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- [Narrator] Castles dominated the mediaeval landscape

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

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,

and archaeologists Tom Pinfold and Peter Ginn

are turning the clock back

to relearn the secrets of the mediaeval castle builders.

- This is the ultimate mediaeval technology.

- [Narrator] The origin of our castles is distinctly French,

introduced to Britain

at the time of the Norman conquest of 1066.

[lady counting in foreign language]

- [Narrator] Here in the Burgundy region of France

is Guédelon Castle,

the world's biggest archaeological experiment.

[background music]

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.

- [Narrator] For the next six months, Ruth, Peter and Tom

will experience the daily rigours of mediaeval construction.

- Dropdown. - Yeah.

- [Narrator] And everyday life.

How workers dressed,

and ate.

- You can really smell your food, Ruth.

- [Narrator] And the art of combat.

This is the story of how to build a mediaeval castle.

[piano music]

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, it's most defining features,

the towers, will take shape.

- It's just something else, look at those things up there.

- Oh my goodness.

- Makes you dizzy.

- [Narrator] The team are meeting

members of Guédelon workforce: master mason, Florian Renucci

and site administrator, Sarah Preston.

- This is amazing.

- Well, thank you so much for coming so fast

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's gonna be guiding you throughout your stay here.

- You oversee this entire project.

That is amazing.

That really is.

- Well, it's really simple.

[all laughing]

I just have to know very well the castle.

- But you're almost like the puppet master;

you have the people working the quarry,

the people working as masons, the carpenters.

You've got to control everyone.

- Well, I prefer the image of a musical conductor.

We have to be in the same time working.

This is very important.

- So on the 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.

[all laughing]

[trumpet music]

- [Narrator] Building Guédelon is an enormous undertaking.

It will require some 30,000 tonnes 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 the 13th 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 very used to reading the theories behind

how castles are made,

but hopefully as an experimental archaeologist,

I can actually test some of those theories,

put them into practise.

- 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've been like.

- [Narrator] Building a mediaeval castle began

with a wooden model.

- So what is this model used for?

- In mediaeval time, they don't have a paper plan,

so they used to have wood model.

- Well, I guess this is 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 very easy for him.

[all laughing]

- I suppose, a mediaeval building site, like you have here,

you can easily have over 100 masons,

they all can look at this

and know the angles they need to be doing

and the wall they're working on.

- [Narrator] 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 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.

- [Narrator] 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 tonnes of stone

will be in this castle when it's finished.

- [Narrator] 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 a forest

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.

[piano music]

- [Narrator] The boys are put to work

extracting blocks of sandstone

under the watchful eye of a stonemason

who's worked here for 16 years, Clement Guérard.

- The first job? - Hmm.

[Clement speaking in French]

- Make the small stone.

- [Narrator] Clement is 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.

- So I'm making this hole fit the wedge snugly.

But obviously, Clement

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.

- Clement, looking good?

[Clement answers in French].

Bad music,

good music.

- Good music.

- And now a sledge hammer.

- Wow, you can just see the fracture starting to appear.

This is not about brute force, it's about listening,

it's about looking, precision engineering.

- [Clement] Listen, good.

Perfect.

- I see this as a good omen, Tomo.

- [Narrator] The hardness of the sandstone

varies considerably depending on its iron content.

The more iron, the harder the stone.

So the mediaeval mason had a system of grading it.

- We've got three categories of stone here:

the pif, the paf and the pouffe.

We've got the pif,

this sort of black high iron content sandstone

and that's used for the major

load bearing parts of the castle.

The paf is more reddish sandstone and the soft one,

the pouffe, sort of very yellowy crumbly sandstone.

- And it's almost like we're shopping

for stone really, isn't it?

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.

- [Narrator] 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 is 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.

- [Narrator] This small hovel is typical of a worker's home

on a mediaeval 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.

Off cut limestone, this will do perfect.

- [Narrator] The centrepiece of every mediaeval 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.

But, we know from lots of archaeological digs,

the 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.

- [Narrator] The cottage needs somewhere to store

the staple foods of wheat and barley.

- Hi, Simon.

- Oh, hello, Ruth, how are you doing?

- Hello. I'm good. I'm good.

I was thinking about a grain ark.

- [Narrator] 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 cabinet maker would do.

- Oh, certainly.

Certainly very different from what anybody would do now,

or even in the last couple of 100 years.

You're limited by the materials and the tools available.

- [Narrator] 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 round down to there.

- Yeah, and then turn it over

and work a bit further down.

- Gosh, this is faster than sawing, isn't it?

- Absolutely.

There we go.

So that's in two

- [Narrator] Simon splits the wood again to produce planks.

- So that's, 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.

- [Narrator] The rough planks must now be smoothed off.

- This is a side axe.

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.

- [Narrator] 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.

- It's pegs instead of nails, yes.

So there are some things you do need a saw for.

[Ruth laughing]

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.

It's not going anywhere.

[guitar music]

So are you happy with that then?

- I'm happy with that--

- Is that gonna do the job? - It will do the job.

Home isn't home without a grain ark.

- Absolutely not.

- [Narrator] 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 10 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 for defence,

it's crucial for life inside the castle

once the castle is operational.

You need to have that constant supply,

and obviously, we need it now for our building.

You're on rope, I'm on pulley.

- [Narrator] Peter's commissioning a pulley

from wood turner, Gary Baker.

- Well, the first stage is to select a log.

And the pulley is gonna be in this direction, okay?

- 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.

So we're gonna follow the grain this way.

We're just gonna rough chop it.

- What's the wood that you're using there?

- This is ash.

Ash is a very dry wood.

And therefore when it dries, it doesn't,

it doesn't move that much.

It's not gonna warp and crack.

- [Narrator] The mandrill 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 both in England and France

since before the 10th century.

- So it's just a pedal,

a pulling string around the mandrill--

- Yeah, on a flexible pole.

The pole basically all it does is lift the pedal back up.

- [Narrator] The roughly shaped ash

is turned to make a cylinder.

[piano music]

- I have to say, watching you,

that is really, really hypnotic.

You know it looks knackering.

- It is. It is.

It's like the gymnasium,

mediaeval gymnasium, but you do get fit.

- [Narrator] As well as a pulley,

they'll need a rope for the well.

Rope is essential on a mediaeval building site

to lift loads and bind scaffolding.

Tom's commissioning a rope for the well

from the castle's rope maker, Yvan 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 see him do is walk up and down.

For this 50 metre rope, he's actually walked half a mile.

It's extraordinary.

- [Narrator] 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,

Yvan knows the rope has been twisted

the optimum number of times.

- Very slowly, the traveler's moving in,

but with each turn that Yvan does,

we get something that I see as being rope.

- [Narrator] Gary's turning the cylinder into a pulley

by cutting a groove in it's rim.

- We should take it off.

There we go.

- So smooth and so fast.

- Stop.

- [Narrator] 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.

[Tom and Yvan speaking in French]

- Shall I thread this through before you haul it up.

- [Narrator] 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.

[bright music]

- One way down.

- [Narrator] On a mediaeval construction site,

the majority of the water is used to make mortar

to fix the quarried sandstone into 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.

- [Narrator] Motor 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,

they try and source as much as possible from the local area.

And luckily, having the quarry right there,

it means you've got a huge amount of sand on tap.

- [Narrator] 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.

- 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?

- Well, to be honest Peter, some of us just get on and work

Unlike you, who seems to roll around

in every bit of building material you can.

It suits you though.

- That's just a natural magnetism.

- You're pretending all that grey hair

is actually lime water.

- Oh, dear.

It's actually the stress from working with you.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Today's batch of motor 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 tonne.

- I mean, these things are an absolute,

well, godsend, aren't they?

- They are the machines of the mediaeval building site,

bringing up all the stone for the walls.

- Well, you think you've got 500 kg 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 mediaeval technology.

- [Narrator] To lower the cargo onto the tower,

the boys simply walk in the other direction.

- Okay, start, walk.

Slowly, slowly.

[dramatic music]

- So this is our stone, the sandstone from the quarry,

and it'll be graded into three lots:

the pif, the paf and the pouffe.

That's the pif, isn't it, that's quite hard.

- Yeah, that's the hard.

- That's paf.

- That's the medium.

- And there will be pouffe in there somewhere.

- That looks like pouffe.

- Get some of these.

The pif, they're very, very hard sandstone

that is used for facing, for the structure,

for the external walls.

Whereas the paf and the pouffe

are actually used to infill the walls

to tie it all together.

- [Narrator] Philippe Delage began his career as a builder

over 40 years ago.

For the last 10 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.

- But if you're bricklaying, do you do that

'cause it's got a flat surface, but the stone has to go in

and the mortar has go up into the stone.

So don't flatten it out, okay.

- [Narrator] 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 plum line.

- On the scaffolding here,

you'll notice there's about a two inch gap

so you can get your plumb line down there

and make sure the wall is absolutely straight

'cause if it's not, tower starts going like that,

it'll start going like that.

- [Narrator] Most of these mediaeval tools and techniques

have been around for millennia

and are still used on building sites today.

- Just doing the rubble infill to the wall.

So we've got the facing stone, the pif, 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 will 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 is that motor, Peter?

- Already in the wall, Tom, already.

[instrumental music]

- Now these, I'm hoping I'll have a secret ingredient

to transform what is frankly a muddy hole

into somewhere comfy to live.

- [Narrator] Mediaeval 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.

- [Narrator] 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.

- [Narrator] 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 by the masons,

it's gonna go to the great tower for the doorway

into that top room.

We're just using this crane as directed by Phillipe.

- [Narrator] Using this simple lever system,

one man can lift four times his own weight.

- Yeah, it's okay.

- [Narrator] It's then raised up the tower

using the tread wheel crane.

- I can see it coming up.

Here it comes.

I'm as dizzy as you like.

- Is your 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 man feel quite seasick

whilst on dry land, like myself.

- [Narrator] 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

they've built this reservoir out to clay,

and that way you can pull the lead in,

it's not gonna drain off

and you don't waste a valuable resource.

- [Narrator] 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.

- Well, that looks brand new.

It 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.

- [Narrator] 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, mediaeval 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's subdued now.

- Our mediaeval square here says it's all good.

- It's ready to, for the next stone.

- [Narrator] 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.

And 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.

- [Narrator] Manoeuvring this heavy stone

with a simple crane is tricky.

One slip and serious damage could be done to both the lintel

and the surrounding stonework.

- You got that, Tom.

- Yes, well done.

- Oh, I felt quite vulnerable then, I've gotta be honest.

- It's almost perfect.

- [Narrator] Stone masonry, like so many mediaeval 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's the oldest form of cooking utensil of any sort.

- That's it, even your iron ones are called cooking pots,

there's the clue.

- [Narrator] 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.

- So it's gonna be stronger

than if it was just--

- Squashed together. - Squashed together.

- [Narrator] Clay is heavy and difficult to transport,

so potters sourced it from as near to home as possible.

- And where do you get your clay from then?

- From as close as the side of the road as you possibly can,

that's a pothole.

One where you could lose a waggon 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 waggon pass and glance past--

- Wow, where did he go? - Where's he gone?

- [Narrator] 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 wanna, 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.

As long as the pot's made evenly, it'll work better.

- Right, so if there's this thick lump somewhere,

then you're gonna have problems around that.

I'm flaring it out.

- [Narrator] The round bottom means

it won't sit on a flat surface.

So the mediaeval pot often had legs.

- There's the cook pot.

[instrumental music]

- [Narrator] The hovel is now fully equipped

and ready to sustain the workers.

- This is perhaps the most important thing, innit?

This is our larder, our fridge, our pantry our food supply,

the grain ark.

Lovely, innit?

There it is.

This is the mainstay of our diet, this is our main food,

it's certainly 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 that?

And then with 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.

- [Narrator] 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, is cushioning.

- It's quite comfy.

- It's not as bad as you think, is it?

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 living your entire life.

I mean, I'd rather be in a small place like this

and get the heat, it's the easiest place to heat.

- And also how much time are you gonna spend in here really?

I mean these days you think, I need a sitting room with a TV

and a big sofa 'cause you're gonna relax in there.

You're gonna be working most of the time

and you've got all your jobs and tasks to do.

So that's sort of like,

rest and relaxation isn't as important.

- There's less time for it.

- Cheers. - Cheers.

- Salute.

- They don't clink, do they?

That's about the only thing I've got against drinking bowls,

they don't clink.

- [Narrator] It's morning

and the team are getting ready for work.

Knowing what ordinary mediaeval people wore is a challenge.

But fortunately, a few items of clothing have survived.

- The most useful garments were survived

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 Claire 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'd have a belt.

However, it's not to give you a waist

but it's all about creating an attractive drape of cloth.

I tell you, it's the most comfy thing I've ever worn.

- It is faintly ridiculous, I think that

mediaeval underwear is as big as this.

I think, obviously for Tom,

that's probably an appropriate size

but both myself and Ruth could fit into these.

I feel a bit like a pair of 1950s football shorts,

although in the light vaguely see-through.

And then we just got the hose, single legged hose.

But at this stage, it's just very similar to kind of,

I suppose, stockings and suspenders.

However, if they were sewn onto the plants,

pretty soon you'd have a pair of trousers.

You kinda see where the evolution of clothes come from.

- [Narrator] Ruth's headwear

is inspired by the mediaeval queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

- And 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 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.

[Ruth laughs]

- [Narrator] 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 is preferred

as its fine grain meant it was quicker and easier to curve.

- We need for chapel tower, a lot of stone having 10--

- Inches. - Inches.

- [Narrator] 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.

- [Narrator] 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?

- 10.

- Yeah, very good.

You remember.

- [Narrator] Facing a stone was a basic skill

that every stone mason would have had.

First the edges are cut using a pitch.

- And a hammer.

Angle about there?

- Yes.

Actually, you have to do it in one time.

- One-- - Time, yeah.

And you have just follow it now.

- Like follow it through.

- Very good.

- [Narrator] A stonemason would have learned

under the watchful eye of a master mason.

- I don't want to hear this.

This is a bird.

As a stonemason, it's rhythmical.

Or quick.

But it is always the same.

You can do very rhythmical.

You only think of the rhythmical music, rhythmical.

And few minutes after, you're finished, okay?

- [Narrator] 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.

Well, we are in this room.

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 stylized view.

But now as a stonemason, you must precisely mark it out.

- Yeah, exactly.

We have now to try and form imagination dream

in useful drawing.

- [Narrator] The niche is where the altar will be.

Before any building is done,

the walls must be marked out with absolute precision.

- This is continuing the curve of this wall.

- [Narrator] The altar niche

must be in the east of the tower.

So Florian is marking out the east-west axis

using an ingenious mediaeval tool.

- I absolutely love this.

It's a horn, we 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.

- Flip it over.

- [Narrator] Using just a rope, dividers and the ochre line,

the chapels 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 flow was the nerve centre

of the mediaeval building site

where the master mason drew full-scale plans.

Using a compass,

the circumference of the spiral staircase is drawn,

actual size.

- This is apprentice job.

- Always the apprentice, never the master.

Florian and Clement are working out the central part

of our staircase and that will form the column

that runs up connecting all stairs.

- And now we're getting to draw 12 steps.

- [Narrator] For the mediaeval 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 step in the drawing first.

- I mean, this is a fantastic way to actually make sure

before you start cutting stone, wasting materials and time,

that they work and you can see there,

they're bigger than my foot then so that's workable.

- Now we need to finish one step.

- [Narrator] 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.

- It's ready.

A present for you.

- 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.

Five, 10 minutes?

- Two or three days.

- Two or three days.

You can hear how good quality this stone is

by the ringing sound when Clement hits it.

And I think that's why, to be honest, I'm standing here

and not actually being allowed to do anything.

I lie.

- A right line

- An apprenticeship for a stonemason would have been

about seven years.

But to be honest, as Clement says, it's actually a lifetime.

You're always learning.

And Peter and I haven't been here long

and there's just so much to take in.

- [Narrator] Carving stone takes its toll on the tools

and everyday they must be sharpened

by blacksmith Martin Claudel.

- Is it true, at Guédelon,

if there's no blacksmiths here for two days, work stops?

- Yes, work stop,

because we have to fix a lot of stone masonry tools

and if we don't do that, they can't work.

- [Narrator] 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 constant airflow, isn't it?

- [Narrator] 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 shutter.

To carve stone, it must get yellow hot.

- He watches for the colours

appearing on surface of the metal: blue, the red,

and most importantly, the straw yellow at the very end.

Now it's ready for the masons.

- [Narrator] There are a few clues

as to how ordinary people lived

day-to-day in a mediaeval village.

But Ruth's pieced together fragments of knowledge

to work out how people did the most mundane

of everyday tasks like washing up.

- Haven't got a scarring pad.

But I've got sand.

For the pad, well, this time of the year,

there's plenty of fresh 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 bit off, but, you know, I mean,

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 turned to wood ash,

just straight out of the fire.

- [Narrator] 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.

- 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, huh?

- [Narrator] 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 light flower on.

So that's quite bitter in flavour,

but, you know, anything to give a bit of bite.

- [Narrator] 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.

- [Narrator] 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.

- This is the sound of the past.

A rotary quern like this is 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.

And you can see that in people's teeth

when we're dug up archaeologically.

- [Narrator] With the tools sharpened,

Clement has put the finishing touches to the step.

Now comes the delicate task

of transporting it to the chapel.

- Looks like your step's arriving.

Well, I say, your step

- [Narrator] The step is winched up the castle wall

using only manpower.

- Ready.

- Brake off.

[background music]

- [Narrator] 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.

- These guys have been doing this for 15 years

'cause they know how to get things like this up here

but it's amazing what they can move

without the use of what we call machines.

Essentially, the use of rollers, leavers,

inclined planes, pulleys all made out of wood.

Wood and stone working together, perfect harmony.

A bit like me and Tomo.

- [Narrator] 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 out to go, isn't it?

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

would have been really difficult, wouldn't it?

- Yeah.

Tomo's not stuck down there, is he?

- Wedged. - Wedged.

[Ruth laughing]

- [Narrator] Using the greens from the garden

and the ground barley,

Ruth is cooking a mediaeval pottage in the clay pot.

- So a little bit of water in there,

I'm gonna start with my leeks.

This time of the 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

this time of year.

That's softened down a bit now.

- [Narrator] Grain is added to create a porridge like dish.

- 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 the third dimension appear such as the,

the doorway that we've been working on,

put the lintel on there, suddenly wow.

- Gives me a real feel too, just how much impact

such places must've had on people.

You know, if everybody's living in this sort of

little tiny one room, half in the centre, low building

and then there's that funking great thing out there,

it's quite a shock to the system really, isn't it?

I mean, it makes a huge impact.

- Well, this is a period

when these great like military buildings,

religious buildings are starting to rise up

and really make an impact on the landscape.

- [Narrator] The team are also getting used

to the simple mediaeval food.

- This is a triumph.

This is an absolute triumph

- 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 tread wheel.

Anything is good to eat.

- It's not exactly easy, either, grinding the darn stuff.

I bet it's just as hard work as pounding away all day

in the quarry.

- There's no easy jobs in the mediaeval age.

- No, there aren't, are there?

- [Narrator] Next time, defending the castle

with crossbows--

- Nice.

- [Narrator] And architecture

against the most powerful weapon of the age--

[lady counting in a foreign language]

The trebuchet.

[background music]