Original subtitles

(majestic music)

- Our journey begins at Epping Forest,

once a royal hunting ground.

From there we travel northeast and explore

several beautiful houses, including the Tudor gatehouse

at Layer Marney Tower.

Heading into East Anglia, we discover the medieval towers

of Long Melford and Lavenham,

made rich with the wool trade.

In the heart of the County of Norfolk

is the City of Norwich and its beautiful Norman cathedral.

Flying east we come to one of the best known

seaside resorts in the country, Great Yarmouth,

with its golden mile of all the fun of the seaside.

East Anglia is well known for the Norfolk Broads,

where boating holidays have been popular

for well over a century.

We end our journey at one of the finest houses

in the country, Blickling Hall,

and its association with a tragic figure of Anne Boleyn,

the second wife of Henry the Eighth

and mother of Elizabeth the First.

Epping Forest lies to the northeast of London

and is an ancient woodland and former royal forest.

As a royal forest, only the monarch could hunt here.

But local people had rights to graze animals,

gather food, as well as collect firewood.

Poaching was harshly dealt with,

often by death or mutilation.

Over the centuries the forest was gradually reduced

in size due to land owners cleaning areas

and enclosing the land.

In 1878 an act of Parliament was passed stipulating

that the forest must be unenclosed and not built on.

Four years later, Queen Victoria gave up

the monarch's rights and gifted the forest to her subjects.

She said, "It gives me the greatest satisfaction

"to dedicate this beautiful forest to the use

"and enjoyment of my people for all time."

And thus it became known as the people's forest.

In Tudor times, Henry the Eighth

and Queen Elizabeth the First may well have hunted

in the forest, though no documentary evidence

has survived to prove it.

In 1543, though, Henry commissioned a building

known as the Great Standing from which to view the chase.

The building was largely rebuilt in 1589

for Queen Elizabeth the First,

and this is what we see today.

It's now known as Queen Elizabeth's hunting lodge

and is open to the public.

"Sir William hath at his own great costs and charges

"erected and builded a new house,

"very fair, large, and stately,

"made of brick and embattled."

So wrote Thomas Larke in 1566,

surveyor to Sir William Petre about Ingatestone Hall,

the new house that Sir William had built

on his Essex estates.

As a mark of her favor, Queen Elizabeth the First

spent several nights here on her royal progress of 1561.

The Hall stands in open countryside

one mile from the Village of Ingatestone

and substantially retains its original Tudor form

and appearance with its mullioned windows,

high chimneys and crow-step gables.

The Hall is surrounded by 10 acres of enclosed gardens.

Since it was built, Ingatestone Hall has passed

through the hands of 15 generations of the Petre family,

who open it to the public during summer months.

Hylands House is on the outskirts of Chelmsford,

the County town of Essex.

It has had a succession of colorful owners

who have altered and improved the house over 200 years.

The last owner, Mrs. Christine Hanbury,

lived alone here during the second World War

when the house was used by the SAS as their headquarters

and the grounds had a German prisoner of war camp

built in it.

She died in 1962 and the house was bought

by the local authority and a massive restoration program

began both of the house and the landscaped park.

Every August Hylands Park is packed

with thousands of people who come to the V Music Festival

and give a new lease of life to the estate.

We now head into East Anglia,

an area rich in historic places.

Layer Marney Tower is a good example.

It is one of the finest as well as tallest

Tudor gatehouses.

Sadly, the rest of the house was never built.

Lord Marney began construction of his new house

around 1520, starting with the tower.

But no sooner was building underway than he died.

His son then took over, but he too died just a year later.

Leaving no male heirs, building stopped,

leaving the central tower and two wings constructed.

The gatehouse is a remarkable and very fine example

of early Renaissance work.

King Henry the Eighth's Italian architect,

Girolamo da Treviso, is said to have designed the building.

It stands 80 foot high and built in red brick

with terra cotta ornaments.

Restoration took place in the 20th century

to restore Layer Marney to its former glory.

John Constable is one of England's greatest painters

and grew up here in the late 18th century

at Flatfort Mill in Suffolk,

which was owned by his father.

One of his most famous paintings, "The Hay Wain,"

featured Willy Lott's Cottage.

In 1926 this cottage, along with the mill,

were in a near derelict state

until a local philanthropist bought them

and undertook basic repairs.

After he died in 1943, he left both properties

to the National Trust, who continued the restoration work.

The mill is now leased out to the Field Studies Council,

a registered charity committed to helping people

of all ages to understand and be inspired

by the natural world just as John Constable was.

Many of Constable's greatest pictures were painted

along this stretch of the river,

which is known today as Constable Country.

This is Hedingham Castle, built around 1140

on the site of an earlier 11th century wooden one.

It has a five-story keep,

which is still over 36 meters high.

It was designed for defense and also

to dominate the area as a physical reminder

of the absolute power of Aubrey de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.

Two of the original four corner turrets are missing,

and it seems likely that this was the result

of an attempt to demolish the building for materials

rather than through military action.

The castle was original surrounded by a stone curtain wall

but all traces of this have now vanished,

probably demolished at the beginning

of the 17th century when the castle fell into ruin.

In 1713, the castle was bought by Sir William Ashhurst,

the Lord Mayor of London.

He landscaped the grounds and built a fine country house

close by which today is occupied

by the descendants of Aubrey de Vere

who built the castle of 850 years earlier.

During the Medieval and Tudor ages,

wool became big business and brought great wealth

to parts of the country, including East Anglia.

And this can be seen in the houses of the merchants

and investors such as Milford Hall.

The house has been designed with a sense of symmetry.

Each half of the house is a mirror image of the other.

The style reflected the wish of the Tudor family

for order and harmony in their own lives

as well as for the design of the house.

It is built of brick, a building material

the Tudors made fashionable.

While there is no fortification of the house,

there are still small towers and turrets on the corners

that seem a reminder of an earlier age of castles.

This style of house became very popular.

So much so that in the same village

there is another fine house, Kentwell Manor.

Here a decorative moat surrounds the house,

which has the same style of towers and turrets

like Milford Hall.

The money made from wool also went to building

what are known as wool churches.

And the one at Long Melford is considered

the finest in East Anglia.

Its impressive size would have far exceeded the needs

of the small village population.

(bright Medieval music)

Evidence of the Medieval wealth of the wool trade

can also be seen just five kilometers away at Lavenham.

This is one of England's largest parish churches.

With its monumental flint and limestone tower,

it dominates the small weaving village.

It was financed largely by donations

from two local families during the 15th century.

During the Medieval period, Lavenham was among

the 20 wealthiest settlements in England.

This was entirely due to wool and a trade

from here at the Lavenham Wool Hall.

By the late 15th century the town was paying more

in taxation than considerably larger cities

such as York and Lincoln.

But this was not to last.

Within a hundred years cheaper cloth imports

from the continent dealt a blow to the town

and it lost its reputation.

As a result, it was largely forgotten

over the succeeding centuries

and remained remarkably unchanged.

This has resulted in Lavenham becoming

a very popular tourist attraction

for its many unspoiled Medieval and Tudor buildings.

Another Suffolk attraction rises above these trees,

Ickworth House.

This is an astonishing Italianate structure topped

by a massive rotunda begun for the eccentric fourth

and very rich Earl of Bristol in 1795.

The huge circular centerpiece is a structure

that would look more at home in Rome than in Suffolk.

Indeed, it was designed by an Italian architect.

The house was never actually intended to be a home,

but a gallery to show off the earl's art and fine furniture.

Unfortunately, much of the earl's collection was seized

by Napoleon's troops in 1798 and the earl spent

the rest of his life trying unsuccessfully

to gain its return.

This house is a testament to a rich man's flight of fancy,

and even his own wife thought Ickworth

was a stupendous monument of folly.

Close by Ickworth is Bury St. Edmunds,

which has a history stretching back to the Saxons

as one of the royal towns of the 9th century.

It was planned on a grid system,

rather like a Roman town,

and the shape survives to this day.

It was built by the Abbot of Bury St. Edmunds

in the year 1080, not long after

the Norman invasion of 1066.

The bones of the Saxon King, Edmund,

who was slain by invading gains,

were laid to rest in the old abbey, now in ruins.

It's often assumed that the name Bury refers to burial,

but it actually refers to old words like burg or borg,

meaning fortress or castle and was in existence

before Edmund was re-interred.

The abbey is associated with a great event

in English history, the Magna Carta.

In 1214, the barons of England are believed

to have met here in the Medieval church

and sworn to force King John

to accept the Charter of Liberties.

This document influenced the creation of the Magna Carta,

which was signed a year later at Runnymede near Windsor.

Very little remains of Saxon, England today

except for a few simple stone churches,

as buildings were made of wood

and have not survived the centuries.

At West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village,

a reconstructed one has been built

over the original site of a building dated

from around the 6th century.

The first excavations to take place

in the vicinity of the West Stow Village were in 1849

when an Anglo-Saxon cemetery was accidentally discovered

on the nearby heath.

In 1947, the outline of the village was discovered,

and following extensive excavation,

it was decided in 1974 to reconstruct the village

on the site as an experimental archeological project,

which has been ongoing ever since.

In 1999, the site was opened to the public

and offers visitors a feel of how early Saxons once lived.

Norwich is the county town of Norfolk,

and back in the 11th century it was the largest city

in England after London and one

of the most important places in the kingdom.

Throughout the Medieval period, Norwich established

wide-ranging trading links with other parts of Europe,

with its market stretching from Scandinavia to Spain.

Norwich Castle was founded soon after the Norman conquest

and records show that 98 Saxon homes were demolished

to make way for it.

The Normans established a new settlement

around the castle, as well as a marketplace,

which has been in continuous operation for over 900 years.

In 1096, the Bishop of Feckford began construction

of Norwich Cathedral.

The chief building material was limestone imported

from Carne in Normandy.

To transport it to the cathedral site,

a canal was cut from the river to get it

as close as possible.

When it was completed, the bishop moved

his episcopal seat to the new cathedral.

In 1272, it suffered considerable damage

after riots in the city.

In 1362, the spire fell down, causing major damage.

And if that was not enough, lightning struck in 1463,

causing a fire to rage through the nave.

The new spire is the second tallest in the country

after Salisbury Cathedral at 96 meters.

The building still retains much

of its original Norman design

and remains a place of worship.

The castle, however, was turned into a prison

in the 13th century and remained so until 1887

when it was bought by the city council

and turned into a museum.

In 1845, the railway arrived

and a grand Victorian station was built.

Up until then, it was often quicker, surprisingly,

to travel by boat from Norwich to Amsterdam

than to travel to London by road.

The Romans also occupied East Anglia,

and next to the Village of Burgh Castle is the site

of one of several forts.

It was constructed around the 4th century

to house cavalry as a defense against Saxon raids

up the rivers of the east coast.

The fort is a very large rectangle with three

of the tall, massively built walls still standing.

The fourth fell into what was once an estuary

but is now a marsh.

The projecting towers enabled soldiers

to defend the walls against attack

and were a useful place to position catapults,

which the Romans called ballistae.

The fort was garrisoned for a period

by a 500 strong cavalry unit.

Unusually, no Roman roads have been identified

connecting Burgh Fort with the remainder

of the military network.

It's quite possible it was resupplied

exclusively from the sea.

This is the River Yare which runs up to Norwich

from the coast, and along the river at Reedham

are a number of windmills.

This is the Berney Arms Mill, which was built in 1865

to grind cement clinker.

The raw materials would have been delivered by boat.

When production ceased, the mill was converted

to a pumping mill to drain the surrounding marshland.

Today it's restored and open to the public.

Close by is Polkey's Mill, which was built

for drainage and modernized in the late 19th century

from an earlier mill of the late 18th century.

It was restored in 2002 and is managed

by the Norfolk Windmills Trust.

We now follow the River Yare to the coast,

where it flows into the North Sea at Great Yarmouth.

For hundreds of years this was a major fishing port,

depending mainly on the herring industry.

In the second half of the 20th century,

it suffered a steep decline and has now all but disappeared.

However, the town has been a resort since 1760

and has steadily grown in size and popularity

over the last two centuries.

The town's seafront is known as the Golden Mile

and attracts millions of visitors each year

to its sandy beaches, along with a whole host

of indoor and outdoor attractions and amusement arcades,

including two piers.

Charles Dickens used Yarmouth as a key location

in his novel, "David Copperfield,"

and is said to have described the town

as the finest place in the universe.

He stayed at the Royal Hotel on the Marine Parade

while writing one of his best known books.

From the seafront it's possible

to see Scroby Sands Wind Farm,

one of the U.K.'s first offshore installations.

It was commissioned in March 2004

and has a capacity of 60 megawatts,

enough power to supply 41,000 households.

(inspiring music)

The farm consists of 30 wind turbines

located in water about 15 meters deep.

Each turbine has three, 40 meter blades

that rotate round a center point

some 60 meters above sea level.

The steel masts that carry the turbines

are driven 30 meters into the seabed

to provide stability on the shifting sands.

The wind is also useful for the 100s of boats

that can be seen on the Norfolk Broads

and the rivers that join these open stretches of water.

Boating holidays have been popular on the Broads

for well over a hundred years,

and one of the most famous sites on the river

is the Norfolk wherry.

This is the Albion, built in 1898 as a trading vessel.

She was rescued and restored in 1949

and is one of only a few remaining trading barges

built specifically for the Broads.

In the Edwardian summer months during the 1900s,

skippers scrubbed out the hulls

and took holiday makers for trips to make extra money,

just as she does today.

One of the most popular holiday centers

in the Broadland National Park is Horning.

It's hard to believe now that the village goes back

to the year 1020 when King Canute gave it

to the local abbey.

Horning lies on the River Bure

and is a good place to hire a pleasure cruiser

or rent a waterside cottage.

It's described as the prettiest village on the Broads,

and the designs of some of the waterside homes

are very individual indeed.

And today these houses change hands

for a great deal of money,

many exceeding well over a million pounds.

The Broads are a network of navigable rivers

and lakes across the Counties of Norfolk and Suffolk

and were formed by the flooding of peat workings.

In January of 2015 the Broads were recognized

as a national park, which includes seven rivers

and 63 Broads, mostly less than four meters deep.

This one is Hickling Broad, the largest of the group.

It's a haven for all sorts of wildlife,

and of course, a great place to sail or cruise.

At the north end of the Broad is Hickling Staithe,

where this is a sailing club, boatyards

and a pleasure boat inn for a well-earned drink and meal.

Horsey Mere is one of the most northerly Broads

and ends at Horsey Wind Pump.

This drainage windmill was built in 1912

on the foundations of an earlier one

and was working until 1943 when it was struck

by lightning and severely damaged.

Now restored, it marks the end of the navigable waterway.

We end our journey at one of England's finest

historic estates and the probable birthplace

of Anne Boleyn, mother of Elizabeth the First

and executed by her husband, Henry the Eighth, in 1536.

This is Blickling Hall.

(palatial music)

The present house was built in 1616

and largely replaced the Boleyn one.

It's in the Jacobian style, which refers

to the Latin name of King James the First,

who reigned at the time.

It was once surrounded by a magnificent formal garden

which was later reduced in size

to make way for a landscaped park.

For many visitors, it's the association

with the tragic story of Anne Boleyn

that captures the imagination, and the ghost story.

It's said that every year on the anniversary

of her execution a headless ghost arrives

at Blickling in a carriage driven

by an equally headless coachman.

But she hasn't lost her head completely in the afterlife.

She carries it along with her during her hauntings.

A ghostly place to end this journey.

(majestic music)