not just because of the greatest figures of the period,
but because of ordinary people getting their hands dirty
doing a lot of very disgusting jobs.
This time, the poor souls
who had to dish out medieval medical cures,
the human hamsters who made cathedrals possible,
and how walking in wee supported an entire economy.
These are just some of the worst jobs of the Middle Ages.
The Middle Ages is what we call the 500-year period
that ended just before 1500.
It was when the great cathedrals and castles of England were built,
the time of the crusades, of bishops and barons,
when Magna Carta was signed,
and when Robin Hood and his Merry Men terrorised Sherwood.
The country prospered under the wool trade,
then suffered the ravages of the Black Death.
'But above all, it was the Age of Chivalry.'
'Think saintly nobles,
jousting champions and pure maidens.'
'Think battles and bravery.'
'Think deeds of derring-do.'
'Think again.'
(SOUND SCREECHES TO A HALT) Whoops!
TONY: We do tend to have a rather romantic attitude
towards the Age of Chivalry, with knights in shining armour
fighting for fair damsels in a misty haze.
But, actually, that's got far more to do
with the sentimental nature of the Victorians than with reality.
So, what were knights really like?
What did they do? Who looked after them?
Well, that brings me to my first worst job,
because you didn't start off being a knight,
you started off on the very lowest rung of the ladder -
being an arming squire.
TONY: The arming squire was actually a combination
of a valet and a washerwoman.
To plumb the depths of the knightly hierarchy,
I've come to Arundel Castle in West Sussex.
Oh, look at you! Your supposed to be a knight in shining armour.
He looks as though he's been hit by a load of cowpats.
Could you really have look like that at the end of a battle?
Probably even worse than that, to be honest.
Um... this, as you see,
is...everyday work for myself.
It's pretty grimy, it's wet, it's slimy.
I've been in it for probably eight hours.
Um...I haven't had a toilet break.
So things are pretty hot and sweaty and smelly in here.
Gavin, your his arming squire.
When he comes back after eight hours on the field,
- what's the worst part of the job? - Taking him out of the armour.
GAVIN: He might have fallen into blood,
he's going to fall into where horses have been cut down.
TONY: So how do we get it off? GAVIN: Well, we start...
with the helm, just to give him a little bit of air in there.
What would you be doing while he was bashing away at the enemy
- for eight hours? GAVIN: If he hadn't called me
to be at his side on the field, I'd be at the back of the lines,
maybe with another piece of armour,
if something was broken, if he got caught,
I could be there to run in and help him out.
Would you have been trained much before you could do this?
Oh, very much. I mean, I started off as a page,
then I'll become a squire and at some point,
maybe in my late teens, early 20s,
at that point, IF I was brave enough
and warranted enough, then I would be knighted.
So Gavin, have you got the chance to end up like Paul,
- a full-fledged knight? - That's right, yeah.
As I have been in his service for many years,
so I'll be trained in the ways of the knight, the ways of chivalry...
He needs to carve my meat as well. TONY: Beg your pardon?
Carve my meat... He has to learn to carve that in a fashionable manner.
Basically, you're like a Formula 1 pit team.
GAVIN: Pretty much so. PAUL: A good team would be...
like a Formula 1 team. You could get in and out of it quickly.
The problem is, what're you gonna do once you're out of it
and some poor person has to clean your things?
And that's likely to be my squire or another attendant in the camp.
'There are 24 pieces of armour in a full suit,
weighing up to 27kg, supported by a leather harness
and worn over a hot and sweaty, padded jacket.'
TONY: Dear, oh dear! If you'd been scared during the battle,
I wouldn't want to have been down here.
And most of it is running down my legs.
Yes! Alright. That's a step too far for me.
In order to clean up the dirty armour,
the arming squire would have used
vinegar and sand... like this stuff here.
Occasionally, they used to include a bit of urine
into the mix to give added zest.
It's pretty effective although it's horrible stuff.
It would remove your fingerprints pretty quickly.
But this is just the tedium of the camp.
What would the actual battle have been like?
'Before you got to clean out the armour,
you had get to the battlefield,
and that could be a nightmare.'
'Take the most famous conflict of the Middle Ages -
the Battle of Agincourt.'
'Our squire would have marched 260 miles
through France in 17 days,
living outdoors in almost continuous heavy rain.'
'Food and clean drinking water was scarce.'
'Dysentery killed far more soldiers on the way to Agincourt
than died on the battlefield.'
'The English were hopelessly outnumbered,
but the heavy rains created a quagmire
for the French cavalry in their heavy armour.'
'They became sitting ducks
for the English army's mightiest weapon - the longbow.'
In the end, it was the archers that did it. They won the battle.
Their arrows might not have been able to pierce a suit of armour,
but they could kill the horses.
And they did, they DECIMATED them.
Now, you might think that being an archer
was one of the better medieval jobs.
But in many ways it wasn't.
If you got captured, you had your fingers sliced off.
And at the end of the battle,
it really did become one of the worst jobs in history.
There were no doctors on the battlefield,
no St John Ambulance running around with stretchers...
So the archers used to wander among the carnage
and when they found someone seriously injured,
they put them out of their misery.
So being a knight wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
You could die on the battlefield and if you were severely injured,
you'd probably get finished off by a friend.
But if you stayed at home, you were just as likely to die
from getting a common cold,
particularly, given the kind of cures that were on offer.
In the year 1348,
the Black Death swept into England from Europe.
It decimated the population and killed around about 2 million men,
women and children in a couple of years.
Understandably, people began to get
more and more frightened of falling ill.
'Of course, we know that they were fighting a losing battle
against overcrowding and poor sanitation.'
Remember, in those days, household waste and excrement
were just chucked out of the windows into the streets
in the towns and in the cities.
Most people had no idea that that was the cause of their problems,
and instead, in their panic, they began to rely on
a whole host of bizarre remedies,
and for us, that means lots more worst jobs.
'Medical theories were sophisticated
but as we now know, hopelessly misguided.'
'Success rates were terribly low, even before the plague.'
'So any career in medieval medicine
was bound to be frustrating.'
'Oh, and messy, very messy.'
TONY: How about a few of these if you don't fancy
walking around with a bottle of aspirin? Leeches.
In the medieval period, these were a staple medical treatment.
The idea was that as they suck the blood out of you,
they'd suck the badness out as well.
In fact, they were so popular, that it brings me
on to my next disgusting job -
leech collector.
'By the 20th century, leeches were almost declared extinct.'
'So I'm heading for one of the few spots left for a leech safari -
Romney Marshes in Kent, with ranger Owen Leyshon.'
TONY: Cor! It doesn't half smell!
I'm practically up to the top of my waders in one step.
What sort of people would've been leech-gatherers?
OWEN: They would have been professionals,
but they would also have been thatchers,
who would've had leeches stuck to them
as they were collecting all these reeds and sedges
and they would've passed them on to dealers.
Could have made a lot of money out of these reeds
- if you're a thatcher? OWEN: (CHUCKLES)
Still have a nice bit of pin money from the leeches on your feet.
TONY: Apparently, if we jiggle around a lot,
the leeches will think we're cows or sheep or something
that has come down to the water to have a drink,
and they'll come from the bottom and attach themselves to us.
They wouldn't have waders in the Middle Ages?
No, they would've had Scottish women in the Northern England
Lake District and Yorkshire.
They would've gone to good leech areas
and they would've gone in barefoot
into these marshy areas looking for leeches.
TONY: What are leeches? OWEN: Worms with character.
TONY: They really are worms? OWEN: The peak of worm evolution.
They cross-fertilise each other
and lay spongy cocoons
in the root balls of the vegetation along the shoreline.
And little leeches will emerge after several weeks.
And as they get more and more blood meals over a season,
they will get bigger and bigger but also move on to bigger prey items.
Do we use leeches in medicine today?
If you chopped your finger off, you take your finger to the hospital,
and have it sewn back on.
But then what you would have is a leech
on the end of your finger, to draw the blood up to the tip.
TONY: Is that one? OWEN: Oh, my gosh! Yes!
TONY: (LAUGHS) The hunter has struck! I have leeched!
I have caught... the leech!
Actually, I'm copping out, aren't I?
In the Middle Ages there would've been Glasgow girls, barelegged
with leeches hanging off their legs, and I've got waders on.
I will not be overshadowed, come on.
TONY: Is it gonna hurt? OWEN: No, it won't.
It'll leave a permanent, Y-shape scar on your leg.
- How big? - Only the size of the mouth.
OWEN: Here we go.
TONY: Oh, no. It doesn't like me!
TONY: Oh, for God's sake, do the deed!
TONY: It has just bit me.
OWEN: Yeah? - Definitely just bit me.
Oh my God, he's swelling up.
How much bigger than this will the leech get as it sucks my blood?
That depends very much how they feed,
but they can increase their size by about five or six times.
We could be here for some time.
And these guys in the Middle A... Ouch!
These guys in the Middle Ages... It's really stinging now.
..when they had an illness,
they could have 20 or 30 of these all around them?
That's right, I mean. And can you imagine the mess
after they've all been taken off you?
They would have been bleeding profusely.
TONY: Shall we take it off now?
You can really see the blood now.
The hirudin, the anticoagulant in the saliva of the leech,
will keep...will open up the wound and keep it flowing of blood.
TONY: I'm glad you shared that with me.
Actually, leeches were only one way of making you bleed.
In the Middle Ages, there were others,
which brings me to my next worst job -
the barber-surgeon.
'In the Middle Ages, barbers were qualified
to use a range of razors, knives and scalpels.'
I'm really ill. I think I may possibly even be at death's door.
So I've pulled together my last few pence
in order to invest in this man -
the barber-surgeon.
Chris, how ill am I, actually?
Well, to look at your urine sample, you are pretty ill
otherwise you wouldn't have come to me.
This is the first wee of the morning when colours are strongest.
So the surgeon would be able to tell what was wrong from that.
'The body supposedly contained four humours -
blood, phlegm and yellow and black biles.'
'Ill-health was caused by their imbalance.'
'To diagnose a patient, you compared their urine
with charts, by sight,
smell and... Oh, God!'
TONY: You don't need to taste any more. Really.
I would say you're normally a choleric person.
But it's got darker - you've got an excess of melancholy in your body.
So you've been a bit down lately, depressed.
That's been affecting your health.
Bristol City aren't winning often enough!
Oh, well! I can't cure that.
TONY: There's nobody down there, I don't think.
TONY: These are some fairly fierce-looking instruments.
Well, this is a tool kit of a professional man,
a barber-surgeon who's made a lot of money from his profession.
These knives are for chopping off people's bits and pieces?
CHRIS: Oh yes, this is my amputation set.
If you're trying to take off someone's arm
with a straight knife, just start off like that,
and around there, and there. Then we've got to lift it up
- and get underneath it. TONY: It's fiddly.
- Yeah, so we have a curved knife, TONY: Yeah.
which will fit around like that, and in one great swoop,
it could take three-quarters of the muscle off your arm.
And the back of the blade is sharp as well.
So with a backstroke, you just take that bit off.
'Just imagine having to remove somebody's limb
when they didn't have the benefit of modern anaesthetics.'
It wasn't something people came for often.
They had been to real extremes before
they'd employ you to do something like that.
TONY: So there wasn't much money in it?
There was a great deal of money when it was available.
But it wasn't available very often. So I had to make a living...
TONY: Cutting hair. - And shaving people.
TONY: These things are pretty much like
in the barber's shop when I was a kid.
CHRIS: Well, their functions haven't changed.
This is a horn comb, but it's still a comb.
And this is a razor. It's a bit more fancy than the modern ones,
- but it's still just a blade. TONY: Can you stop a minute?
I want to talk about something else I've just noticed.
- Is this what I think it might be? CHRIS: It is.
In medieval times, they believed when you swallow medicine,
it'll go into the stomach and be broken down
by the heat of the liver because the stomach was like an oven,
which will break down things through heat.
So you have to put it in by another route.
- Not this route. - Not that route.
- It's a route down here? - Absolutely.
This is a clyster, a medieval enema tube.
It's very cold, apart from anything else.
We can warm it. We've got to smear it...smear it well with lard,
so it slides in smoothly because it must travel in at least 6in
- beyond the sphincter muscles. - 6in is, what, that?
- Yeah. - Goodness me!
- Makes your eyes water. - It would.
And then the...medicine is poured down in there,
- Yeah. - and ram it down with your stick
to make sure it all comes out at the other end.
You see, you learn something watching this programme.
It's not just medicine. If you were ill,
they might FEED you by that method.
- What, up the arse? - Absolutely!
CHRIS: It didn't work, but that's what... They believed it would.
Would give the barber-surgeon a laugh, wouldn't it?
CHRIS: Specially with people he didn't like.
If you couldn't afford a colonic irrigation from a barber-surgeon,
for your day-to-day ailments you'd probably visit the "wise woman".
And when you see the ingredients she used in her medicines,
I think you'll understand why I have designated it a "worst job".
'A wise woman was viewed with a mixture of fear and respect.'
'She was an agony aunt, midwife and district nurse, all combined.'
'The church usually turned a blind eye
but there was always the risk of being tried for witchcraft.'
'Remedies ranged from the common sense to the nonsensical'.
'For instance, to cure warts, just take one eel.'
- Now, which bit do we want? - It's this bit here.
OK? And the idea is that to use it as a wart cure,
- Yeah. - you have to rub it on the wart...
- Yeah. - Oops! ..on the affected area,
and then, obviously, once you've done that, you then take this out
and you bury it, and as this rots away,
your wart will disappear, sir.
- Does it work? - Apparently so, apparently so.
TONY: Why have we got a load of worms and bits of string?
Well, apparently, this is quackery medicine at its best.
If you go to a...a physician who isn't properly trained,
then what would happen is, if you had a sore throat,
they would suggest, depending on the severity of the sore throat,
whether or not you would have one, two, ten or even 20 worms
on a cord tied around your neck,
alive, as these are,
and then the idea was that when these died and stopped wriggling,
your sore throat would be cured.
So I just...put them on like this?
That's right. And they're supposed to go to... next to your skin.
So they go inside your shirt. (LAUGHS)
TONY: Well, you hold that. WISE WOMAN: OK.
Here we go.
They're rather cold and clammy, I'm afraid.
WISE WOMAN: Are we in? TONY: No, got it in my mouth!
Sorry. Well, that's always one of the dangers.
- I think my sore throat's better. - We shall take this off then, sir.
'Wise women tended to be paid by barter.'
'So they'd have traded their cures in return for a service
like having a roof fixed or a supply of food.'
'This was medicine for the poor.'
'But natural herbs and ingredients often had healing properties.'
- What other cures have you got? - Well, we have nettles.
Nettles are particularly good for arthritic joints.
And the idea is that you whack... the joint...with the nettles.
And, obviously, the stinging of the nettles stimulates blood flow.
But the problem is that you also have the sting of the nettle.
Now, to counteract the sting of the nettle, you bruise nettle tips -
and I have some here -
and you basically just... keep squishing them like that.
Because you've bruised them, it's safe to pick them up.
Then you rub that on the back of the joint. It takes away the sting.
- That really works? - It does work.
- Come on then, give us a sting. - Ohhh! Right, OK.
- OK? - Yeah. Oh, blimey! Day sting,
- not night sting. - (LAUGHS)
- OK. Now, is that stinging? - YES! It's stinging.
Right. OK, OK. Right.
Have to rub it quite vigorously.
- That really hurt! - I'm sorry, I do apologise.
- OK? - All around there, yeah.
So you won't be troubled with arthritic joints this weekend.
- You might, if this doesn't work. - (LAUGHS)
How's that feeling?
My hand still stings like hell!
WISE WOMAN: Well, in that case, I think a pick-me-up is called for.
- I'll have a pick-me-up. - OK, I have some by the fire,
which is bubbling away quite nicely,
um...and it's worm stew.
- It is WORM STEW! - Worm stew.
- How do you make it? - Well, take your "fresh vermes,"
which we have in the pot. I've started to cook some of them down.
We've mixed in bread, a selection of herbs,
some water and some butter.
'We know now that the worms would've provided
the benefits of protein to an otherwise sparse diet.'
'But boiling up weird ingredients could be construed as witchcraft,
and if she was accused, there could be a high price to pay.'
You would be arrested, you would have trials by ordeal.
You would possibly have an open grate with an iron bar in
and be made to pick it up and walk across a room
and set it down without dropping it.
And then your hands would be tied with bandages.
They would be checked after three days, and if they were festering,
and showing no signs of healing, then you were convicted as guilty.
Because God would intervene if you were innocent!
TONY: Your soup's bubbling. It's not burning, is it?
WISE WOMAN: No, no, no, no. It's fine.
I should think it's probably ready by now.
It looks a bit black, but that's how it's supposed to look.
There you go, have a try of that.
- Oh, I saw little lumps in it! - That's the worms.
- It's supposed to look like that. TONY: It's quite hot as well.
WISE WOMAN: Go on, you'll feel wonderful after it.
I wish I was dead!
It tastes like phlegm...
that's slightly flavoured with chicken.
Yes, it does taste a bit like chicken and snot.
Would you like me to take that back off you? (LAUGHS)
'The wise woman and other miserable medical careers
have been swept away by modern science.'
'We've still got medieval architecture, though.'
'But THAT was only built on the strained backs
of a lot more people doing a lot more worse jobs.'
When Richard The Lionheart set off for the crusades in 1189,
he thought that by fighting a holy war for Christianity,
he'd be saving his soul.
In the Middle Ages, money could buy you
the love of God and a place in heaven.
Crusading was one way to get these spiritual brownie points.
Another was by building something big and bold for the church -
like a cathedral.
'There are 24 medieval cathedrals in Britain.'
'They took generations to construct.'
'Building sites became home to whole communities
of craftsmen and labourers, who devoted their working lives
to these monuments of medieval faith.'
Fortunately for us, we can get a bit of an idea
of what working on a medieval cathedral would've been like
because the tower of St Edmundsbury is still under construction today.
'Here in 21st century Bury St Edmunds,
there's plenty of mechanised help.'
'700 years ago, everything was done by hand,
or rather, by thousands of hands.'
'Building a cathedral in a city
was like bringing a new car plant to an area today.'
'It provided hundreds of jobs, high and low.'
'But even prestigious workers like stone masons had it tough.'
'Before they even started building,
they had the hellish tasks of quarrying and cutting
and carting the raw stone to the building site.'
'Andre Vrona is the most sought-after stone mason
in the country, and the master mason at Bury St Edmunds.'
'He's brought me to Ketton quarry, near Peterborough,
to look for just the RIGHT piece of limestone
for the St Edmundsbury tower.'
TONY: Have people used the stone around here for building for long?
ANDRE: Oh, it's been recorded as being used...from this area
extensively since the 15th century, certainly,
to build manor houses, cathedrals,
mainly ecclesiastical buildings in...
north of here, south of here and East Anglia.
TONY: How would they have dug a piece out?
ANDRE: (SIGHS) Well, you can guess that these guys
wedged and levered it and drove pins in.
They would've got into the natural strata of the stone underneath it,
and raised it, just a small amount.
TONY: Nowadays, transporting big pieces of stone is pretty easy,
but in the Middle Ages, it was a REAL problem.
Basically, you had two alternatives.
You could either use water, if there was a river nearby,
or else you could use a cart,
which was incredibly slow and very expensive.
In fact, the cost of transporting the stone
could be four times as much as the value of the stone in the quarry.
And when you think that a lot of the stones
in the English cathedrals came from Normandy,
you can imagine how much the costs really escalated.
'So to save money on transport, there was a team of people
whose entire day was spent cleaving the stone.'
Andre, you've got modern technology
but how would the lads have cut these blocks in the Middle Ages?
Well, it's called "delving" and using plug and feathers...
- What's plug and feathers? - Are these.
Feathers...and a plug...
that's tapered... It applies pressure and it splits.
Go on then, show me how to delve.
'In medieval times, these holes were laboriously drilled
with a hammer and spike.'
- That one is tight enough, Tony. - You can hear the different noise.
Yeah, completely different. So if you'd like to have a go?
- Yeah. - A couple of taps on each one.
Yeah. Oh... missed it!
ANDRE: Keep going, one more big one... There...
TONY: Oh look at that, look at that! Oh my God, it's opening up!
That's extraordinary. That was like a little earthquake!
You just felt the whole stone move!
- I hardly hit that at all. - It's a simple thing.
It's not a strength thing, it's the pressure.
It's relatively simple and easy.
TONY: Have a look, look at this!
Look, it's gone right down to the bottom!
That's amazing! It's so simple, isn't it?
It is, yeah. It's basically the form of splitting stone
to get these dimensional shapes up the quarry
to save them carting waste from the quarry to the site.
And this is how they did it.
TONY: A medieval cathedral building site
would've been a fantastic place.
No one would ever have seen anything of this size
and grandeur before, and it would've been absolutely teeming
with workmen - setters, hewers,
layers, wallers and of course, the stone masons.
Higher wages, better paid,
but it would've still been a job with plenty of dangers.
The master mason at Canterbury Cathedral
was a Frenchman called William.
He was working on the scaffolding one day at this kind of height,
when suddenly the whole scaffolding collapsed
and he went plummeting down.
Masonry and timber and scaffolding fell on top of him.
He was so badly damaged, he couldn't do his job any more.
They had to send him home, and an Englishman took over.
Andre, it's amazing when you look down there. Look down, right down...
here. That is SO vertical.
Andre, do you think that the masons in the medieval period
would've been able to make pillars this straight?
There's no doubt that in some cases they would, but largely
ecclesiastical medieval buildings didn't achieve that.
TONY: Why not? - Because over such a long period
they were built, there would be varying skill levels to the masons.
And different people. You've built this whole thing.
ANDRE: In two or three years. They were 80-90 years.
TONY: The problems might get lost. That's something a bit dodgy.
ANDRE: Yeah. Whereas you can be forgiven years ago for an inch,
pull it back on line, but we're not allowed a quarter.
You're saying medieval masons might've done a botch job.
Yeah, often they did, often they did.
'The St Edmundsbury project is using a medieval mortar of lime.'
'When it's mixed, it's harmless enough,
but in the middle ages, making lime was a high risk process
for the lime burner, and believe it or not,
the mortal danger came from chalk.'
Michael, why do you need chalk to make cathedrals?
I need chalk so that I've got something to make lime from.
By heating the chalk up, if I can heat the chalk up to red heat
and hold it at red heat for a while,
it'll change to quite a different chemical,
- though it'll look the same. - What does the lime do?
Lime, I think, holds the whole thing together.
It binds together the grains of sand
to make a mortar and the mortar holds the stones apart
in a gentle cushioning sort of way.
I'm going to put a few pieces of chalk into the bottom of this.
'The first stage was making quick lime,
a highly caustic alkali.'
'This is a small scale version of the process
that medieval lime burners used in their giant kilns.'
'It was potentially deadly.'
Keeping the lime kiln happy
means watching it day and night
for perhaps 48 hours.
MICHAEL: If the burning isn't effective,
they can create carbon monoxide.
- What does that do to you? - It's horrible.
It paralyses you first and then kills you.
It poisons your blood, stops your blood taking in oxygen.
MICHAEL: During the process of the burn,
it's not unknown for people to fall in the kiln
and not be able to get out again, so they roast as well.
'Driving off the oxygen in the kilns
was dangerous enough, that was only half the job.'
'The resulting quick lime was added to water
to make slaked lime used for making mortar.'
'And it was a very risky business.'
MICHAEL: I'll show you that on a bigger scale.
I've brought lumps of quick lime. Very dangerous stuff.
It's why I'm wearing gloves - it'll eat through my hands in no time.
I'm gonna try a Roman technique
to imitate the sort of lime that we're using on the site.
TONY: Like this...
Powdered form of lime is safer than quick lime.
TONY: This is the powder you make the mortar with?
But how do you get that into powder?
By adding water. That does not sound likely, but that's the case.
- It's dangerous. - Why is it dangerous?
It could spit like nobody's business.
So how did that affect the lime burners?
It was nasty. The caustic action of this on their skin was dreadful.
When it go in to their eyes and their mouths,
they were in real trouble.
- Wow, it really goes! - I'm gonna put that
- in that to make it bit safer. - Yeah.
But can you see how that lump has crumbled?
TONY: Yes.
That was like fireworks!
Quick lime is very thirsty material.
If any of that got on your skin, it could be very painful.
TONY: And they'd be handling this stuff every day,
and the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning,
and the quarrying, and the long nights, and the dust...
MICHAEL: They didn't live too long. It was...over quickly.
'Some cathedrals towered up to 14 storeys high.'
'Without the benefit of the modern hoist
just lifting the huge blocks of stone to the top
would've presented massive problems for the masons.'
'As a result, they had to develop
state-of-the-art lifting machinery.'
Imagine what it would have been like walking mile after mile
after mile after mile after mile...
and getting absolutely nowhere.
That's what it would've been like for the poor workers
trapped inside that...
Which brings me to my next worst job, the treadmill worker.
'I've travelled all the way to Normandy in France
to see this replica, which has been designed
using medieval illustrations as a guide.'
'It was the treadmill that provided the power
for the medieval crane, so if you're the one doing the treading,
it was a pretty menial task,
but it was crucially important.
The medieval crane builders had two alternatives.
They could either build the small wheel,
which was pulled around from the outside,
or else they could make a much bigger wheel,
which was powered by two people inside.
The bigger wheels could lift the larger loads.
But this was new technology, the cranes were really experimental,
and there was always the danger that they might collapse.
So working inside that wheel could be really dangerous.
'The treadmill workers were the unwitting guinea pigs
at the centre of a technological marvel.'
'The cranes were built by trial and error,
often breaking and killing people, then being modified and rebuilt.'
'But they must've been effective,
or the buildings wouldn't have been possible.'
Medieval illustrations seem to suggest
that the crane was actually lifted onto the top of the cathedral
as it was being built. So, the craftsmen
must have had some sort of way of lifting the crane up in pieces,
maybe using smaller cranes or possibly a windlass.
Here at Hambye, you can see that the walls are absolutely peppered
with these little holes which would've been for scaffolding.
So, as the walls got higher, so the scaff went higher,
and the crane went up and up and up,
until it was right on the very top of the cathedral itself.
This was technology that had been around since the Greeks and Romans.
But it had been completely lost in Western Europe until the Normans
and the French went over to Constantinople and brought it back.
In fact, it was these machines alone
that enabled the great medieval cathedrals to be built,
because they were the only way that people of that time had
of lifting massive blocks of stone the size of a car.
And in fact, it's this car that we're gonna lift.
Michel, Frank... Allez!
- How does this work? - This crane works very easily.
(FRENCH ACCENT) You know, the rope is driving by the big wheels,
but the rope is attached to the axle of the wheels.
'The way the crane works is pretty simple.'
'The rope is attached to the axle in the middle of the treadmill,
and in order to lift the car just 1m,
the axle has to turn at least two or three times.'
'Because the diameter of the treadmill is much greater,
the amount of effort you have to put in to get the car to budge
is spread out over a longer distance.'
'It's like using a low gear to peddle a bike uphill.'
TONY: These guys are ready. Shall we get in?
ROLAND: Yes. TONY: Are you ready, guys?
(SHOUTS INSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH) Vous pouvez montez dans la voiture!
TONY: They're getting in while it goes up.
Will it be able to take that weight as well?
ROLAND: Yeah, oh, easily.
This crane can take twice weight than we have actually, you know?
TONY: It can take two tons? ROLAND: Oh, yeah.
- Which way, this way? - OK, to lift, we go this way.
TONY: All right. RONALD: We don't have to rush.
RONALD: Working slowly, we'll do the job anyway.
It's going now, look. It's really going up now.
TONY: Who were the people who would've been doing this treading?
Most of the time they used blind people.
TONY: Blind people? - YES.
TONY: Why was that? - To secure the whole process
because if you turn inside too much,
you will feel some kind of attraction for the emptiness.
You mean if you're blind you don't look down 300 foot
and see the terrible fall that awaited.
That's very sympathetic of them, isn't it?
Yeah, it was one way to... they can serve the community.
TONY: Do you think... ROLAND: They were working for God,
- you know, building cathedrals. - They worked bare foot?
ROLAND: Oh yes! Because they didn't have shoes at the time.
TONY: It's going up now. Look at that.
TONY: See. You can feel the tug.
You can feel there's more weight on it, but it's not too difficult.
TONY: Shall we stop now?
TONY: So we turn around and put them down again?
ROLAND: No. Cut the rope. Faster. TONY: (LAUGHS)
TONY: Oh, this is no problem.
ROLAND: Yeah, slowly.
ROLAND: Uh, we stop! Small problem here.
'Everything seems so safe and easy
until this apparently solid machine
suddenly began to come apart at the axle.'
TONY: So the axle... comes out and...
- the wheel drops out. - Yes, and we can't go down
to the 30m...down.
'I got an inkling of what being a treadmill worker must've been like'
'Imagine being 200 foot up in the air and blind,
and suddenly realising things are starting to fall apart.'
This all may seem pretty safe
like hamsters going around in a wheel.
But when you're in here, it doesn't feel like that at all.
You have no control over this thing.
You can't stop it and break it.
You can't just put your hand out to stop it either,
because you're frightened that as it whips past these things,
it's gonna slice your fingers off.
And when you try to bring it to a halt,
the damn thing just keeps moving and moving and moving.
And it's wet and it's slippy.
So when it's just going along fine...
that's like you're on holiday, but as soon as there's a problem...
- Is this OK now? - Yeah. Now it's pretty safe.
- We can finish the jobs. - OK. Let's get down.
ROLAND: We're going down that way.
- Keeping my hands in my pocket. - After you, gentleman.
I feel really nervous now.
- Really? - I can hear the creaking!
No! Come on.
OK. It's the safest machine we have ever made,
- but we made only one. - Thank you for that!
'Finding out about some of these jobs has been bad enough,
but which job's on the very lowest rung?'
'Could I actually do it?'
Well, the Middle Ages certainly had its fair share
of dangerous and disgusting work.
Being an arming squire could be menial,
dirty, unhygienic...
and you could get killed!
'But it was a job that could lead to fame and fortune.'
'Having been bitten, I can tell you leech-collecting
sounds worse than it is.'
'And practising medieval medicine, though messy,
was at least better than being a patient.'
'Building cathedrals had its hazards,
though your handiwork would outlive your lifetime
by up to a hundred decades.'
But for me the very worst job is one which comes
from the main industry of the middle ages - the wool trade.
If your name's Fuller it's highly likely
that at sometime in the dim and distant past
one of your ancestors was involved in the job of fulling.
And if manual labour's something you do with your hands,
then fulling is pedal labour cos you did it with your feet.
And "P" is the operative word.
Because in order to make wool soft and malleable
it had to be trodden for at least two hours
underfoot in stale urine.
'In the Middle Ages, wool became the country's biggest export.'
'By 1300, there were 15 million sheep -
almost three times the human population.'
'So fullers would've been thick on the ground, too -
a vital link between weavers, dyers and cloth merchants.'
'You could earn up to three times as much as a field labourer.'
'But the work was so unpleasant
that this must've been little comfort.'
'When raw wool's spun and woven
into a lose weave fabric, it's left dirty.'
'The grease is needed to ease the weaving process.'
'It's after that the fuller has to turn
this rough cloth into something more usable.'
This is fine. Why don't they just put this on?
Well, if you...
...you need to finish it.
This is, when you cut this, it will fray.
TONY: Yeah. RUTH: And it's greasy.
TONY: It is pretty greasy. RUTH: You can make it better.
It's a felting process. It closes the fibres together.
TONY: You can see that they are actually
- widely apart here. - Can see daylight through that.
TONY: Whereas here...
smooth and... just smells like cloth.
- It's much cleaner. - So how does this fulling work?
You need water, you need something to take the grease out
and you walk about on it a lot. Want to have a go?
I'll definitely have a go. I'm really up for this.
OK. This is the upside.
I get this nice vaguely amusing costume to wear.
And the basic job of fulling is OK.
It's just a bit boring. Just marching up and down,
up and down in a VAT for seven or eight hours at a time.
The downside is that I am marching up and down
in...this.
This is genuine human urine.
This isn't a television trick or anything.
It's not orange juice or dyed water.
It's about 20 litres of stale urine here.
If this was petrol, it'd be enough to get me from here to Newcastle.
And it's been kindly donated
by our production team over the last couple of weeks.
Thank you very much, guys, for your help with the experiment.
- You're ready, Ruth? - I think so.
TONY: Then, let's get into it.
RUTH: Smells bad? TONY: OH! Ehhh!
- God, that smells! - Thanks for keeping that.
It's like raw meat.
I'm really not looking forward to this very much.
(RETCHES) Every time you breathe in...
Makes your eyes water.
The flies are starting to gather around.
It is quite disgusting, isn't it?
Well, I suppose we'd better... take our shoes off.
I've got my shoes off. I have to tuck my skirt up.
- I think you should, love. - It's not going in there.
Every time you get a deep breath of it...
you forget what you're doing. You breathe in deep and woof!
It hits the base of your stomach and you wanna chuck.
RUTH: Yeah. Let's go. It's cold!
Uhh! They could've warmed it up for us!
Was there a special technique involved in this?
Well, the important thing is to get as much movement as possible.
So dancing is probably more effective than walking.
But um...basically you keep moving...
and every now and then, you have to stop and move the cloth.
The important thing is not to breathe!
- It's pretty vile. - It is quite disgusting!
'The reason they used urine
is that when it had been left for a week or two it decomposed
to produce a rich source of ammonia,
which is perfect for removing the grease.'
'They didn't have public loos at the time
so part of the job would have involved
collecting it from door to door.'
How long did they have to this for? Seven or eight hours?
It depends very much on the size of the cloth.
But it can, yes, I mean it can take a long time
if you want a really heavy finish.
The faster you move, the warmer you'd get.
I don't know what you do about upset stomachs.
Trouble is, when you start to move fast,
you start to breathe more heavily!
Do you think it's changing the colour of the cloth?
It's changing the colour of the liquid.
You can see the grease is coming out, it's gone cloudy.
It has taken the grease out.
The lines in it are going.
TONY: It's a bizarre version of a washing powder.
RUTH: The threads are actually closing up.
I mean that...have hardly been at that at all,
and you can see it's already different.
- It gets your toenails very clean! TONY: I'm losing the will to live.
This really is the worst job.
Mind you, in a strange kind of perverted way
I think I'm getting used to the smell.
Only another seven hours, 59 minutes.
(SPLISH...SPLASH)
After all these miserable hours of urine treading,
you'd end up with this, which would've been used
to make something like this... worn by the knights and squires
and King Henry at Agincourt and the bishops in their cathedrals.
In fact, without this worst job
the big players in the middle ages, would've been stark naked.
Join me again next time as I slide down the career ladder
once again in order to look at some of the worst jobs
of the Tudor period.
'Heads roll as I try out the messy job of executioner...'
EEYEAH! Oh, look at that!
'...find myself on the sharp end of pinmaking,
and experience equal opportunities
Tudor style!'
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