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...
Whoa!
..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.
MAN: Trois, deux, un. Tirez!
Here in the Burgundy region of France is Guedelon 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 coal face because this is industry.
For the next six months, Ruth, Peter
and Tom will experience the daily rigours of medieval construction...
Job down. Yeah.
..and everyday life...
..how workers dressed
and ate...
You can really smell your food, Ruth. SHE LAUGHS
..and the art of combat.
This is the story of how to build a medieval castle.
It's April, and since their arrival a month ago, the team have been
learning ancient skills from the Guedelon masons.
Perfect. Oh, good. HE LAUGHS
They've also set up a base for themselves in the shadow
of the castle.
Building a castle involves such a lot of people
and they've all got to live somewhere.
The 13th century was part of the golden age of castle building...
..when ever-evolving tactics and fortifications were driven
by the legacy of bloody crusades and vicious dynastic struggles.
Medieval dynasties sought to expand their influence
and protect their gains.
They built imposing stone castles, not only to assert power
but, more fundamentally, to withstand attack.
Now the team learn about building the castle's defensive structures.
They look at the ingenious features medieval castle builders devised.
MAN: Trois, deux, un. Tirez!
And explore the craft behind the weapons they had to resist.
Defence, for me, really is the raison d'etre of a castle.
It's not just, you know, the battles, the attacking,
the defending, it's the structural input that you have to think about -
your defences, curtain walls, your towers, things like that.
RUTH: They are defensive structures I suppose.
They're much more than that, though, aren't they?
I mean, they're...they are about defending yourself psychologically.
They're about telling everybody, "Don't even try it."
And what about the weapons too?
I mean, what could they actually do against a castle?
How effective were they? Yeah.
I guess, how many men do you need to defend a castle?
And you'd need some ruddy great big stores of food. Yeah.
THEY LAUGH
Castles - people sometimes...knights and princesses, but it isn't,
it's mostly about the likes of us, isn't it?
It's about everybody else. Yeah.
And how do we survive? Yeah.
THEY LAUGH
A castle like this at Guedelon would have been built for a prosperous
Lord who wanted to display his wealth and power...
..and also needed his home to be strong enough
to withstand potential attack.
And this dictates much of its design,
with 36-feet-high curtain walls protecting the courtyard
and residential spaces.
Entry is via
a twin-towered gatehouse.
And at each corner above the
crenulated walls there will be
four round towers,
the highest of which will be the Great Tower,
a superb vantage point at nearly 100 feet high.
In charge of the defensive structure of the castle
is Master Mason, Florian Renucci.
He's travelled the world
studying the ancient secrets behind medieval stonework.
Guedelon's walls are over 12 feet thick in places.
Today, the masons are placing a special long stone called
a boutisse into a section of castle wall,
designed specifically to reinforce it against attack.
The boutisse is to connect the front of the wall... Yeah.
..front part, to the stone inside the wall. Right.
Er, the boutisse, for instance, you have one here.
This stone here is very long, it's here.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I can see that, yeah.
We have to have wall really, um, strong. Yeah.
This wall have to resist an enemy. Yeah.
And a better way to fight a castle... Yeah.
..is to throw stone to the wall. HE LAUGHS
At the wall, yeah.
If we don't boutisse, the front part of the wall will go down.
You can really see from this wall that you've got the external face,
the internal face and the bit in the middle, the infill.
Exactly.
We are going to put one boutisse.
Can you help us to...? Yeah.
Definitely. Very good.
Are you feeling strong, Peter?
I don't need to. That's...that's the beauty of this.
Yes. Er, try to be always in the middle of the stone.
Right. Yeah, OK.
It's a heavy stone to have a strong castle.
Boutisse stones are not just placed at random,
they're fixed into the wall at three-feet intervals
to give maximum strength.
The boutisse go, er, in the middle... Right.
..of the joint.
So it's just linking in but it's so clever
because the pressure is now spread between two stones.
Yes, we have to think everything.
It's like, um, a game. THEY LAUGH
Like medieval Tetris.
At Guedelon they're using a medieval formula to make mortar,
mixing water with quarry sand and lime putty.
Unlike lime produced industrially,
it will take many centuries to set completely.
We were afraid about it.
Cos thousands of tonnes of stone being held together is
a bit of a risk at the start, then? Exactly.
And, er, it's perhaps the first time in Guedelon that we use this old
way of making mortar.
Through experimentation they've discovered that clay impurities
in the quarry sand give this mortar great strength.
So the experiments of archaeology has actually given you a really good
building substance to build your castle.
Exactly.
Tom's just putting the mortar down here and he's making it rough,
so when the stone goes down, that mortar will press into the...
..the cracks of the stone.
If it was smooth, then you'd just have gaps, so if there's a bump
in the stone and smooth mortar, it just wouldn't touch it.
Whereas, because he's making it all rough, it'll squidge together
and just keep that stone absolutely solidly fixed into place.
It's looking good, Tom.
Every stone has to be in line because this will go up and up
and up, potentially another four metres.
These stones are slightly off, your build is slightly off
and eventually it'll collapse.
Now the stone will be... Solid. ..solid.
The biggest threat to castles was sieges.
These were far more common than pitched battles
and could last for months, even years.
If they couldn't get through the gates,
invaders could try going over the walls with towers and ladders...
..or mining under them.
But another more sophisticated means of attack developed.
From basic stone throwers to mangonels, couilllards
and trebuchets, a range of deadly medieval war machines evolved.
These came to dominate siege warfare for hundreds of years
until they were ultimately superseded by the cannon.
The largest-ever trebuchet, it is thought, was that commissioned by
Edward Longshanks, King of England, in the War of Scottish Independence.
And he was trying to bring down Stirling Castle.
It was a vast beast called Warwolf... SHE CHUCKLES
..as a nickname.
Disassembled, it took 30 wagons to move it.
Five master carpenters worked on it along with 49 other workers
and it could hurl an object of 300 pounds' weight with accuracy.
30 miles from Guedelon is St Brisson Castle,
which houses a collection of replica siege engines.
The Romans introduced basic catapults to Britain.
But by the 13th century the development of counterweight
technology saw the introduction of deadly high-powered stone-hurling
war machines.
They were used in sieges to bombard defending troops
and collapse castle walls.
The crew wear protective helmets in case the machine malfunctions.
TOM: How big do you think that counterweight is?
PETER: How's it going, Tom? It's good mate.
It's amazing how only four people
can manoeuvre such a heavy counterweight.
Yeah, I mean, what, that's about 500 kilograms?
The energy you're putting into that to raise it up
is going to be stored as potential energy,
then when it's released, this, which is about 10 kilograms,
this ball is going to be swung out and flung into the distance.
They reckon it'll go about 100 metres.
Looking good. Right, he's just going to lock this off.
There we go.
Tension's on the pin.
Now it's locked off, they can unwind this rope so that when it fires,
or when it's loosed, the rope doesn't hold it back.
So here we go, unwinding the rope.
Whoa! Watch those handles.
Well, this is a well-trained crew. They know what they're doing.
And this is... It's, er, very different, isn't it,
from doing it in peacetime as it would be in the heat of battle?
I think about the shouting, the noise. Yeah.
These ropes could snap, the wood could snap.
Here we go.
The ball, the projectile, into the sling and it's ready to go.
RUTH: I think we'll leave. So, standing back.
HE LAUGHS NERVOUSLY Standing back.
We're just moving back in to the seclusion zone.
Imagine if it was in the heat of battle, you'd just be there...
Yeah. Yeah. You'd feel quite lonely
if you were the guy who was about to pull the rope.
Right, we're going to count down.
MAN: Cinq, quatre, trois, deux, un. Tirez!
I mean, still, look how much energy is still in there.
And you have to get the mathematics absolutely right.
The difference between the length of that arm and the length of the rope
and the...because if you don't get that spot-on,
it can fly backwards instead of flying forwards.
But if you...if you deconstruct this, it's essentially scaffolding,
it's a mason's-shaped ball. It is.
It's the ropes that we made on site.
It's exactly the same mathematics that the masons are using.
I mean, it's really... It's sort of simple
but it's also really quite sophisticated.
If you can build a castle, you can fight a castle.
That's the arms race that's happening in our period, isn't it?
You know, the castles get more strong, more developed,
more technical and so the siege weapons become stronger,
more powerful, more technical. Yeah.
It's each driving each other further and further onwards.
It's not fast, though, is it? No. No. THEY LAUGH
Despite being slow,
these mighty war machines were greatly feared in the Middle Ages.
Some fortified towns surrendered at the very sight of them.
TOM: Right. RUTH: Shall we go and have a look?
Projectiles ranged from carved stone or mortar balls like these,
to rotting animal carcasses intended to spread disease,
and even the heads of defeated soldiers to really lower morale.
It's funny, isn't it, looking at the damage, you know?
Cos it is just a small hole.
But I suppose, when you think again, against a stone wall,
it's going to keep going until it finds a weakness...
This is the hammer, isn't it? ..one after another.
Yeah, a hammer doesn't crack something with one blow. It's not a great explosion, it's...
The persistent drip, drip, drip until you crack.
As well as being an archaeologist, Tom is a midshipman in the
Royal Naval Reserve with a special interest in military history.
He's been looking into what kind of armour an ordinary soldier
might have worn in the 1200s.
Not everyone could afford the expensive metal helmets
and mail worn by wealthy lords and knights.
A more basic form of protection commonly worn for combat
was the gambeson...
..a padded linen tunic whose main protective element was -
sheep's wool.
Tom's visiting Ruth in the hovel.
She wants to make him a gambeson
and the process starts with the sheep's wool.
Ruth, when you asked me here for a fitting for my protective clothing,
I was thinking chainmail and armour. SHE LAUGHS
But that's not the case, is it?
No, no, no, this is. Well, it is but it's not. This is cloth armour.
Cloth armour? Yeah. And that's good, is it? It is good, yeah. Yeah?
You're going to be glad of this, I reckon.
THEY LAUGH
So, you make...have lots and lots and lots of layers of linen
and then a big fat layer of wool, prepared wool.
And then more and more and more layers, many.
And then you've got to stitch the whole lot together really tight.
Not so it's, like, big and fluffy like a duvet but...
Right, compact it down.
..compacted right down into something truly dense.
I mean, it's almost...
This is... Modern body armour is the evolution from this. Yeah.
You've still got a balance between protection and manoeuvrability
and trying to cover as much of the body as possible.
And this is the ancestor of Kevlar.
THEY LAUGH Yeah.
Of the bullet-proof vest.
Here it goes.
One of the defining visual features of medieval castles
is their arrow loops.
The ingenious design of these simple slits in the walls provided
protection and gave castle archers a huge advantage.
STONEMASON: Very good.
Guedelon mason, Constantin Lemesle, has specially shaped a stone
needed for building an arrow loop in a corner tower.
Before they mortar the stone in place, they need to be sure it fits.
All right, so that's in position.
I thought that was going to go the other way round actually,
I thought...
Er, no, we have to alternate, we have to...
..to have a long face here and after a short one. Yeah, yeah, OK.
Er, and when you have a short one, you have a long here. Yeah.
And a short under.
It's to get something very strong when you cross the...
..the stones. Yeah, OK.
The funnel-shape design of the arrow loop,
tapering to a mere three-inch gap,
gave attackers outside only a tiny slit to aim at,
while the defenders could look out without being seen.
The arrow loops sloped down so archers could see invaders
even at the foot of the tower.
If it was, um, like this, for instance,
we can't, er... You can only hit people over there.
You can't hit them down there. Fight and shoot people.
Unless you've got a step ladder. THEY LAUGH
So, people can be in front of the tower, no problem for them. Completely safe.
And I guess also this is a weak point of the castle, isn't it?
You're actually creating a crack in your castle wall
so you need to reinforce it.
People say that in the 13th century, the round tower was very useful to
resist when stone are throw... throwing on the tower.
Because when the stone...coming, the round form used to be stronger.
You spread the pressure, don't you?
The stone hits there and it's curved then all these other stones...
Exactly. Yeah. ..take the impact. Exactly.
Peter and I are probably firing arrows at it -
we'd just break our arrows on the inside, so...
Of course, it'll be interesting to see
if you fire an arrow or a bolt back in.
That's it, that's the trick, isn't it? Yeah.
If you're attacking, you want to be able to know you're going to at least scare people,
if not kill them on the inside. THEY CHUCKLE
There'll be around 40 arrow loops in the finished castle.
In order to test their effectiveness,
Peter and Tom will need a suitable weapon.
One of the most infamous at the time was the crossbow.
First seen in 4th century BC China, by the 1200s,
crossbows were increasingly used in European siege warfare.
Crossbows were probably introduced into Britain around the time
of the Norman Conquest.
In some ways, they were less effective than the longbows,
they took an awful lot longer to load, so the rate of fire was much,
much slower.
Out in the battlefield, in the heat of the moment, they were pretty
useless, but in a siege it was a completely different thing.
Behind some nice safe walls, you had time.
And it was the sort of weapon that anybody could use
with no training and no skill at all.
Richard the Lionheart eventually met his end when a crossbow bolt,
fired by a boy in 1199, pierced him in the shoulder.
The resulting infection did for him.
As a weapon that made knights more vulnerable to lowly foot soldiers,
some despised it for breaking the conventions of chivalry.
But the art of crossbow-making became a whole industry
by the 13th century.
In Britain it survives to this day
among a few specialist craftsmen like bowyer, Chris Jury.
This is what's commonly known as a crossbow prod,
which is basically the bow on a crossbow.
What kind of wood is this? This is yew wood.
Now, yew wood is probably the best wood for making a bow.
In any piece of yew, you get the sapwood and the heartwood.
The sapwood is good in tension, which means it can stretch, and the
heartwood is good in compression, which means it can crush.
So, the two grow naturally together in a single piece of wood
to form a natural spring.
Chris uses a spokeshave to take off the bark.
I would imagine in the medieval period they would have done it in,
like a production process, so it'd be done in fairly large batches.
Apprentices would have started off maybe at the sort of age of 13, 14.
After seven years, then you was a journeyman who was...
..who was nearly at the point where he was a master of the craft.
Then you'd be a master bow maker and by that time you wouldn't even
get your hands dirty with the making of the bows. HE LAUGHS
You'd just let your minions get on and do it for you basically.
As I am your apprentice, is there any chance I can have a go with that?
Yeah, of course you can, yes.
You want to be gentle but you've also got to put a bit of pressure on, haven't you?
It's quite a delicate task cos you don't want to be cutting into the sapwood at all.
You just want to remove the bark.
I'm taking off lumps there. Don't look. Don't look.
HE LAUGHS I'll slow down.
The next stage is to taper the prod with an axe.
I can tell you've used an axe before. You've definitely got
a better technique than that than with a spokeshave. HE LAUGHS
If you don't mind me saying so. HE LAUGHS
The more we do this, the more likely it is that I'm going to
make a mistake, so...
You need all ten toes, do you?
Pretend it's one of your own legs. HE LAUGHS
I think I'm done. That's it, that's good, that's good.
Yeah, a bit of aggression's OK? Yeah, that's it, go on.
A draw knife is used to further smooth and shape the crossbow prod.
That's it, round it in.
That's it. It's still way too thick, so you can take off a lot of wood.
I suppose it's like with everything. It's just getting your eye in,
understanding the material you're working with and understanding the tools,
and hopefully it all comes together.
Yes, that's why certain tools like the axe and like the spokeshave
and the draw knife are ideal because they follow the grain.
So, while the tools look a bit crude,
they actually do the job rather well.
But you can understand how the apprentices did seven years
cos it's quite a...it's quite a specialist kind of task really.
So it's... Yeah.
That's starting to take shape rather nicely.
If you've done good work with your tapers, then it should bend
relatively evenly.
Well, I think I've done exceptional work with my tapering.
Well, er, yeah, it looks... it looks pretty good.
You are so accurate with that.
Carpenter, Sam Rooney,
has come all the way from New Zealand to work at Guedelon.
In his spare time, he makes traditional bows.
Today, Sam and Ruth are experimenting
with making a crossbow arrow known as a bolt or quarrel,
which was shorter, heavier and more deadly than a regular arrow.
You imagine an arrow, whether it be for a crossbow or a longbow,
and you imagine a little stick. Yeah.
Why are you starting with a great big piece of wood?
Mainly for mass producing arrows.
And you can have several lengths of a tree and then just split it
into small squares and then you round them.
I suppose if you think really mass production, that makes sense, doesn't it?
If you've gotta make 20,000... Yeah. ..for a castle... Yeah.
..the amount of time it will take you to find 20,000 sticks
that were the right size and shape...
You'd have to send an army of people off to gather twigs, yeah.
Yeah. Whereas two or three trees would do you your 20,000 arrows.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.
You're just squaring this off at the moment, are you?
Yeah, I'm just squaring it off... Right.
...using a medieval bandsaw.
The thin piece of wood is then cut into individual strips which will be
shaped to make each bolt shaft.
Yep. And it will be practically a circle. Yeah, yeah.
Like this one here. Oh, right. That one's pretty much finished.
That's about as round as you'll need it, isn't it?
So we're going to drill a small hole in the end of the bolt.
A metal bolt head is then attached.
You would not want that pushed through you, would you? Aargh!
No. A foul-looking thing. HE LAUGHS
And a slit is cut so it can be fletched.
It's recorded that in 1250, a chief English quarrel maker
produced 25,000 quarrels a year
and could be expected to make 100 in a single day.
I'm fine with that.
It is a huge amount of work, all of this, isn't it?
Well, yeah, I guess so.
Bows are still really woven into our modern life.
I mean, think of the surnames - Bowyer, Fletcher, Stringer, Archer.
And then all the number of phrases that come from one form of archery
or another, things like 'to pick a quarrel' or 'a bolt from the blue'
or 'he's got lots of strings to his bow'.
They're all archery terms.
They finish off their bolt by warming up a medieval glue
made from an unusual source.
SAM: It's made from the bladder of a fish
and you actually get the bladder and dry it out.
Shove a bit of glue in here.
So it's just a bit of glue on the leather, shove it in the slot.
Yeah, just here, yeah. SHE LAUGHS
There we go. That's it. Yeah. There we go, one quarrel.
Well, thanks very much. I shall give it a go. OK. Good luck.
Thanks, Sam.
By the end of the 12th century,
a new design of crossbow was introduced.
The addition of a metal stirrup
enabled the crossbowman to hold
the bow with his foot
and draw back the string,
either with both hands
or a belt hook.
This was known as spanning the bow.
Peter has come to make the stirrup with Martin Claudel who's been
a blacksmith at Guedelon for four years.
PETER: They use a process called 'smith and striking'.
The smith is the blacksmith - he's the guy doing the thinking.
He's got the little hammer, he's moving the metal around, he taps it.
The striker has the big hammer and that is me.
I always hate doing the striking.
I've got no rhythm basically.
But then he hits, I hit, he hits, I hit,
and when he hits the anvil, I stop.
OK, we good?
Your turn. Oh, right.
Peter and Martin will hammer the iron flat
and then bend it at four corners, making a stirrup shape.
I think we got away with that.
Um, it's certainly starting to take shape.
We've got a kink in it, we've got a bend.
And in these two ends, he's going to fire weld.
So he's basically splitting the metal
so when they come together, they interlock.
He'll heat all that up and then he'll basically smack it as hard as
he can and compact that back into a single piece of metal, essentially
creating a fire weld which is ultimately very, very strong.
Which will give it the strength it needs
because if you think about putting your foot in it and pulling on that
crossbow in order to cock it, you don't want your metal coming apart.
He's going to ramp up the heat so it goes white-hot.
The reason for the darkness in here is so he can see the colours.
Here we go.
That's fantastic. Yeah. Are you happy? I'm happy. Yeah.
Back at the hovel, Ruth has enlisted some help
to stitch Tom's gambeson together.
Hello. Hello, chaps. Oh, dear. Hello.
What are these? Are you making rugs or something, are you? RUTH LAUGHS
You told me they were making you a suit of armour. THEY LAUGH
We are. Really? Very, very, very slowly.
That's the first layers of cloth all sewn together
with the wool going on top. Yeah.
And then I've started quilting this panel
and putting the other layers on top.
It's like a front piece and a back piece? Yeah. Yeah.
Then as soon as you start sewing, you can see it's starting to compress it down.
Have a feel of the difference of that. Look how wobbly that is, soft and wobbly. Yeah.
And then feel where it is when it's sewn. Oh, wow! I think so.
Fight in the winter cos this looks quite warm.
I think it's quite warm! Yeah.
In fact, I have to be honest, don't fight any time soon.
You wouldn't believe... This is a day's work!
I mean, I've done nothing all day today except this.
Who was wearing gambesons?
They were being worn by men at arms, fairly ordinary soldiers,
you know. Yeah.
And being worn by the rich soldiers in combination with chainmail.
Mmm. So they were being worn by quite a lot of people. Yeah.
I'd certainly be happier if I was on the walls wearing a gambeson to
sort of stand there with my crossbow than I would be if I was just...
Yeah. ...in my shirt. I don't know, I...
In the 13th century, gambeson-making was a skilled craft
done mainly by men.
You keep your right arm underneath, so you just keep poking and pointing.
And I find if you stretch the cloth with your left hand... Blimey!
Yeah, blimey, I'm glad you said that.
You've missed. You've gone, come up right over there.
Do I want to go back down? Yeah, you gotta come up in line.
OK, OK. SHE LAUGHS
He's not a natural, is he? At least I'm giving it a go, eh?
At least you're giving it a go.
Go on. No, missed again. No, try again.
Argh! RUTH LAUGHS
This is like potluck. Right, this time.
OK, that's better. That'll do, that'll do, it's good enough, right.
Yeah. And you need to pull really tight, though don't break the thread.
Yeah. Marvellous. And then straight back down again. Straight back down.
That's it. And catch it with the other arm.
I do not envy you one iota. It is slow, isn't it? It is.
Chris is nearing the final stages of his work on the crossbow.
CHRIS: OK, so here we have your bow, all nicely shaped
and expertly tapered and nice and smooth.
Um, and now the next stage is to make sure it bends evenly.
The prod is ready to be put under tension, using a tiller stick.
If the bow is not evenly shaped, the prod may snap.
So now we basically examine the curve of the bow. Right.
So the trick...the trick is you need to spot the weak bits
before they develop into a problem and shave them away.
Even after all this time and work, there's still jeopardy
about whether it'll actually be effective.
There's a massive amount of jeopardy involved in doing it.
This is the real art of the bowyer. You need to train your eye to see
the curve and to notice any flat spots in the curve.
Yeah, I was going to say because, to be honest,
it looks pretty good to me. So we're happy with that.
That would be... That would make a good shooting bow.
The deep ditch and sloped walls at the base of the castle are designed
to make them harder to approach.
The only entrance across the ditch is a 10-foot-high bridge
to the main gate...
..a structure which relies on a very humble element to hold it together,
the nail.
677 were needed to make this bridge...
..all forged on site.
Martin, the blacksmith, makes all the nails for the doors
and fixtures in the castle.
Inspired by a popular story from the Middle Ages, Ruth has come to
the blacksmith's forge.
I'm going to have a go at making a nail.
This, believe it or not, is a really female activity.
The story goes...
...that when they needed the nails to crucify Christ,
the blacksmith that they asked refused to be involved
and his wife stepped up, "I'll make 'em," she said.
SHE LAUGHS
It was a story that had a lot of popularity in the 13th century
and, as a result, there are lots and lots of pictures of women
working at a blacksmith's forge, nail-making.
Frequently rather ugly, demonised women, great big hook noses.
But dressed just like me.
This one little piece of metal that we're working,
how many nails will it make?
Maybe between ten and 20 maybe.
It's not many, is it, for this much work? Not many.
I mean, I suppose that really explains why
things like furniture are made entirely with no nails.
They're all made of wood with wood joints.
So you only use your nails where you really need them.
It's a precious thing, the nail.
It's a funny thing that when you talk about the past and you list all
the crafts, people imagine that that means it's only men.
If you look at the lists of guildspeople in London and, indeed,
in Paris, it's amazing how many crafts are, in fact,
headed up by a female name.
There were female blacksmiths.
Once the iron has turned red in the hearth,
it softens and can be worked.
Almost ready. Almost ready!
Ruth is going to try 'smith and striking' with Martin.
I can scarcely lift this hammer let alone do anything useful with it.
We'll see.
A scary moment - ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh!
I've got a block of wood to stand on cos I'm short.
Ooh, sorry. Ooh.
I'm not on strike, am I?
Oh! Terrible.
OK. Whoa-oo! Good. SHE LAUGHS
Poor Martin is having to reshape it as my hits are not quite central
and so I'm making dents down the edges and he's being very, you know...
SHE PUFFS
..sorting out all my...
The metal is heated again and again...
Nice and sharp on the end.
..and gradually driven into a point before being squared up.
The head is then shaped.
It gets clouted.
That's it. Then just straightened out.
And plunged in the water to cool it.
Just like that.
I can really see why 13th century people were finding
ways of using as few nails as possible.
It's such a lot of work.
The stirrup is in a fairly straight line.
To make the finished weapon, crossbow expert, Robin Knight,
binds Peter's iron stirrup and Tom's yew prod.
I mean, one of the interesting things, for me, about making this
crossbow is you're relying on a lot of different skills -
a blacksmith making a stirrup... Yeah, there was... ..a bowyer making the...
There was no such thing as a crossbow maker.
One man made the tiller, the blacksmith made all of the ironwork,
another man made the string.
That's where you get the surname 'Stringer'.
And when the guy at the end of the process got all the bits
together, he didn't know how each individual part was made because,
to him - the trades were, before the guilds,
were called mysteries - to him, it was a mystery.
Right, that simple.
He just wasn't aware of how it was done.
A group of individuals with very specific knowledge and skills...
Exactly.
..bringing together almost like a, a flat pack of a crossbow
and then... Yeah. ...one man. One man put it together.
Now, what separates a crossbow from the longbow is really...
In defence, you don't actually need a huge amount of strength
or skill... Or training. ..to use it and use it effectively.
Training for longbows took from about the age of seven.
A crossbowman, you can train him up in half a day.
But he's still got the capability of killing you with half a day's
training as a longbowman with 15 years training.
I mean, this is a weapon that was actually banned by the church, wasn't it?
A weapon unfit to be used on Christians, only to be used on
heathens and Saracens.
Nobody liked crossbows. Unfortunately you get the oddballs like me
that sort of quite like them.
TOM LAUGHS
OK, now we come to the crunch. We're going to span the bow.
The moment of truth. The moment of truth. Now...
The stirrup works, get your foot in there.
OK, is everybody...?
Holy Mother!
That looks... That looks pretty good, doesn't it?
It looks solid. That's a proper piece of killing machinery, that.
Back at the castle, the team are almost ready for basic siege combat.
Look at you two relaxing whilst I've been away working.
This is it - there's your stirrup, mate.
I'll come in between you, if that's all right?
Oh, that looks pretty good. Are you surprised? Yes.
THEY LAUGH Fair enough.
I'll be honest - it wasn't me that did most of it.
This is our medieval killing machine, to be perfectly honest.
I've got the other bit. That's quite a long trigger there.
It's a long trigger. Oh, wow! And that's our ammunition, is it?
Mmm. OK.
Yeah, it looks quite deadly. It does. Looks horrible, doesn't it?
And think, you've dipped that in some animal dung
or something like that, you've actually got a biological weapon there as well.
You're going to infect someone even if you don't kill them straight off. Yeah.
You're going to do damage. It's not a nice weapon.
Is there any such thing? Well, very true, very true.
So, Ruth, how is Tommo's gambeson coming on?
Well, it's not finished, I can tell you that.
That's it there, is it? Well, it's the front panel.
That's all right. I've got it sort of shaped.
That's looking pretty good. And mostly bound.
It's a pretty rigid beast. Have I got the right shape?
It's quite heavy. Ooh! Ooh! RUTH LAUGHS
I'll have to tense up. Come on, come on, get your... Oh, blimey.
How much more work is there to do? Well, I'm going to do the back panel.
You're not getting sleeves. I've given up on sleeves.
Initially I was going to plan you the proper full gambeson with the sleeves, but I'm sorry.
I think it will be a bit like a straitjacket without sleeves. But...
I found an ancient gambeson that's at the end of its life,
if you want to try a complete one on. Oh, yeah. Put one on, Peter.
Oh, no. I told you it was a bit smelly and ancient, didn't I?
This is classic. It's smelly. Oh! It might still be...
It might actually be alive. It smells like a tent, that.
Looks like a straitjacket, doesn't it? Arms out.
Look how much softer this one is than the other one. This is much more flexible.
I quite like mine, to be honest. I like the cleanness of mine.
Cleanness. Ooh, let's do me up. It is like in a straitjacket.
You start at the top, do you? Shall I hold it across? Yeah.
You could just imagine some chaps trying to get into all this lot in a hurry, can't you?
A sort of team effort, isn't it, actually? It's a...
There you are, go on - that'll do. What do you think?
Yes, this is... Suits you. It's pretty good.
And not just the staining.
Do you feel strong? Yeah.
You've got a few little weak points. That's going to protect...
Those who could afford it would have covered their gambeson with
a chainmail shirt weighing over 25 pounds.
Feel. Whoa! THEY LAUGH
There is only one way of doing this.
Oh, no, this is like...
Try your hand to the right, Peter. Oh, my hair is stuck in it.
Ooh, I'm going to have a bald spot by the time I get out of here.
Can you get in?
Ah, we've lost a sleeve on this side.
THEY LAUGH
Oh, so glamorous. There we go. All right, pull your sleeve down.
Oh!
That's... RUTH LAUGHS There we go.
I really... How's your movement now? I mean...
It's good, it's... It's a bit more restrictive under the arms.
It's actually not that restrictive.
It's just the weight, you know. It's heavy. It's heavy. It's really heavy.
But it's not that heavy, I can still...
Seeing the chainmail on, it looks like it would give you
better protection than I thought originally against something like this. It is quite dense, isn't it?
That's fine, that is... That is actually fine.
I'll take a run-up. Close contact. Yeah.
You'll be pretty safe from an assault blow in that. Yeah. Now we get to see him taking that off.
We're not going to help him, then? No. Oh. Sorry, Peter.
No, no, this is going to be the amusing moment. There we go.
I've seen some wonderful period images of blokes
trying to get out of their mail shirts. Go on. Here we go.
Here we go. Whoa!
Ah! The years I spent in the asylum.
This is exactly what the pictures show.
This is exactly what they show. SHE LAUGHS
Unbelievable. Hooray! I am impressed.
Ooh! Wow, that's a weight off your shoulders!
The team are going to give the gambeson a sterner test
using their new crossbow.
RUTH: I can't tell you how glad I'm not really in the 13th century facing
an invading army.
I just can't imagine how horrible that would be.
Bolts shot from a high-powered crossbow could be as deadly
as bullets and shellfire.
OK, I'll duck down so you can rest. I'll hide. Thumb is on there.
Ooh! OK. I wish it looked less like a person.
There's no head. OK. Ooh! It's horrible. OK.
Yeah, there is, it's very, very small. THEY LAUGH
OK, here we go. OK.
Three, two, one.
Ah! Thank goodness for that, I missed.
Load you up, big boy.
Peter, Peter, Peter. RUTH LAUGHS
You're below that.
Trois, deux, un. Urggh!
Nice. You meanie.
You meanie. Well, I've gone to the side and low. Yeah, yeah.
Shall we have a look? Yeah.
How are we looking? How...?
Well, it has gone through. It's gone through, has it? That much.
I really expected that to be, you know, up to the flight.
Yeah, I thought it was going to be spaded into you, yeah.
And let's not forget the quality of the gambeson.
You know, that layered approach has obviously worked.
While some sieges were won by overpowering the castle,
it was often something far more basic which finally forced
the defenders to surrender.
In truth, when castles fell it was rarely to actual siege engines
and far more frequently to starvation.
Indeed, in 1215 at Rochester,
besieged inside the castle,
the people were holding out.
King John on the outside had amassed five trebuchets that were battering
the walls for two months.
Inside, food was running short and they looked around them
and began to eat their expensive war horses.
And it was only when they had finished eating every horse
that they surrendered.
Defending your food was a vital aspect of strategic castle design.
With this in mind, Guedelon's Great Tower contains its own food store
and a well.
It's the castle's ultimate stronghold.
If the walls were breached,
it would be possible to fall back to the Great Tower.
Next to the Great Tower is the kitchen where Ruth begins preparing
a meal fit for fighting men.
Meanwhile, Peter and Tom are about to put the arrow loops
of the Great Tower to the test.
TOM: That's quite a narrow target, isn't it, really? PETER: Yeah.
You know, I mean, do you ever really aim to hit someone on the other side
or are you just trying to get the bolts out the gap?
Can't actually see much out of the...
Guess there's only one thing to do. Yeah, go for it.
TOM LAUGHS
Are you aiming for anything out there or are you just...?
Just aiming for the gap, my friend. Aiming for the gap.
Right, bolts in, touching string. OK.
That was fast.
In this environment, that seemed far more powerful
and these a lot faster.
I guess from a defensive point of view then, something like that
shooting out of the loop, you know,
it's a bit of a fear factor straightaway, isn't it?
Satisfied with the defensive capacity of Guedelon's arrow loops
on the inside, Tom and Peter set about seeing how resistant they are
to attack from the outside.
Do you think we can get a bolt through that gap?
Luckily we're not under fire and having rocks thrown at us.
I reckon we could definitely do it in six.
Shall we give it a go, then? Yeah, let's give it a go. OK.
So, you're going to load for me? I'll load.
Arrow in the groove.
It's on the spring. It's loaded.
Oh, that was terrible, that was. No, it wasn't.
After many attempts, a shot finally finds its target.
Yes!
A feat that would be somewhat harder to achieve in the heat of battle.
No, that was lucky. Well, still...
I mean, that was a good height on there as well.
That would have gone in about head height inside. Yeah.
Architecturally, these arrow loops, they work for this castle, don't they?
You can be in there, you can fire out but if you're outside here
trying to fire in, it's not impossible
but it's lucky if you do.
While Peter and Tom return to the building work, in the castle kitchen
Ruth is preparing food for medieval men at arms.
It is slightly conjectural.
We have to sort of look at as many sources as we can to come up with
what a 13th century soldier would actually be eating.
So, it largely comes down to pork.
Pork was considered to be THE food which was most compatible with
the human body.
Medieval thinking was that the body of someone of high social standing
digested and responded to food differently to that of a common man.
So their food needed to be cooked differently.
For the common soldiery, it just all goes in - fat, skin, marrow -
all good for building strong, fighting bodies.
This broth, or pottage, simply contains pork, onions, beans
and some herbs.
So that should just quietly...
...cook for the next couple of hours.
So almost the same ingredients - the pork, the beans and the onions -
are also going to form the basis of a dish suitable for the lord.
But it is the cooking methods that make the difference.
13th century medical ideas thought of the stomach as a cauldron
that had to cook through the food.
They thought that by cooking food itself, you could be helping
the stomach to do that process.
So for the lord, we start by boiling the meat - it's par-boiled,
part cooked by boiling it -
then we roast it, which is the stage I've reached here.
And then once it's mostly roasted,
it's going to come off the spit again, cut up and then fried lightly.
So, this is still running a little bit pink.
Done to a turn, as they say, meaning to within one turn of the spit,
which is exactly what I want ready for this last quick flash fry.
Although we call it frying, it's more like sort of braising.
I shan't give it long. About two minutes and it will be done.
And that with the beans and a sprinkle of dandelion leaves should
make him one of the most fearsome warriors in Christendom.
It's nearly time to down tools at the end of the day.
But first there's a special delivery to the top of the tower.
Oh, you can really smell your food, Ruth. SHE LAUGHS
What have you got for us? All I can smell is smoke. Oh, wow! Well...
THEY LAUGH Right on cue.
Oh, a pot. All right. Pass it over. Crockery. Crockery. Fried onions.
Fried onions. Tommo's food. Beans. My food.
Ugh! Pork. Ruth's food.
A nicely balanced diet then? Oh, yeah.
So, you know, where do you fancy yourself on the social scale really?
Well, I know where I am on the social scale. THEY LAUGH
I'm roughing it at the moment but...
Oh, and by the way, dandelion petals... Mmm.
...they are associated with the planet Mars. Oh, really.
So you're going to be that martial by the time you've finished.
Ah, I see. That's the point, yeah. So you're going to start with...
I'll start with a bit of pottage. ..some man of arms.
Mmm, yeah. I know you're a man. THEY LAUGH
That's enough of that, OK. You've got to start doing a bit of work.
I'll eat this and I'll start working.
I'm going to... I'm going to nick a bit of that thrice-cooked pork.
It's the only way you'll keep your belly up.
It would look more lovely if it was on silver platters with beautiful napkins. But never mind.
Oh, it's got that rustic look to it. Yeah, I'm good at rustic. I don't really do posh, pretty food.
But if you're up on the walls doing guard duty, I reckon
you actually want the kind of pottage, almost stew-type meal,
you can just... You don't have to think about it. You can just enjoy your food. It will warm you up.
Course, I suppose, you know, if you're in a castle,
this is a great meal on day one of the siege.
But by day four, you're starting to look at the stocks and say,
"How, how much have we got?"
As it drags on.
As much as anything, food is a weapon of war. Yeah. Exactly.
Next time, interior design, 13th century style,
which means mud, paint...
Yerrup!
..and a fiery furnace.
Can you imagine living in a world with no electric lights?