NARRATOR: Castles dominated the medieval landscape,
and Britain has some of the finest in the world.
Today, most are decaying relics,
many of their secrets buried in time.
Now, historian Ruth Goodman...
Whoo!
..and archaeologists Tom Pinfold and Peter Ginn
are turning the clock back,
to relearn the secrets of the medieval castle-builders.
TOM: 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 coalface, because this is industry.
For the next six months, Ruth, Peter and Tom
will experience the daily rigours of medieval construction...
Drop down. WOMAN: Yep. Yep.
..and everyday life.
How workers dressed...
HE GROANS ..and ate.
You can really smell your food, Ruth.
SHE LAUGHS
And the art of combat.
ARROW FIRES
TOM: Ohh!
This is the story of how to build a medieval castle.
Four months into their adventure,
the team have been immersed in the building work,
alongside Guedelon's masons.
Perfect. Oh, good!
MAN: Tirez!
They've learned how a castle was defended in times of war...
TOM: Every stone has to be in line,
because this is going to go up and up and up.
..and discovered how lavishly decorated
castles were on the inside.
This was about showing your power!
It was about prestige.
METALLIC HAMMERING AND CLANGING
Now the team delve deeper
to discover the secrets of the skilled communities
whose combined expertise made such mighty castles.
It's just this mass of molten metal.
Castles were not made from stone alone.
Without the mastery of the medieval blacksmiths transforming metal...
..and the carpenters' sophisticated grasp of geometry...
"Wow" is all I can say.
..the castle could never be built at all.
RUTH: This is one of those moments
when everything comes together extremely fast,
in quite a dramatic way.
ALL EXCLAIM
The first castles introduced to Britain by the Normans
were mostly built not of stone, but of wood,
making them quicker and cheaper to construct.
Their favoured design was the motte and bailey.
Following the conquest of 1066,
they erected hundreds at strategic locations across England and Wales.
One of the first structures completed here at Guedelon
is an example of a classic wooden motte and bailey.
You know, I-I can never remember...
Which...which one's the motte and which one's the bailey?
The motte is your mound, on top of which
you're probably going to end up with a wooden tower like this,
which in our case, in Guedelon, goes on to be the great tower.
And your bailey is the area enclosed by your palisade fence,
as we can see here.
So, this could be your bailey.
So, the bailey becomes the courtyard,
the palisade fence becomes the curtain walls.
Exactly - that's the evolution of the castle right there, really, isn't it?
While most early castles were made of timber,
at key sites, the Normans invested in stone,
expanding on the motte-and-bailey principle
of high tower and defensive surrounding wall,
but using materials that were far more imposing and durable.
William the Conqueror built stone castles to make a statement -
Norman rule was here to stay.
The fact so many of these castles are still standing
after almost 1,000 years
is testament to the precision and skill of their builders.
It's this remarkable standard of craftsmanship
they're seeking to recapture at Guedelon.
Most of the walls are built with rubble stones,
which are easy to produce in the quarry.
Every ten feet, the masons build levelling courses -
rows of carefully dressed flat stones that strengthen the wall
and also allow the masons to regulate the structure.
If it's too regular,
if you're using just blocks that are shaped, but not specific,
you'll actually end up with a weak wall.
By putting in the levelling courses, you flatten everything out,
you start building again from a horizontal surface.
And, so, you'll do that again and again, right up to the top,
and that just keeps the strength of the wall
and allows you just to basically balance out
and work from a flat surface.
Tom is helping to extract
a particularly large stone from the quarry by the castle
to use in a levelling course.
Mathieu Rigo has been a quarryman here for nine years.
TOM: At the moment, we're just making the small hole,
and into that we're going to insert the wedge.
And what we want to do is hit that perfectly
and that should actually work its way
along the natural crack in the rock.
So, it's not as simple as just, "Smack, smack, smack.
"There's your hole, put in the wedge."
HE SPEAKS FRENCH
Yeah? Oh, yeah.
HE CHUCKLES
Each different type of rock has its own extraction method
and quarrymen's skills were handed down from father to son.
OK, we've got our split now
and we just need to separate these two bits of stone.
So, it's over to the crowbar, get that in.
I'm going to lift it up, going to apply some more wedges.
In the Middle Ages, some quarrymen also worked as stonemasons.
Masons were well-paid free men
who enjoyed exceptional status among the workers of the age.
They travelled widely, their skills constantly in demand
for building great castles and churches.
On a construction site, the stonemason's lodge
is where they gathered to eat, drink and discuss ideas and designs.
Lodges became regarded as strongly symbolic buildings,
where the closely guarded secrets of the mason's craft were shared
and geometry was taught.
In an age where there was little scientific knowledge
and a great deal of superstition,
it's easy to see why a mason's lodge acquired an almost mystical status.
Professor Ronald Hutton is a historian,
specialising in medieval and early modern folklore.
RUTH: We're sitting in a mason's lodge
and those words sort of conjure up certain images.
Is that true?
I mean, was there any such thing as freemasonry in the 13th century?
Certainly not.
Freemasonry as we know it comes along
in the end of the 16th century, actually in Scotland,
where they decided to pool together
the mason's skill of understanding geometry and structure
in order to try and understand the secrets of the universe.
And that began this secret society of people dedicated to knowledge,
which grew into freemasonry as we know it.
So, it has absolutely nothing to do with
this sort of medieval tradition of building?
Well, medieval masonry is the seed
and modern freemasonry is the full-grown plant.
If you're a medieval mason, you are doing God's work,
you're building God's houses, the churches and cathedrals.
And as God is the grand architect of the universe,
using natural geometry,
so human masons reproduce that.
They are sub-creators
but are also in a highly mobile skilled, dangerous trade.
That's why a lodge like this is so important.
If you are a free mason, in the medieval sense -
in other words you're free to go where you like -
to have a place like this, a temporary home from home,
where masons can gather, share information, share hot tips
and simply live, play dice, booze,
chill out after the day's work is done
is absolutely essential.
Stonemasons were not the only skilled craftsmen
on a castle building site.
Castles required huge amounts of wood
and this called for carpenters.
Roof structures, doors, walkways and drawbridges
were all made from timber.
Wood was also key to the building process -
from scaffolding and lifting machinery to basic buckets.
Here at Guedelon, the wooden scaffolding
is a really visible part of the build.
It's also one of the most precarious and potentially dangerous.
Indeed, we know that in 1138, at Canterbury Cathedral,
William Sens, the master builder, was up inspecting the high vaults
when he fell from the scaffolding and was paralysed.
Essential to secure scaffolding are putlogs,
the timbers which stick out from the wall
for the scaffold planks to rest on.
The timbers are deeply embedded in the walls, in putlog holes,
into which the logs are inserted.
By planning putlog holes at regular intervals,
the timbers can be continually raised in line with the stonework,
avoiding the need to build a scaffold up from the ground.
Carpenter and stonemason have...problem.
Florian Renucci is the master mason,
overseeing all construction on the site.
FLORIAN: So, there it should go.
He's ultimately responsible for workers' safety here at Guedelon.
Obviously, we don't want anybody to die...
SHE LAUGHS ..while we're building this castle.
So, there are certain compromises.
You're having to have some modern health and safety issues
with the scaffolding.
How close is the scaffolding you're using
to being 13th-century scaffolding
and how much is because you need modern health and safety?
Well, the 21-century technique
for us to walk
is only to put the iron.
PETER: Right. And also modern wood.
So, when we look around us,
the 13th-century scaffolding wouldn't have looked very different.
Mm.
The wood would have been hand-produced, not machine-produced,
and instead of the bolts, what would it have been instead of the bolts?
Ropes. Rope. It would have just been tied? Yes.
So, we have to do, uh... A bit of compromise.
..a compromise for our safety and for...
Yeah. ..um, building in a good way.
Yeah. But we don't change the way of building.
We use wood.
The completed castle will have
a chapel built into the east tower,
where the lord and his family could practise their religious devotions.
Even laymen would have heard mass at least once a day,
so a chapel was considered essential.
HE SPEAKS FRENCH
Nicolas Touchefeu is head carpenter here.
They must get the scaffolding in place
to enable the masons to build the next level of the chapel tower.
The masons have made a putlog hole
and the carpenters have prepared the wood in advance...
..complete with a mortise-and-tenon joint -
something still favoured by carpenters today.
PETER: There we go.
So, not only do you have a mortise-and-tenon here
that can be pegged,
you've also got a bird-mouth joint,
so the putlog is actually sitting ON this as well as IN it,
to give it maximum security.
And then that putlog goes into the castle wall.
Pegs? In this side. This side.
It's secured with oak pegs.
More? No? No, it's OK. OK.
And that is the scaffolding...in.
And the build can commence.
As well as the stonemasons being largely dependent on the carpenters,
both were also reliant on another set of craftsmen.
Blacksmiths.
From hinges on doors to bars on windows
or the chains that raised the drawbridge,
metal was crucial.
At the foot of the castle is a blacksmith's forge.
Martin Claudel produces the tools and metalwork required at Guedelon.
SCRAPING
Peter and Tom are helping mix crushed clay with sand and water.
They're going to help build a furnace, or bloomery,
to smelt iron for tool-making.
You think about a blacksmith's shop,
you think about all the little bits of metal kicking round,
bits of broken nail, bits of, uh...
..uh, fragments of iron that have come off
when you're smacking it with the...with a hammer.
And this furnace is a way of melting those all down
and turning them back into metal that can be used.
These are big old bellows.
HE LAUGHS
That's good. That's good.
Once the furnace is complete, they just need to put in the door,
held in with an ash paste, so they can easily open it.
The giant double bellows are attached to the furnace
to pump air into it when lit,
raising the temperature from 800 to over 1,300 degrees,
sufficient to melt the scrap iron and steel.
It's a lovely melodic sound, the bellows.
It's respiration.
Breathing in and out.
We've made the bloomer, we've made the furnace.
We've gotta put in charcoal, we're going to throw in the scrap iron,
bring it up to temperature, melt this down
and, hopefully, at the bottom,
we're going to get, at the very least, reusable iron,
but perhaps we'll get steel.
But that's all about your carbon content, the purity of the fuel
and the ability to do a good smelt.
Steel is iron with a specific amount of carbon
dissolved inside its structure.
When the temperature in the furnace rises,
more and more carbon from the charcoal is absorbed by the iron.
But it's a difficult balancing process.
This was medieval technology,
long before a modern understanding of chemistry.
But hard steel was so useful for tools
that even small amounts were precious.
PETER: Well, pretty soon we'll be ready to crack open that door
and hopefully have a bloom of steel, from which we can make tools.
We've reached that moment. The iron that's gone in the top has melted.
It's reached the bottom.
It's hopefully turned into a steel bloom.
Clement is just hacking out that sort of ash-and-water paste
that Tommo used to patch up that door.
Ooh, door's off.
We can see the bloom. It's right at the top of that charcoal bed.
It's just this mass of molten metal.
All those scrap bits of metal melted down.
MAN: Ohh!
MEN SPEAK FRENCH
It's amazing to see this happen in a blacksmith's shop. I've never seen that before.
It just means that these guys are self-sufficient.
They need to compact the bloom
to start the folding process for working it, to shape into tools.
Next, the metal is rapidly cooled, or quenched, in water...
HISSING AND BUBBLING
..to lock in its hardness.
Martin then tests it with a steel file.
Parts that feel softer than the file are iron.
Harder bits are hopefully steel.
MARTIN: I believe we got steel.
We just have to...to work it, to see.
Being able to produce hard steel
enabled blacksmiths to make sharp cutting edges of tools, like axes,
which is what Martin is going to forge later.
CHICKS CHEEP
TWEETING
In the Middle Ages, the lords of castles like this one
were part of the driving force behind the clearance of woodland
to make way for crops and to provide timber and firewood.
There are more forests in France today
than there were in the 13th century.
The location of Guedelon Castle was determined, in part,
by the surrounding forest, which provides large amounts of wood.
PETER: This is our tree.
Ooh, it has got a good bend on it, hasn't it?
HE SPEAKS FRENCH
Jean-Michel Hure is the head woodsman.
Relax, relax the arm. Come on.
He gives the team a lesson
in using medieval-style wood axes to fell a tree.
This is going to take us for ages. I know!
Trees were selected with specific uses in mind,
depending on their size and shape.
JEAN-MICHEL SPEAKS FRENCH
WOMAN: You're trying to make it look like a big pencil at the bottom.
Sarah Preston, the site administrator,
is helping overcome the language barrier.
JEAN-MICHEL SPEAKS FRENCH
He says it could... could be smoother.
Smoother. Yeah, sure, right.
Don't look over this side, then.
RUTH LAUGHS It's a terrible mess!
So, Jean-Michel's saying we're getting to the final stages now.
What he can't tell us is where the tree will fall exactly.
TOM: So it could actually fall back this way? Potentially.
So, what you're going to do is keep working,
so then you keep working, keep working,
and at one point, you will start to hear the tree cracking - don't stop.
It's so easy now to go and get your lump of wood
or get your bit of stone.
The raw materials of life are easy to acquire. Yeah.
When you see how much work is involved in the simplest of things...
And not just that - it's the tools to get those raw materials. Yeah.
And you're looking at the complete tool set for woodsmen.
Yeah. And it is, it's something that's...
It's been forged in that blacksmith's area
and it is going to last a lifetime.
And they would have cost a fortune, really, for an ordinary working man.
Yeah. I mean, the tools of your trade, people passed them down in families... Yeah. Yeah.
..because you...you have to - they're too expensive to acquire.
This is definitely a spectator sport, I've decided. It is, yeah.
It's very easy to critique someone's axe skills from this distance. Yeah, it is, isn't it?
I can see a whole new game show coming up now.
Can you hear the crack yet, Tommo? I can hear cracking.
I don't know if it's actually the tree or me.
It is always one of the things I like about this experience,
it's seeing how much skill there is in the simplest of things
and how much intelligence and cleverness there is.
Mm. Are you calling Tommo simple?
SHE LAUGHS TOM: I was trying to do that.
No, maybe "seems simple".
Maybe that's more accurate.
SHE LAUGHS
CHOPPING ECHOES
Part of the woodman's skill is to plan
so the tree falls safely in the right place,
without breaking on impact.
JEAN-MICHEL: Ready, ready, ready. Ready, ready, ready. Wait, wait.
Ready, ready, ready. Continue, continue, continue, continue.
There you go.
PETER: Oh...
SHE LAUGHS
Once the trunk has been squared up,
it will be used by the carpenters up on the chapel tower.
Much of a castle owner's wealth came from exploiting his land
and its tenants.
One way of doing this was to build watermills,
providing a regular source of income.
These mills would have made a huge difference
to the lives of local villagers and labourers.
Producing flour for their bread
required up to two hours a day of hand-grinding.
But one mill could produce as much grain
as around 40 people grinding by hand.
According to the Domesday Book,
in England as early as 1080,
there were over 5,500 watermills.
Little is known about the mills of this time.
However, one of the most ambitious projects at Guedelon this year
is the construction of a 12th-century-style watermill.
The castle team and archaeologists have based its design
on the remains of two ancient mills,
discovered in Jura in the east of France in 2008.
Sophie Wintzer is one of a team of carpenters
who have painstakingly worked on the watermill over a two-year period.
Today is the moment of truth.
Today, we are going to try to make some flour in the watermill,
so we are going to open the sluice, the water is going to run
and, hopefully, the wheel is going to turn
and grind some grain.
PETER: So, this... being able to do this,
you can actually see it working and relate it back to the...
..the evidence you found... Yes. ..in the archaeological record.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, this is why it's absolutely experimental archaeology..
That's why we tried several times
and each time, we have, maybe to change some pieces
and to do some modification.
So, I think you can start by opening the sluice.
TOM: Get the water down there. Yes.
And then we will need someone to watch if the wheel is all right,
with the paddles, and everything stays.
So, there's an emergency stop here
with somebody, you know, ready to close it
because if there is something in the mechanism,
it destroys everything in a minute.
And that's a lot of work ruined very quickly, so... Yeah.
We can say that.
Emergency sluice, Yes.
That sluice, people making sure those paddles are fine.
Yeah. Yeah, and checking if there's no big trouble in the gear.
OK. Here.
Uh, I'm stepping across, bridging it.
PETER: Ooh, wow!
Better get down to our second station.
But there's a problem -
the mill wheel isn't turning nearly as quickly as it ought to be.
Give it a push.
It means that we don't have enough pressure. Right.
So the grain isn't coming out and... No, it's not going round.
It's...it's all from wood, so it's a lot of friction everywhere,
so resistance,
and we have to find solutions.
WOOD SCRAPING You can hear the noise, can't you?
Yeah. The noise of the wood. It's... Yeah.
And, also, it's true that those turns have to get, uh, a bit used.
Yeah, OK. And then it will be a bit smoother.
Everything is too new as well.
It needs to be used a bit. Yeah.
This is experimental archaeology, so everything that's going on here
is all about trying to work out exactly how these worked.
I mean, it's easy to think of a watermill
in terms of water management,
and the water is coming down the sluice
and it is going into this wheel.
But the problem is it's not sufficient to drive this mill.
There's too much friction currently in the...in the mechanism.
So, although the stones are going round,
they're only going round because we're helping them out.
So, we just need to fine-tune this a little bit more
to get this working perfectly.
But we're very close. Very close.
Two years of painstaking research and building could be in vain,
if the problems can't be remedied.
CREAKING
But Peter and Tom are hopeful that some simple modifications...
..and liberal application of lubricating pig fat
will solve the teething problems and get the mill working properly.
BIRD CHIRPING
CLUCKING
Perhaps the most essential part of the blacksmith's role
was keeping the workforce equipped.
The stonemasons' tools become blunt after a few days work.
Without a blacksmith to sharpen them,
all the stone-cutting on site would come to a halt in less than a week.
Because iron and steel were so costly,
tools needed to last as long as possible.
But today, the blacksmiths are making a new side axe.
When you work together as a team, you hit, Vanson hits,
but you don't talk, it's all quiet.
Is that just experience or you're listening to the sound?
Yes, it's experience.
We used to work together and we have a code.
When I let my hammer strike, uh, on the anvil,
it means 'stop'.
That's it. So, in all the noise of working in the forge,
it doesn't actually matter, it's a visual sign as well.
That's it.
MARTIN SPEAKS FRENCH
A piece of hard steel will be welded onto an iron axe head,
to make a hard cutting edge.
The blade is starting to taper down
and we're going to cut it any minute now.
TOM: All right? OK.
Tom has a go at cutting steel.
It's not as easy as I thought it would be.
Oh, I'm making some progress.
What the guys are doing
is just measuring up the steel against the iron axe head.
It needs to be pretty precise.
Until modern times,
few methods of accurately measuring temperature existed.
So, blacksmiths traditionally judged it
by watching the changing colours of the metal.
Once the iron is white-hot,
the hard-cutting steel can be welded onto it.
It's taken a lot of work to make this axe,
but when you think about it, it's a crucial tool
for building the castle, making the watermills,
shaping anything that was required, like scaffolding.
You can't do without an axe
and these guys are working hard constantly,
just to make sure those tools are available for the entire site.
The climax of the process, changing the qualities of metals,
was one of the medieval blacksmith's most carefully guarded secrets.
Martin heats the axe to a critical temperature,
which changes the steel's structure.
He then quenches it in vegetable oil,
which locks in this new hardness without distorting the blade,
as water might.
The side axe is finally sharpened, on stone.
HAMMERING
Medieval stonemasons may have been revered,
but many held the blacksmith's craft as supernatural.
HUTTON: Blacksmiths were intensely magical
because since, uh, prehistory,
they'd performed this extraordinary sorcery of conjuring metal from rock
and then fashioning it into beautiful things.
Medieval blacksmiths were regarded as great healers.
Uh, a pregnant woman afraid of labour, a sick child,
an adult with a lingering illness
would be laid upon a blacksmith's anvil
and the blacksmith would pretend to hammer them,
to hammer the illness out of them.
And people really believed that, like royalty,
they had the power to heal by touch.
Was that something that was considered to be dangerous magic
or was it just part of life and nobody batted an eyelid?
It's pretty scary.
Uh, blacksmiths are often believed to make pacts with the devil...
Oh, right. ..ironically in which the blacksmith usually comes off better.
For example, blacksmiths are believed to be the only people
who can do jobs for the devil, like shoeing his black horses,
without paying the price of their soul.
And there are even tales of blacksmiths, some of them saints,
who are capable of grabbing the devil's nose in their red-hot pincers
and tweaking it to get rid of him if he's annoying.
RUTH: How on earth did the Church respond to that?
The Church canonised some of these blacksmiths.
Saint Dunstan in England was a classic case.
Otherwise, they simply got along with it.
Blacksmiths were too useful,
and as long as they went to mass
and didn't have an alternative kind of religion,
there's no problem.
Here at Guedelon, carpenters, stonemasons and archaeologists
have spent weeks modifying the mill mechanisms and the water channel.
Peter and Tom are going to attempt to grind their bag of grain.
We are going to start with the wheel.
Philippe Delage has been closely involved in the mill project
from the beginning.
PHILIPPE: Which we are going to turn.
And he's going to help them try it out.
CREAKING
TOM: You can hear that stone singing.
It's unbelievable how many pieces, man-made each one of them,
are actually involved in this wheel alone,
let alone the rest of the actual building.
PETER: Yeah. It's a lot of wood. It's a lot of wood.
PHILIPPE: All right, good. We got enough water.
Tommo, maybe you can open the vanne.
Uh, the sluice gate here?
Yeah, that's it.
You know, you use this timber.
For a bit of leverage. And just... Oh...
PETER: Right, off it goes. And after, you put...
Keep it wedged open. ..this one under, like this.
And that will just control the amount of water we let through? Yes.
PHILIPPE: So, we are going to climb upstair...
Shout out loud when it's time for me to...
You're controlling our power, man!
HE LAUGHS Flour power.
PETER: Filled the hopper with grain.
It's ready to be made into flour.
Yeah. I suppose all we need is Tom to open that gate.
Yeah. You are ready, Tommo?
Ready. You can open.
Here it comes.
Tom's opened the sluice gates.
The water's coming down.
It's about to hit the wheel, it's about to hit the wheel.
Hit the wheel!
Look at that!
The mill has a paddlewheel eight feet in diameter.
This turns an axle, turning the smaller pit wheel.
The teeth of this turn the lantern wheel, which turns the spindle.
This powers the millstone, over three feet in diameter.
The bottom stone, the bed stone, is fixed,
and the top one, the runner stone, revolves to grind the grain.
The water is turning that wheel
and our stones are going.
Finally, the mill is operating as intended,
recreating an extraordinary feat of medieval engineering.
Right now, I can really appreciate
how precise everything has to be.
If this isn't pinpoint accurate, it's going to damage it.
So, Peter, how's it going? Have we got flour?
We're getting fl... Yeah. It's brilliant, superb.
I mean, yeah, wow.
"Wow" is all I can say.
And you... Yeah.
You built this! No, it's OK.
PETER: I can't believe, for such a low head -
I mean, that water is falling maybe a metre, going under a wheel -
you're managing to turn a stone that is 200 kilograms
and you're managing to grind your grain into flour.
This is the beginning of industry, I suppose,
and to have this associated with a castle,
you can free up people from the daily grind to do other things.
It's amazing.
PETER: Ah, here he comes. TOM: I'm here. Captain Power.
THEY LAUGH
Oh, let's see what we've got.
Is that it?
What do you mean, is that it?
Oh, fantastic.
Philippe, are you happy?
I think it's a good start.
HE LAUGHS
TOM: I mean, it's just amazing how much work
it actually takes to create one mill.
I mean, hundreds and hundreds of bits of wood,
these massive bits of stone,
you gotta channel all that power from the water.
You know, this is a big effort.
But if you're going to create bread,
you've gotta feed families, soldiers, workforces,
it's all worth it.
Building castles, yeah. Exactly.
It all comes back... What does a castle need?
It needs to be fed. Yeah. And this is what makes it happen.
GRINDING
And once it was up and running,
as well as producing food for the inhabitants of its castle,
the lord could start making money from his mill.
Tenants on his land would have been obliged to use it
and pay for the privilege.
The next major project at the castle
is to build a wooden walkway, or gallery,
on the inside of the chapel tower.
This would allow soldiers
to get from the main building to the castle walls
without disturbing the sanctity of the lord's chapel.
In the Middle Ages, carpenters used geometry
to plan their wooden structures.
They drew on the floor because parchment was expensive
and paper still very rare.
The carpenters are planning a section of the gallery,
by marking out a full-scale plan.
PETER: Every piece of wood in Guedelon Castle
starts its life here, on the tracing floor.
First of all, the plans -
they are drawn on the floor to a one-to-one scale.
Medieval units of measurement were not standardised,
varying from place to place.
HE SPEAKS FRENCH
RUTH: Isn't it interesting, watching them work, too, how few numbers come into it?
It's mathematics, but it's mathematics of proportion.
It's geometry. It's, you know, two of this, three of that.
Halve it, double it, quarter it, third it.
It's not 0.652.
In French, the word for thumb, 'pouce',
is the same as the word for inch.
HE SPEAKS FRENCH
Every site would have its own units of measurement.
RUTH: That's a thumb, isn't it? So it's an inch.
PETER: Le pouce. Le pouce.
Palm. Mind you, I suppose it's the length of your palm.
And empan. So, that's your handspan.
But I like the fact the inch corresponds to the word for thumb.
I really like that.
I rather like the fact that feet and inches and yards
is something that used to be right across Europe, you know?
We tend to think of it as a very British thing these days.
It's just that we hung onto it when everybody else left it behind. Yeah.
But it used to be that there were all these little inches,
all these little feet, all over the place.
Everywhere different.
But the system of measurement here at Guedelon
is based on a medieval castle that's very close by,
and if we were to turn up there
at the start of the build in the 13th century,
on a board, it would say, "This is what an inch is on this site.
"This is what the palm span is... Yeah, based on one person's body.
"..the handspan is." We don't know quite which person's body, but based on somebody's body.
And if they were to pass away, those would have been written down
to be used until the end of the build.
Mm.
To make a straight line on the tracing floor...
It needs to be quite tight.
..they use string with red ochre powder.
Pull it quite high.
Yeah. OK.
Corresponding lines are made on each section of wood,
before matching them with the floor plan.
And then they are levelled out and then they're plumbed up.
So, you're constantly jiggling, and it's very, very subtle.
Little wedges going in to make sure everything's perfect.
Once everything is lined up, they can cut the joints.
They also chisel carpenters' marks into the wood.
These are a code to identify the pieces of the frame,
making it easier to reassemble on the castle walls.
Each team would have had their own code.
Finally, they assemble the completed frame.
PETER: This is the gallery.
I mean, I can't believe,
from a few simple lines drawn on the tracing floor,
that we have this amazing structure, ready to go into the castle.
And here at Guedelon, they almost think that carpentry,
it's almost a form of genius
cos there's so much thinking involved.
I mean, this line running through all these beams, it's precise.
So, this can be unassembled by the carpenters,
it can be put to one side, it can be hoisted up,
reassembled outside the chapel tower.
Doesn't need to be the same carpenter
cos you've got all the marks here.
It is a flat-pack medieval gallery.
This is going to flip up this way.
My feet would be down here, this is a handrail,
there'll be spindles here,
my head would be here
and I would be looking out onto the courtyard.
And this is how you build a castle.
It's thought about 30 people would live in a castle like this,
from the lord and his family
down to servants and guards.
They would have been fed from the castle kitchen
and bread would have been the staple of all their diets...
..made in the stone bread oven.
So, it's sponging quite nice. Look at that.
Ruth and Tom are going to try making a basic bread
with flour from the new mill.
Ruth is using a rising agent which was popular in the Middle Ages.
TOM: Smells a bit alcoholy. Yeah.
RUTH: Sourdough is probably the most ancient method of raising bread
because there's next to nothing involved, you know?
You're just saving a bit from the previous day's batch.
When I made the last batch of bread,
I just broke a bit of dough off and put it to one side.
And I popped it in some water with a fresh little bit of flour
and this is the result.
So, sourdough is literally sour dough.
Yeah, it is. There's no trick.
There's no trick. There's no trick to it at all.
So, I've not added any yeast and I won't add.
And this is going to be an awesome carbohydrate for us.
A real staple diet. It is.
I mean, this is your real, basic working man's bread.
I'll be honest - at the moment, it doesn't look that appealing,
But I guess you've got work for me to do.
Well, do you want to give it a knead? Go on. I'm a big su...
Do I add any of this? Yeah.
Add a little bit at a time and start working it in.
So it is fingers in.
Like you were mixing lime putty, you know, that sort of thing.
HE LAUGHS Turning it in.
Turning it in. Am I making cement? That's it.
I mean, it's starting to look a bit more how I imagine
bread would look at this state.
Bread looks like, yeah.
I thought I was coming in for a break.
"Come into the kitchen," you said.
Well it's not me fault you admitted you'd never made bread. HE LAUGHS
And were these like family affairs or, you know, a proper big business?
How would a baker make his money, as it were?
Well, the majority of bread was made at home, on a family scale.
Right, OK, so... By women.
You wouldn't go out and buy - you'd actually have it in-house?
In the 13th century, most of it is being home-made.
OK, that's behaving much more like a lump now, isn't it?
And you think, you know, work is involved in this at every stage.
It's a massive effort, isn't it? It is, isn't it? It is a big effort.
So, you're happy with that, so just roll it into a nice loaf shape.
All right? Lovely. Yeah.
And then I want you to make a deep, very fast cross.
I mean, so that it's broken the surface tension,
it's easy for the loaf to rise.
Right. And you also get more high quality crust for your crumb.
OK, so, two cuts, nice and quick.
Donk, donk! That's the one.
Burning wood heats the oven...
..and is then raked out before the bread is placed inside.
That's pretty warm. Do you want to rake it out?
Do you fancy raking it out? Rake out? I can do that.
Ohh!
So, why am I doing this, Ruth? It seems incredibly dangerous.
It is incredibly dangerous, you're right there.
THEY LAUGH Just a bit of fun, isn't it?
But basically, we don't need the fire any more.
The fire has done its job. It's heated the stoves.
It brought them up to cooking temperature
and now we need to get the oven clean, ready for the bread to go in.
Right. And we also want to put a little bit of steam in there,
so that it will help that final rise.
Just scrape it all to the side so you've got access to the fire.
That is your 13th-century oven health and safety,
that little move there.
That's your safety.
Right, next job, Next job.
We've got a mop that's been soaking.
You need to just quickly mop out the oven.
You're not just cleaning, you're also adding steam.
So... That's a mop, is it? That's a mop.
You want to get it in and throw it around. OK.
That's it. And you can see how that water doesn't just turn to steam.
It just sort of seems to almost explode into steam.
The oven's dry. It does. Look.
Your next challenge is to get it on your pell.
Right.
There we go. There we go.
Make sure it's sliding on the pell. It is.
Put that on there. There you go.
Sticking it in. Right, bang in the middle.
That's it. Done!
Oh, look at that go.
Yeah.
I'll give you a shout when it's done.
OK. I'll go back.
Back to work, then.
BLEATING
While the bread bakes, Tom tries out the side axe Martin made,
to square up wood...
..creating flat faces from a rounded trunk.
This is the weirdest axe I've ever used.
The balance is all off.
So, we got a cutting edge and a flat side and that actually helps to cut,
but also force some of these fibres apart.
If I put the axe down like this,
you can actually see the pole is slightly tilted
and that allows you to work along the wood nice and close,
but because you're holding it here,
there's no risk to your knuckles or your fingers as you work.
What it comes down to, and what I'm having trouble with,
is that fine-tuning.
I know what I want to do, I can see what's marked out for me,
but I'll be honest, it's not always happening that way.
OK, the moment of truth, Ruth.
How's your loaf done?
It looks quite a dark loaf. Was that the intention?
Dark. You mean burnt!
Well... You mean burnt. THEY LAUGH
I'm not a baker, so I don't want to make that claim.
Oh.
Looks like we got the oven a bit hot.
All right, let's have a look. Whisk her out.
That is definitely burnt.
It's sort of like a sausage at a barbecue, isn't it?
You can probably still eat it.
Oh, it's on fire on the bottom.
Well, it's cooked, definitely. It sounds healthy.
That oven was too hot.
It shouldn't scorch like that in that time.
Oh, well, we'll scrape it off and...
Hey. Exactly!
My first loaf of bread - I'm going to eat it!
The wooden gallery is ready to be installed beside the chapel tower.
Oui.
Is it time for beer yet?
Yeah. THEY LAUGH
Each carpenter is going to take a post.
Myself and Tommo are just here at the handrails
to make sure it doesn't topple over that way.
They're going to remove the chocks
and the three posts are going to sink down,
and the mortise-and-tenon joints will come together
and this gallery will be locked in place,
ready to take the final roof section that covers it in.
Here we go.
Chocks out. Ooh.
Oh!
And the gallery's in place.
With the basic frame in place,
long beams are now needed for the roof section.
All right, mate.
Whoops!
Sorry, mate.
Push! Sorry! Up! Straight up, yeah?
Yes. OK.
After all that slow work
where people seem to work for hours and hours and hours
and produce very little,
this is one of those moments
when everything comes together extremely fast,
in quite a dramatic way.
Now, when you are ready.
Up.
Now it's going to... Yeah, drop down?
Yeah. Yeah. There.
OK? Yeah.
THEY APPLAUD
Up.
With a bit of force, the joints go into place
and are pegged into position.
Just need to pop a roof on it and there you are.
We've got a link between the... the Great Hall and the curtain wall.
It's physical work, but to think when we first saw that drawing
of what this was going to look like... Yeah.
I didn't think we'd see this at the end of it. Brilliant.
A watermill would also have a millpond, owned by the lord,
which was a source of fish.
And castle workers might well have been rewarded for their hard work
with a fish supper.
That is a scary beast. It is, isn't it?
Pike was a favoured dish at feasts throughout the Middle Ages.
So, freshwater fish was actually quite highly prized?
Yeah. Yeah. And pike more so than things like salmon and trout.
Yeah, that is a medieval fish and a half.
Handful of leavies, fat hen, lovely medieval vegetable.
And you're not doing anything to this pike?
No, just shove him on as he is.
So, half an hour - should be done.
Ugh! Yes, yes, yes, yes. Ooh!
Ooh, don't drop the fish.
Does he smell good?
OK, straight to table, I say.
Straight to table.
The pike is ready for presentation to Sophie, Philippe
and others who worked so hard
building the mill and gallery.
Here we go. Wow! Look at that.
Wow! That's very impressive.
Love to say I caught that myself.
THEY LAUGH
I also want it noted I have brought something to this meal.
In honour of the carpenters, you see?
That's no way to treat your first loaf!
Now, brutal. Agh!
Ah, that's... Look at that.
See how soft that is?
It's got a good crumb. Good crumb.
Do you wanna break some up for the people over there?
Oh, fantastic. Thank you, Ruth.
Philippe, having worked the mill,
what do you think of the bread coming out? I mean...
It's not bad! Not bad?
Look how solid this pike flesh is.
This is why it's one of the king of fish.
You can actually carve it into finger-sized pieces,
that's the...which is the point.
You're supposed to be able to pick it up with your fingers and...yeah.
Wow! That...that actually is really good. I mean, genuinely.
It's all right, ain't it? Mm.
Really nice.
And I always thought pike was really bony
and therefore really hard to eat, but...
But it's not particularly, is it?
No. There's a lot of meat.
It's quite an intimidating-looking fish. Very. Yeah!
You should have seen it when he was still fresh. Jeepers!
I think we should drink to the mill.
Yeah, cheers.
To the mill. Cheers. Sante. Sante. Sante.
Next time, the castle's place in the wider world...
..with expensive items traded across the globe.
The spices I've got here are worth more than a chest of gold.
And the latest architectural fashions arrive at Guedelon.
A black, white Byzantium-inspired archway.