the making.
Indeed, many villages right across Europe, in Britain as well as in France,
can actually trace their origin to being camps for workers on a building site.
This small hovel is typical of a worker's home on a medieval building site.
The workers' cottages, somewhere like this,
were always gonna be thrown up in a hurry and fairly sort of basic.
But then so were those of most 13th-century people.
And this is our everything. This is all there is.
Here is our kitchen, our living room, our sleeping quarters -
just this one single space.
Oh, look. Marvellous.
Offcut limestone. This will do perfect.
The centrepiece of every medieval home was the fireplace.
The fire was not just used for cooking.
It also provided heat and light.
In grand houses, obviously, they sort of, like, cobbled this whole area.
Ah.
But... we know from lots of archaeological digs that ordinary houses...
it's just a patch on the ground.
And also I use a couple of bigger stones...
...to balance pots on a bit.
The cottage needs somewhere to store the staple foods of wheat and barley.
- Hi, Simon. - Hello, Ruth. How you doing?
- Hello. I'm good. - Nice to see you.
I was thinking about the grain ark...
So Ruth is calling on English carpenter, Simon Dunn, to make a grain ark.
I'm guessing that making furniture in the 13th century
was rather different from what a modern cabinetmaker would do?
Oh, certainly very different from what anybody would do now
or even in the last couple of hundred years.
You're limited by the materials and the tools available.
In the 13th century, saws were expensive.
So carpenters used them only when absolutely necessary.
Instead, wood was split using wooden wedges.
Whoa. Wow! Look at that, split all the way around down to there.
Yeah, and then turn it over.
And work a bit further down.
- Gosh, this is faster than sawing, isn't it? - Oh, absolutely.
There we go. So that's in two.
Simon splits the wood again to produce planks.
So, you know, I mean, that piece particularly is a really good piece of plank.
- Yeah. It's pretty flat. You can work with it. - And that's a couple of minutes.
I mean, I hate to think how long that would take to have sawn.
The rough planks must now be smoothed off.
This is a side axe.
Erm, it's just ground on one edge, so it's flat on the other.
So you can just...
Trim up the surface a bit.
You can more or less use an axe like a plane.
Once all the planks are made, the ark is assembled...without nails or glue.
Pegs, your basic thing for joining furniture together.
- So instead of nails. - Use pegs instead of nails, yes.
So there are some things you do need a saw for.
- (Ruth laughs) - So we'll just cut the pegs off to size.
Right.
There's no glue or anything in here.
So it's just the wood holding the wood together.
- Yeah. - It's not going anywhere.
- So you happy with that? - I'm happy.
- Is that gonna do the job? - It will.
- Home isn't home without a grain ark. - Absolutely not.
Water was another vital resource for the building of a castle,
and hundreds of gallons would have been used every day to make mortar alone.
So castles were always built near a plentiful supply.
Tom and Peter have been sent to repair the castle's well.
To hoist the bucket, it needs a new rope and pulley.
How deep do you reckon that is, if we're gonna make rope?
I reckon it's ten metres down, give or take a metre.
But I suspect they sunk this to a depth where they're never gonna run out of water.
Exactly. It's crucial to defence.
It's crucial for life inside the castle once the castle's operational.
You need to have that constant supply, and we need it now for our building.
You're on rope, I'm on pulley.
Peter's commissioning a pulley from wood turner Gary Baker.
Well, the first stage is to select a log.
Yeah. And the pulley's gonna be in this direction. OK?
So you couldn't just cut a nice section through a log and just do that as a pulley?
- That would never work. - Really?
The problem with the end grain, it shrinks at different levels
- and it's just gonna split apart. - Right.
So we're gonna follow the grain this way.
We're just gonna rough chop it.
- What's the wood that you're using? - This is ash.
Ash is very... a very dry wood
and therefore, when it dries, it doesn't move that much.
It's not gonna warp and crack.
A mandrel is hammered into the centre of the roughly-shaped wood
so it can be turned on a pole lathe.
Pole lathes like this have been used both in England and France
since before the 10th century.
So that's just a pedal pulling the string around the mandrel... onto...
On a flexible pole.
The pole, basically, all it does is lift the pedal back up.
The roughly-shaped ash is turned to make a cylinder.
I have to say, watching you... that is really, really hypnotic.
It looks knackering.
It is. It is er...
It's like a gymnasium, medieval gymnasium, but you do get fit.
As well as a pulley, they'll need a rope for the well.
Rope is essential on a medieval building site -
to lift loads and bind scaffolding.
Tom's commissioning a rope for the well from the castle's rope maker, Yvon Herouart.
First he lays hemp yarns along the rope walk
to form four strands, each with 14 yarns.
I can definitely see why this is called a rope walk.
All we seem to do is walk up and down.
For this 50-metre rope, he's actually walked half a mile, which is extraordinary.
The four strands are now complete.
Next, they must be twisted together.
First stage of the twisting will actually reduce the length of these strands by about 10%.
That's about 1.5 metres. So I'm estimating that's about there.
When the traveller hits this mark,
Yvon knows the rope has been twisted the optimum number of times.
Very slowly the traveller is moving in,
but with each turn that Yvon does,
we get something that I see as being rope.
Gary's turning the cylinder into a pulley by cutting a groove in its rim.
Just take it off.
There we go.
So smooth and so fast.
Stop.
The yarns have been twisted to form strands.
Then the strands are twisted in the opposite direction to form the finished rope.
To make the strands, you twist the yarns in one direction.
To make the rope, you twist the strands against each other.
That way, you create that tension and that torsion and it stops them unravelling.
Merci beaucoup. C'est parfait.
You're going up, yeah.
I'll thread this through before you haul it up.
Now Ruth and Peter can fit the pulley and rope to the well in the castle's courtyard.
You know, traditionally, this is where people gossip, don't you, standing round the well?
Well, it still is, standing round the water cooler.
- Drop it down. - Yeah.
A long way down.
OK.
On a medieval construction site,
the majority of the water is used to make mortar to fix the quarried sandstone in place.
The production of the daily batch is supervised by Fabrice Maingot.
Right, Tom, we need 25 baskets of this sand.
- 25. - And 50 of this one.
Mortar makers had a vital role to play in the building of a castle...
as the strength of the entire construction rested on their mixture.
Formulas were closely guarded secrets and passed down from master to apprentice.
Due to the huge amounts of sand required to build this castle,
we try and source as much as possible from the local area,
and, luckily, having the quarry right there
means you've got a huge amount of sand on tap.
Lime is the key ingredient that adheres the stones to one another.
It's made by heating limestone to 900 degrees
and then mixing it with water to create slaked lime.
- Pretty good. - That looks very nice, Peter.
Right now, I think the experience is showing for the French guys.
They're really putting me to shame.
It's enjoyable work, though.
I actually do feel like I'm now a bit more connected to the castle.
You like everything clean, don't you?
To be honest, some of us just get on and work,
unlike you who seems to roll around in every bit of building material you can.
Suits you, though.
That's just a natural magnetism.
You're pretending all that grey hair is actually lime water.
- Oh, dear. - Oh!
- It is actually just stress from working with you. - (He laughs)
Today's batch of mortar and sandstone are destined for the Great Tower.
So far it's reached a height of 18 metres, but when complete it will be 30 metres high.
The materials are hoisted to the top using a treadmill winch.
The forerunner of the modern crane,
it takes two people to power it and can lift over half a ton.
I mean, these things are an absolute godsend, aren't they?
They are the machine of the medieval building site,
bringing up all the stone for the walls.
Well, you think, you've got 500kg of weight we're pulling up,
yet we manoeuvre it so easily, the two of us.
My strength, your ballast.
Look. There it is. This is the ultimate in medieval technology.
To lower the cargo onto the tower, the boys simply walk in the other direction.
OK. Walk.
Slowly, slowly.
Yeah.
So this is our stone, the sandstone from the quarry,
and it'll be graded into three lots - the piff, the paff and the puff.
- That's piff, isn't it? That's quite hard. - Yeah.
- That's paff. - That's the medium.
And there'll be a puff in there somewhere.
That looks like puff.
Get some of these.
The piff- that very, very hard sandstone -
that is used for facing, for the structure, for the external walls.
Whereas the paff and the puff are actually used to infill the walls and tie it all together.
Philippe Delage began his career as a builder over 40 years ago.
For the last ten years he's worked at Guédelon, where he's perfected his skills as a stonemason.
You are going to lay the mortar, but don't crush the edge, just like this.
If you were bricklaying, do you do that cos it's got a flat surface,
but the stone has to go in and the mortar has to go up into the stone?
- Yeah. - So, don't flatten it. OK.
One of the biggest challenges is ensuring the walls are absolutely straight -
the integrity of the entire tower depends on it.
The solution is simplicity itself-
a lead weight on the end of a string, known as a plumb line.
On the scaffolding here, you'll notice there's a two-inch gap,
so you can get your plumb line down there and make sure the wall is absolutely straight,
cos if it's not, the tower starts going like that... it'll start going like that.
Most of these medieval tools and techniques have been around for millennia,
and are still used on building sites today.
- Like that? - Yeah. Like that.
Just doing the rubble infill to the wall.
So we've got the facing stone - the piff, the hard stone -
and that is laid horizontally, so the grain runs as it is in the ground.
Actually, if you imagine a book, if you lay a book horizontally,
you stand on it, it'll support your weight.
Whereas if you lay a book vertically and you stand on it, it will collapse.
However, the infill, that actually gets laid vertically
so the grain is going in the opposite direction.
And that's because they're all stacked against each other
and they push against each other around the tower,
making this absolutely solid.
All the tricks of the trade.
Where's that mortar, Peter?
- Already in the wall, Tom. Already. - (They laugh)
Good.
Now these, I'm hoping, are the secret ingredient
to transform what is, frankly, a muddy hole into somewhere comfy to live.
Medieval sources tell us cottage floors were strewn with rushes,
but just how they were laid is a bit of a mystery.
What I think might be the answer is to keep it in bundles...
...and lay them in a sort of herringbone fashion across the whole floor.
Look at that. And the temperature difference between putting your hand there
and putting your hand there is quite astonishing.
That is cold and wet and nasty.
That is warm and dry and comfy.
Every few weeks, Ruth will lay down new bundles of rushes.
I think that when I get the fresh ones on top,
what will happen is that the damp earth underneath will, as these crush down,
will gradually compost,
leaving you on top of new, fresh reeds,
well away from that, all dry and clean and warm.
That's the theory.
Nobody really knows quite how this works.
We'll see.
Back at the castle, slowly and surely the Great Tower is taking shape.
But before they can build up the walls any further,
a doorway into its third-floor room must be installed.
Got some limestone that's been shaped.
It's gonna go to the Great Tower for the doorway into that top room.
Erm, we're just using this crane, as directed by Philippe.
Using this simple lever system, one man can lift four times his own weight.
Ooh.
Yeah, it's OK.
It's then raised up the tower using the treadwheel crane.
I can see it coming up. Here it comes.
- (Chatter) - How'd you find it, Peter?
- I'm as dizzy as you like. - (Laughter)
Gets the heart rate up. A bit of a sweat going.
Mind you, this was the thing that built castles
and this was the thing that made men feel quite seasick whilst on dry land, like myself.
Before the stones are fitted,
a pintle is set into the stone, from which the door will be hung.
It's held firmly in place using molten lead.
So what they've done is built this reservoir out of clay,
and that way you can pour the lead in, it's not gonna drain off
and you don't waste a valuable resource.
The masons have just one chance to get this right...
as the lead sets almost instantly once it hits the cold stone.
Getting it wrong might mean the whole stone having to be replaced.
Oh, that looks brand-new. That looks fantastic.
It's amazing to think, in a building of this size, how little metal is actually used.
But where it is used, it is essential.
Now the stones can be set in place, on a layer of mortar.
It's essential that they're perfectly aligned.
So the forerunner of the spirit level - the mason's level - is used.
Roman Britain, medieval France, or even a modern-day building site,
these are tools and techniques that every builder would have been familiar with.
These have been honed over centuries of use.
It is timeless. It really is.
It looks good now. Yeah.
Our medieval square here says it's all good.
It's ready to... for the next stone.
Now the stone lintel that will top the doorway can be fitted.
This is very, very delicate work.
This is an extremely heavy stone,
possibly the heaviest stone we've moved so far.
That is a serious bit of kit and it struggles to lift this, it's so heavy.
I think we're right on the weight limit.
Manoeuvring this heavy stone with the simple crane is tricky.
- Good. - Yeah, got it, Peter.
One slip and serious damage could be done
to both the lintel and the surrounding stonework.
You got that, Tommo?
To your left, to your left.
Yeah.
Yes. Well done.
Oh! I felt quite vulnerable then, I've gotta be honest.
It's almost perfect.
Stonemasonry, like so many medieval jobs, was heavy work.
So a well-fed workforce was essential.
To prepare food in the cottage, Ruth needs cooking vessels.
Today, pots and pans are metal,
but in the Middle Ages they were often clay.
Ruth is calling on the services of English potter Jim Newbolt.
What would people think about cooking with pottery?
I mean, I think people are scared of it, the idea of it now.
But it used to be the way of cooking.
I mean, it is the oldest form of cooking utensil of any sort.
That's it, even your iron ones are called cooking pots. There's the clue.
First, Jim makes the basic cooking pot on the wheel.
He then fits handles so it can be lifted on and off the fire.
- And what I'm doing is extruding the clay... - Stretching it out.
So it means that as you pull the handle it creates the grain... like wood.
So it's gonna be stronger than if it was just...
- Squashed together. ...squished together.
Clay is heavy and difficult to transport,
so potters sourced it from as near to home as possible.
Where do you get your clay from?
From as close to the side of the road as you possibly can.
That's a pothole.
One where you could lose a wagon and team...
...into it. - That's fabulous.
It's a hole where you've dug clay for pots. It's a pothole.
You pull over to let another wagon pass, and glance past..."Where's he gone?"
Next, Jim reshapes the base of the pot.
So what shape is best, then, for fire?
For cook pots on the fire, big round bottoms.
Right. You want a... no sharp corners.
No, no, it means that the heat moves around the outside of the pot.
And then with a sharp-bladed knife, you start taking off the edge there.
So long as the pots are made evenly, it'll work better on the fire.
Right, so if there's a big, thick lump somewhere, you're gonna have problems around that.
I'm flaring it out.
The round bottom means it won't sit on a flat surface.
So the medieval pot often had legs.
And there's the... the cook pot.
The hovel is now fully equipped and ready to sustain the workers.
This is perhaps the most important thing in it.
This is our larder, our fridge, our pantry - our food supply, the grain ark.
Lovely, isn't it?
There it is.
This is the mainstay of our diet. This is our main food.
It's the starch, the bulk...
...and it's also the source of any beer or ale we might drink.
And the lid is not attached because...
...it goes that way up and it becomes my dough trough when I need to make bread.
It's really clever, isn't it?
Simple.
And I've got all sorts of food supplies hanging about -
and "hanging" is the operative word -
because I don't want anything on the floor where mice and rats can get it.
So hanging it either from the walls - like the vegetables in nets -
or from the underside of the roof,
keeps them safe, away from all the crawling vermin.
And the smoke, as it percolates its way out, keeps away flies.
You can think of this space not just as a living space but as a storage space.
After a day's work,
the boys have returned to put Ruth's experimental rush floor to the test.
You've spent all day working on the castle, you're tired, just come back,
I mean, this is insulating, it's cushioning...
- It's quite comfy. - It's not as bad as you'd think.
It's not as bad as you think.
I mean, when they say they haven't got a bed, and that's it -
you just get a blanket and this is what you sleep on -
it sounds a bit horrendous, but it's not. It's all right.
It is a tiny space, though, to live a complete life, just one little space like this, isn't it?
- Yeah, but... - As a whole family.
Well, you say it's a tiny space to live your entire life.
I'd rather be in a small space like this and get the heat...
- It's an easier space to heat. - Yeah, good point.
And how much time are you gonna spend in here?
These days you think, I need a sitting room and a TV and a big sofa
cos you're gonna relax in there.
We'll be working most of the time and you've got all your jobs and tasks to do.
So that, sort of, like, rest and relaxation isn't as important.
- There's less time for it. - Speak for yourself.
- (Laughter) - Cheers.
Cheers. Salut.
- They don't clink, do they? - (Laughter)
That's about the only thing I've got against drinking bowls - they don't clink.
It's morning, and the team are getting ready for work.
Knowing what ordinary medieval people wore is a challenge,
but fortunately a few items of clothing have survived.
The most useful garments will survive
because they were actively kept because they were the clothes of saints.
They have been preserved in churches right across Europe.
So this yellow dress that I'm wearing,
this is something that has been derived from two early-to-mid-13th-century saints -
Saint Elizabeth, from Germany,
and Saint Clare, from Assisi, in Italy.
So, it's loose, but can you see... Look, there is quite a lot of shaping to it.
You can see all these seams.
It's made very particularly to make the cloth hang nicely,
no matter what position your body is in.
I do have a belt.
However, it's not to give you a waist,
but it's all about...
...creating an attractive drape of cloth.
It's the most comfy thing I've ever worn.
It is faintly ridiculous, I think,
that medieval underwear is as big as this.
I think, obviously, for Tommo, that's probably an appropriate size,
but both myself and Ruth could fit into these.
Oh! They feel a bit like a pair of 1950s football shorts,
although, in the light, vaguely see-through.
And then we've just got the hose.
Single-legged hose.
And at this stage...
It's very similar to, kind of, I suppose, stockings and suspenders.
However if they were sewn onto the pants, pretty soon you'd have a pair of trousers.
You kind of see where the evolution of clothes comes from.
Ruth's headwear is inspired by the medieval queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine.
As she got older, she decided that her chin was sagging a bit,
and she wasn't looking quite as lovely as she did,
so she invented a barbette,
which goes under the chin, and onto the top of the head, and pins there.
And then, with a barbette, you always wear a fillet.
And this is a fillet. It's just another band sewn into a circle.
And you wear that almost crown-like on top.
It's a very 13th-century look. So that's it, my French look.
Today, Tom and Peter have been summoned to the Mason's Lodge
for the next stage of their apprenticeship - carving limestone.
So far they've been working with roughly-hewn sandstone to build the castle walls.
But for more intricate features like arches, windows and stairs,
limestone was preferred,
as its fine grain meant it was quicker and easier to carve.
We need, for the Chapel Tower, a lot of stone having ten...
- Inches. ...inches.
First, the boys use their splitting skills to create rough limestone blocks...
under the supervision of stonemason, Abdelilah Abid.
The wedge is in. Now you can try with the big one.
- Perfect. - Oh, good.
Very good, very good.
The rough block is moved into the Mason's Lodge,
onto a platform known as a banker,
ready for the skilled job of shaping it.
- How many? - Ten.
Yes. Very good. You remembered.
Facing a stone was a basic skill that every stonemason would have had.
First, the edges are cut using a pitch.
And the hammer.
- Angle about there? - Yes.
Yeah. Actually, you have to do it in one time.
- One... One swing through. - Time, yeah.
- And you have to follow it. - Like a follow through.
OK.
Very good.
A stonemason would have learnt under the watchful eye of the master mason.
(Quick tapping)
I don't want to hear this.
(Quick tapping)
This is a bird.
Tak-tak-tak, tak-tak tak.
The stonemason, it's rhythmical.
- Yeah. - Or quick.
But it is always the same.
You can do... very rhythmical.
You only think of the rhythmical music...
...and a few minutes after, it's finished.
- OK? - Yeah.
Stonemasons were paid per stone carved,
so the quicker they worked, the more money they would earn.
These limestone blocks are for the Chapel Tower.
This year, the team are hoping to build the walls up by six metres
to complete the chapel room itself.
In the 13th century, religion was central to daily life and nearly all castles had a chapel.
- Here we are. We are in this room. - Yeah.
And we have to draw the niche in the east part of the room,
just in front of us.
Yeah.
So this drawing you have is very much a kind of a stylised view,
but now, as the stonemason, you must precisely mark it out.
Yes, exactly.
We have now to transform imagination drawing in useful drawing.
The niche is where the altar will be.
Before any building is done,
the walls must be marked out with absolute precision.
OK.
This is continuing the curve of this wall.
The altar niche must be in the east of the tower,
so Florian is marking out the east-west access using an ingenious medieval tool.
I absolutely love this. It's a horn. We've cut off the ends.
That's been tied to a piece of string...
which is wound around an axle,
and it is encased in ochre powder.
I mean, the same ochre that we find in the quarry.
When you pull the string up and snap it...
...it hits the ground, thus shedding the ochre,
and leaving an absolutely true straight line.
And these, they've been around for millennia.
Right, flip it over.
Using just a rope, dividers and the ochre line...
the chapel's walls are marked out.
To reach this first-floor chapel...
a limestone spiral staircase is being built.
To design it, Florian and Tom
have come to the Tracing Floor next to the Stonemason's Lodge.
The Tracing Floor was the nerve centre of the medieval building site,
where the master mason drew full-scale plans.
ALL: Bonjour.
Using a compass,
the circumference of the spiral staircase is drawn, actual size.
- This is an apprentice job. - Always the apprentice, never the master.
Florian and Clément are working out the central part of our staircase,
and that will form the column that runs up, connecting all the stairs.
And now we're going to draw er... 12 steps.
For the medieval mason, geometry was the jewel in the crown of their art.
Using just a compass,
angles and shapes could be accurately drawn to within a degree, with perfect symmetry.
Here, Florian divides the circle into six equal segments...
...which are then subdivided to create 12 steps.
Now we have the steps, we can try the steps in the drawing first.
This is a fantastic way to actually make sure,
before you start cutting stone, wasting materials and time, that they work.
You can see there, they're bigger than my foot length, so that's workable.
Now we need to finish one step.
Because all the steps are the same, Florian needs to make just one template.
This is a precision job now.
You mess this up, you're gonna mess up your stone in the castle.
So the last thing to do is basically just cut the template.
That's ready. A present for you.
(Laughs) Thank you very much.
We've got our template now, placed on top of our large piece of stone.
We're marking it out with a bit of slate.
Magic. There it is. Now it's ready.
- Just cutting. - Just cutting. (Laughs)
- Five, ten minutes? - Oh...
- Two or three days. - Two or three days.
You can hear how good quality this stone is
by the ringing sound, when Clément hits it.
And I think that's why, to be honest,
I'm standing here and not actually being allowed to do anything.
Ah, I lied.
- Right line. - Righto.
An apprenticeship for a stonemason would have been about seven years,
but to be honest, as Clément says, it's actually a lifetime.
You're always learning, and Peter and I haven't been here long.
You know, there's just so much to take in.
Carving stone takes its toll on the tools...
...and every day they must be sharpened by blacksmith, Martin Claudel.
Is it true, er, Guédelon,
if there's no blacksmith here for two days, work stops?
Yes, work stops because we have to fix a lot of stonemasonry tools
and if we don't do that, they can't work.
First, the worn-down chisel is heated to 1,000 degrees to soften its tip.
To reach this temperature, bellows blow air through the fire.
I love these bellows.
One goes up, the other one goes down.
So it's a constant airflow, isn't it?
Martin draws the chisel to a point on the anvil...
...then sharpens it using a file.
But the chisel tip will be blunt again in no time unless it's hardened.
Hardening is one of the great discoveries of the ancient world,
achieved by heating the metal, then quickly quenching it in water.
As it gets hot, the metal changes colour
and this tells the blacksmith how hard it will be once quenched.
Too soft and it won't cut. Too hard and it will shatter.
To carve stone it must get yellow-hot.
He watches for the colours appearing on the surface of the metal -
blue, the red and, most importantly, the straw yellow at the very end.
(Steam hissing)
Now it's ready for the masons.
There are few clues as to how ordinary people lived day to day in a medieval village.
But Ruth's pieced together fragments of knowledge
to work out how people did the most mundane of everyday tasks, like washing up.
I haven't got a scouring pad, but I have got sand.
For the pad, at this time of the year there's plenty of grass -
I could use straw - just as something to rub with.
Now, if I've got to deal with grease, that's a different matter altogether.
Sand will take the worst of it off,
but no amount of scrubbing with just some warm water
is going to shift the grease out of something.
You need a little bit of chemical help.
And for that I turn to wood ash, just straight out of the fire.
The wood ash combines with water to make caustic soda.
When it comes into contact with fat on the dishes...
it makes soap, leaving the dishes spotlessly clean.
A handful of ash, wipe it around with a bit of grass or straw,
rinse it out with hot water and you get a clean pan.
Easy-peasy.
Knowing what peasants ate in the 13th century is also a challenge,
but we do know what ingredients they had to hand.
Ruth has come to the castle's garden to see what there is to harvest.
Could really do with some TLC, this patch of garden,
but nonetheless, a fair few things are starting to sprout through,
which is a relief.
So I've got parsley coming through here.
And a number of other things that you might think of as weeds -
and indeed they are weeds, but are edible.
There's a lot of land cress, with this little white flower on.
So that's quite bitter in flavour but, you know, anything to give a bit of bite.
Plants that we now consider weeds would also have been used.
There's quite a lot of dandelions and nettles too, which will help bulk it out.
Wheat and barley were also essential ingredients.
Flour was expensive,
so workers ground their own using a device that has been around for 10,000 years.
The quern.
(Whirring)
This is the sound of the past.
Oh!
A rotary quern like this...
...was estimated to require about an hour to an hour and a half's work every day.
This is the daily grind.
You pop a handful of grain in the centre...
...barley in this case - and off you go.
The posher you were, the more refined your food was,
and ordinary people often made do with food that was really quite coarse.
You can see that in people's teeth when we're dug up archaeologically.
With the tools sharpened,
Clément has put the finishing touches to the step.
Now comes the delicate task of transporting it to the chapel.
- Looks like your steps arriving. - Yeah.
Well, I say, your step.
The step is winched up the castle wall using only manpower.
Ready.
Brake off.
Once on top of the wall, it's moved up the tower using an inclined plane.
One slip and the step could fall, wasting three days' work.
Rolling.
- Be careful. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
These guys have been doing this for 15 years.
They know how to get things like this up here,
but it's amazing what they can move without the use of what we'd call machines -
essentially the use of rollers, levers, inclined planes, pulleys...
...all made out of wood.
Wood and stone working together, perfect harmony.
A bit like me and Tommo.
- Do you wanna nip down first, Ruth? - OK.
Each step must be absolutely level
or else the staircase will veer to one side.
A mason's level and plumb line are used
to ensure it's perfectly positioned.
I suppose this staircase has still got quite a long way up to go,
and if this isn't absolutely perfect...
the first little bit of skew and that just gets magnified as you go up.
But carrying anything up here or, God forbid, fighting your way up here,
it would be really difficult, wouldn't it?
Yeah. Tommo's not stuck down there, is he?
- Wedged. - Wedged.
Using the greens from the garden and the ground barley,
Ruth is cooking a medieval pottage in the clay pot.
So a little bit of water in there. I'm gonna start with my leeks.
This time of year nettles are still quite tender.
I wouldn't say that you add nettles for flavour, particularly,
but they are quite good bulk.
They're one of the few things that grows in profusion at this time of year.
That's softened down a bit now.
Grain is added to create a porridge-like dish.
(Birdsong)
- Hello, Ruth. - Oh, you're back.
- How was it today? - It's going very, very well.
It's amazing how the whole thing is...
...it's all in two-dimensional layers, but then you see...
- They're like cuts. ...a third dimension appear,
such as the doorway that we've been working on.
Put the lintel on there, suddenly, wow!
It gives me a real feel, too, of just how much impact
such places must have had on people.
You know, if everybody's living in this sort of little tiny... one room,
hearth in the centre, low building,
and then there's that thunking great thing out there...
it's quite a shock to the system, really. It makes a huge impact.
This is a period when these great military buildings, religious buildings,
are starting to rise up and make an impact on the landscape.
The team are also getting used to the simple medieval food.
This is a triumph. This is an absolute triumph.
RUTH: For barley and vegetables, it's not bad.
You're a hungry man, you've been pounding all day at the stone,
walking on the treadwheel, anything is good to eat.
And it's not exactly easy, either, grinding the darn stuff.
It's just as hard work as pounding away all day in the quarry.
- There's no easy jobs in the medieval age. - No, there aren't, are there?
Next time...defending the castle... with crossbows...
Nice.
...and architecture...
against the most powerful weapon of the age...
Trois, deux, un... tirez!
...the trébuchet.
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