To continue with the Christmas theme for December, we will look at Tudor Monastery Farm at Christmas.  Christmas was the biggest celebration of the year.  Ruth Goodman, Tom Pinfold, and Peter Ginn return to the Tudor Monastery farm to celebrate Christmas Tudor style.

Tudors celebrated Christmas over 12 days with the 12th night being the biggest party of the year.  The farmers fasted for 24 days to prepare for the days of feasting.  It was a chance to save food and money for the celebration.  Farmers would also lay down their tools during the 12 days of Christmas.  Peter and Tom would make sure that the animals were well fed before the celebrations.

Ruth prepares the pig's head for the Christmas feast.  Boars head was the traditional meal for Christmas.  The Boar was the fiercest animal that the Tudor hunted.  They were hunted to extinction and so Ruth prepares a pig head.  Ruth pickles the pig's head to preserve it for the feasting.  To help Ruth prepare for the feasting, Tom stocks up the farm with wood.  You could control the heat of the fire by using different woods.

To help brighten up the home, Peter goes into the woods to pick holly and ivy.  Peter and Tom work to make a Christmas Crown to hang in the Tudor farm.  They use their fence-building skills to make the crown. However, the boys made it too big for the farm door.  Poor Ruth is busy with cooking for Christmas.  Christmas was the time where the common people could experience the height of luxury.  Foods from all around the world were a part of the Tudor Feast.  It was also the chance for the Tudor Farmer to help the poor with their celebrations.  There was a variety of foods that were made for the Tudor feast at Christmas.  The Christmas Pudding and Mince pie made their way to the table during the feast at Christmas.  The mince pie originally contained meat during the Tudor Period and over the years the spice and fruit combination while the meat in the pie declined.  However, since there were no tins in the Tudor Period the pastry had to be quite stiff to bake.

The first day of the Twelve Days of Christmas was Christmas Day.  It was on Christmas day when the people would break their fast.  The day kicked off with a morning Mass.  Ruth, Peter, and Tom celebrated Christmas with the people who helped them on the farm in the past year.  It was the one time of year where the most meat would be eaten.  Ruth makes the connection between the courses of the Tudor Feast and how modern people feast.  Professor Ronald Hutton provides commentary on why there were celebrations during Midwinter.

The second day of the twelve days of Christmas was the feast day of St. Stephen.  Peter checks on the animals.  Tradition had it that farmers would not work in the field.  Peter discovers that their pigs had piglets, much to Peter’s delight.  The monasteries celebrated Christmas communally.  The feasting in the monasteries tended towards the poultry: swans, ducks, and chickens.  Tudor farmers raised huge amounts of swans, especially for the monasteries. 

Ruth and Tom learn about falconry.  Aristocrats learned it to show off for their friends, the lower classes of people learned it to hunt.  This was another way that the Tudor farmer supplied the monastery with poultry.
To continue to learn more about the Tudor Feast at Christmas, continue to watch this episode. 

You can show this episode during the Christmas season in school.  You could even try to make some of the foods in the classroom!

You can access the YouTube video here.

This section features historians living as period people, performing tasks that our ancestors had to do, all the while dressed in period costumes.  Any one of these series would be an excellent addition to the classroom.  Not only do is this historical base reality TV, but several of these series can also be used in a science or agricultural classroom.

Secrets of the Castle - Episode 1  Episode 2  Episode 3  Episode 4
Tom Pinfold, Ruth Goodman, and Peter Ginn explore medieval lives and how to build a castle.  This series shows off one of the longest historical experiments in history.  Pinfold, Goodman, and Ginn explore a variety of aspects of castle building.  They kick off the series by establishing their base and then move on doing building projects.  This is a STEM and STEAM-heavy series. *Highly recommend for a middle school and high school history and science classroom.*

Victorian Pharmacy - Episode 1   Episode 2   Episode 3  Episode 4
The Victorian Pharmacy was the place where cures could be found.  It was the place where both the poor and rich could find medical care.  Ruth Goodman, Ruth Barber, and Tom Quick work in a real Victorian Pharmacy, finding alternatives for the popular cures of the day.  They how pharmacists made their medicines, brought people into the business, as well as how the industry became regulated.  *Recommend for a science and history classroom.  Highly recommend independent study and clips for a lecture.*

*Full Steam Ahead: YouTube
Peter Ginn, Alex Langlands, and Ruth Goodman explore the history of British Railways in this series.  They start with how the railroads impact mining and local areas before going into how the railways impact Britain as a nation.  The railroad had as big an impact as the internet had.  Ginn, Langlands, and Goodman demonstrate the changes the railroad brought over the decades.  *Highly recommend for a middle school and high school history classroom.*

Turn Back Time - The Family - Episode 1  Episode 2  Episode 3  Episode 4 Episode 5 
This earlier series is where three families discover how families lived over several different periods including the Edwardian Period, Depression, World War II, and the 1960s.  Three houses were transformed throughout the series to reflect the decade they are in.  They lived in each house for a week.  The families are living the lives of their ancestors.  *Highly recommend for a history classroom and a family and consumer classroom.  Good series for independent study students.*

Turn Back Time - The High Street - Episode 1  Episode 2  Episode 3  Episode 4  Episode 5  Episode 6
Four families participate in reviving the High Street through different eras: Victorian, Edwardian, 1930's, World War II, 1960's and the 1970's.  They operate a grocer, butcher, blacksmith shop, dressmaker shop, and bakery.  The Chamber of Commerce explores whether or not the High Street can be revived through this experiment.  The participants are selected from locals and they promise to shop in only the period stores.  *Recommend for a history classroom and independent study classroom.*

Farm Series
*Tales From Green Valley: Episode 1  Episode 2  Episode 3  Episode 4  Episode 5  Episode 6  Episode 7  Episode 8  Episode 9  Episode 10  Episode 11  Episode 12
A group of historians and archeologists work on a farm that was established during the Jacobean Period.   They make repairs around the farm, raise animals, and live the way farmers lived during the Jacobean Period.  They build a new barn as well as a new privy.  They work the farm during a calendar year, except they do not live on the farm.  At the end of the year, many of the buildings were restored.  *Highly recommend for both history and agricultural classroom.*

*Edwardian Farm: YouTube  Amazon Prime
Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn, and Alex Langladas live as farmers during the Edwardian Period.  Goodman, Ginn, and Langladas plant market gardens, raise livestock and keep house using Edwardian methods.  They participate in daily Edwardian life and show how the Edwardian period brought changes to England.  *Recommend for a history classroom, highly recommend for an agricultural classroom.  Excellent series for an independent study student.*

*Victorian Farm: YouTube  Amazon Prime
Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn, and Alex Langladas live as farmers during the Victorian Age.  They work on the Acton-Scott estate for this series.  The first restore a Victorian's farm workers cottage, prepare cider, and plant their fields.  They participate in daily Victorian life.  They celebrate the holidays Victorian Style.  Recommend for both history and agricultural classroom.  Highly recommend it for independent study students and clips in a lecture.*

*Tudor Monastery Farm: YouTube Amazon (Region 2 DVD)
Ruth Goodman, Tom Pinford, and Peter Ginn live life as farmers during the Tudor period for a full calendar year.  Monasteries were an important part of Tudor Life and they were the landlords during this period.  They plant a field, raise livestock, and keep house using Tudor methods.  Ruth manages the house and dairy while the boys' Tom and Peter manage the fields.  This playlist includes Tudor Feast at Christmas.  *Recommended for all ages as well as for both a history classroom and agricultural classroom.*

*Wartime Farm:  YouTube
Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn, and Alex Langladas as well as new team member Henry live as farmers facing the conditions of World War II.  Goodman, Ginn, and Langladas startup with setting up the farm for war conditions, planting the fields, and trying their hand at recycling.  They deal with rationing.  They also take in war refugees, participate in home defense and welcome the Americans.  *Highly recommended for both middle school and high school history and agricultural classrooms.  Highly recommend it for independent study students and clips.*

This is the series finale of Tudor Monastery Farm.  Ruth, Tom, and Peter continue to live and work on the Tudor Monastery Farm.  It is September and the beginning of Autumn.  The time travelers are getting ready to close their year out.  The pea crop is harvested and the animals are coming back to the farm.  The barley harvest is ready to be harvested.

The Monastery was the largest landowner in England.  The fields were open and not enclosed by hedges.  Farmers were given land to farm.  Peter commented that it was all hands to the pump when it came to harvesting their crops.  Harvest would have been back-breaking work for the harvest.  Their tools are quickly getting dull from the work.  Tom was surprised to discover that.  Ruth and the women bind the barley into Sheafs.  Every stalk was important and the poor people were allowed to glean leftovers.  Ruth comments on the amount of work that the team had done in four hours and what needed to be done. 

Ruth then prepares the meat for the winter and she makes salt to help preserve their meat.  She learns how to make salts.  Salt was part of the cash economy, you had to buy salt.  Salt was imported from France or Spain, however, there were pockets of Britain that had brine springs.  Salt forms by boiling water.  This salt comes to the top of the water and forms a skin.  Ruth then carefully extracts the salt.  The first gatherings are the cleanest, Ruth tests this theory by throwing eggs into the brine.  The impurities will bind to a protein.  There were different grades of salt, the grey salt was used for household cleaners and the white was used for cheese.

In the meantime, Tom and Peter bring their sheep down back to the farm.  The 1530s would change sheep rearing.  After the dissolution of the monasteries, their land was sold off and landowners started to enclose the land.  The large monastery flocks were then broken up.  It was the last time that there would be big flocks in England.

The team then brings in the barley for storage.  Tom and Peter pick goss to prevent rodents from getting into the barley.  Goss is prickly which will discourage visitors and keep the air circulating underneath the barley.  Peter talks about how prickly Goss was.  He also observes that by taking the harvest in they are taking away the homes of the rodents.  The last of the barley is brought into the farm.  The harvest queen is crowned.

Fall is when the animals are slaughtered and Ruth uses her salt to preserve the meat.  The Tudor butcher formed two-pound chunks of meat.  After butchering, Ruth salts up the meat and then puts it into a brine.  After sitting in a brine for two days the meat would then be taken out and put in a barrel packed with salt.
Ruth prepares the Michelmas feast.  She cooks a goose for the feast.  She talks about when it was appropriate to eat geese.

To continue to learn more about the Tudor Monastery farm, continue to watch this fantastic series.

Tudor Monastery Farm is an excellent show for the classroom.  If you need a filler for a substitute teacher or just to share some living history with your students.  You can show certain episodes in an agricultural classroom as well.  Grab some clips and use this series in the classroom as part of a lecture.  You are only limited to your imagination when it comes to using YouTube in the classroom. 

You can access the YouTube Video here.  The worksheets for this series are available on my Teacher Pay Teachers page.

The monastery and others took care of the poor, rather than the state.  Helping the poor was a social virtue.  It was the measure of how a Christian would be judged.  Hospitality was also high on Tudor’s radar.  The Monasteries helped the poor through the almshouses or providing shelter.  They accommodated everyone.

The monasteries served as a backpacker’s hostel, a nursing home, as well providing a place for the rich.  By hosting the rich, the monasteries could help generate donations.  The team focuses on Tudor Hospitality in this episode.  Their task is to help the Monastery host a rich patron, as well as restore a room for a retired monk.

The boys attend to the pea crop before they can help out with the renovation and hosting the party.  They build bird scarers to help frighten the birds.  In Tudor times, there were bounties placed on birds.  The boys use shells to scare the birds away from the pea crop.

Ruth makes butter in the dairy.  This butter will be used for Abbot’s feast.  She separates the cream from the milk and starts making butter.  Butter was good for the health in Tudor times.  Everyone had a cow because you could graze the cow on the common land.  After the lands became enclosed and the poor had to rent land.  However, they could not afford to rent the land and butter became the domain of the rich.  This would be an excellent clip to show in an agricultural classroom.  Butter making would be a good experiment to do in the classroom.

Tom and Peter make their way to the room they are restoring.  They tear up the floor as part of the renovation.  They plan to use lime putty to help with the renovation.  They gather limestone and wood to make a temporary kiln.  Limestone was a popular building material in the Tudor Times.  They set the limestone on fire and after the fire burns out they put the burned lime into the water and turn it into putty.  It is a volatile reaction.  The stones will turn to putty overnight.

Ruth cleans out her dairy equipment.  Cleaning was a vigorous affair in the Tudor Times.  They did not use soap.  One weapon in the cleaning arsenal was salt.  Salt killed bacteria.  Then everything was scalded with boiling water.  Finally, they laid their tools out in the sun to kill bacteria.  They knew that the sun worked in sterilizing tools.  She then harvests rushes for the room renovation.  The rushes will be made into mats.  Rushes were an important feature of the Tudor home.  They were used on the floor, baskets, mattresses, and hats.

After making the lime putty, the boys set to work on redoing the floor.  They make the floor out of sand, flint, and clay.  They add curdled milk to the mixture to bind the floor.  The sour milk smell will go away.  After mixing they then start laying the floor. 

To continue to learn more about the Tudor Monastery farm, continue to watch this fantastic series.

Tudor Monastery Farm is an excellent show for the classroom.  If you need a filler for a substitute teacher or just to share some living history with your students.  You can show certain episodes in an agricultural classroom as well.  Grab some clips and use this series in the classroom as part of a lecture.  You are only limited to your imagination when it comes to using YouTube in the classroom. 

You can access the YouTube Video here.  The worksheets for this series are available on my Teacher Pay Teachers page.

It is July and the time travelers are halfway through the year. The peas and barley are thriving. Pigs and sheep are also doing well. Ruth, Tom, and Peter are advised by the monastery about more ways the farmers earned money. The farm’s fortunes and the monastery’s fortunes are very much tied together. The Abbeys were a source of authority for the land.

One way the Tudor Farmers made additional money was through lead mining. Peter and Tom are off to attempt lead mining. They open up an abandoned mine. The mine they open up has not been operated in over 100. Lead mining often provided an extra income for the farmer. This in turn allowed the farmer to afford a few extra luxuries or they could invest in additional livestock. Lead was in high demand, especially from the churches. They used lead in their windows and gutters. After opening the mine Tom and Peter go into the mine.

Ruth finds another way to make money: eel fishing. The monasteries encouraged the people to fast from meat three times a week. Fish and eel made up for the lack of meat-eating. To do this she helps make a basket to catch the eel. Eel traps are made from two cones, one inside another. It was an ancient way of fishing. An eel is also easier to keep alive because you mainly need to keep the eel damp.

Tom and Peter go through the mine through the old tunnels that Tudor miners took. Monasteries granted leases for the Tudor farmer to mine lead. They discuss the history of the mine and mining in the Tudor period. The boys look for silver flecks in the wall. Then they start mining. Lead veins were set at 45 degrees which made working conditions challenging for the Tudor miner. About 50 barrels a day came out of the Tudor mines. The lead is then smelted to get the lead from the rock. They build a Tudor-style kiln to make white coal as well as to melt the lead ore. However, the boys get into trouble due to the wind. How do they solve the problem of their fire collapsing? Tune into Tudor Monastery Farm to find out.

Ruth sets the eel trap with Simon’s help. He is an expert in Tudor fishing. She lays out the traps in the shade because eels are drawn to dark places. She baits them with dead fish, “the stinkier, the better,” she comments. Simon and Ruth then check the eel traps. The first trap did not have an eel. The second trap had eels. Ruth tries to knock them back into the bucket, but since they look like snakes it made her nervous. A portion of the eels that were caught would go to the monastery.

Tudor Monastery farm continues to demonstrate that the Tudors were highly tuned to the natural world. Nature provided the Tudors with the tools they needed. To demonstrate this principle the boys use cotton grass to light the kiln fire. To continue to learn more about the Tudor Monastery farm, continue to watch this fantastic series.

Tudor Monastery Farm is an excellent show for the classroom. If you need a filler for a substitute teacher or just to share some living history with your students. You can show certain episodes in an agricultural classroom as well. Grab some clips and use this series in the classroom as part of a lecture. You are only limited to your imagination when it comes to using YouTube in the classroom.

You can access the YouTube Video here. The worksheets for this series are available on my Teacher Pay Teachers page.

Tudor Monastery Farm is in episode 3.  It is late spring and the farm has been run for two months.  The pig enterprise has been set up.  Ruth, Peter, and Tom sheered their sheep and sold the wool to the monastery.  They then learned how to drive oxen.  Now they focus on food and what the farmer ate.  Bread and ale were a staple of the Tudor diet.  The Tudor people had a high-calorie diet.  Bread and beer were 1/3 of the calories in the Tudor diet.  Since they worked hard on the farm, they were able to burn calories faster.  Ruth comments the only thing missing was Vitamin C but if you had the “occasional leaf” you were good on Vitamin C.  If the barley crop failed, the Tudor farmer could starve.  In the Tudor period, one in four harvests failed.

Religion guided the Tudor farmer in preventing a bad harvest.  Forty days after Easter, the Tudor farmer processed around the farm boundaries to ensure a good harvest.  It was called beating out the bounds.  There were no written parish maps to tell people where their boundaries were.  A second reason why the Tudor farmer processed around the farm was to remind the people of the boundaries.  Ronald Hutton talks about how they got the Tudor children to remember the boundaries.  Boys were often beaten and turned upside down.  After they did that they were given fruit cake as a treat.  The idea was to remember bitterly what a place looked like.

Tom and Peter then discuss the pigs.  It was the earliest form of factory farming.  Farming changed during the Tudor period and instead of being subsistence farming, they were profit farming.  The boys separate the piglets from the mothers to wean them.  The piglets are taken to the woods.  They are fattened up on acorns.  A boar is introduced to the mothers to breed.

In the meantime, Ruth collects wild yeast to make bread and ale.  Her experiment in capturing wild yeast is a success.  The idea was to collect the wild yeasts that were in the air.  Ruth’s experiment is a success.  She then works to spread out the barley on a floor to start the beer-making process.  The next step after spreading it out on the floor is to get it wet.  Days go by and they shovel it into a smaller and smaller pile.  Beer making was an intensive and time-consuming job.  Ruth then transports the barley to the bread oven and continues the ale-making process.  Tudors drank ale and not beer because beer required hops.  Tudor farmers worked from dawn to dusk. 

The only place where time counted was in the monastery. The monks had specific times when to pray, when to go to the chapel and when to eat.   Tom and Peter build a clock for the monastery.

To continue to learn more about the Tudor Monastery farm, continue to watch this fantastic series.

Tudor Monastery Farm is an excellent show for the classroom.  If you need a filler for a substitute teacher or just to share some living history with your students.  You can show certain episodes in an agricultural classroom as well.  Grab some clips and use this series in the classroom as part of a lecture.  You are only limited to your imagination when it comes to using YouTube in the classroom.  The discussion on Tudor pig breeding would be an excellent clip to show in an agricultural classroom.  Or you could create a science experiment on capturing wild yeast to demonstrate the scientific method.

You can access the YouTube Video here.  The worksheets for this series are available on my Teacher Pay Teachers page.

Tudor Monastery farm continues.  Subsistence farming was giving way to farming for profits.  Tudor farmers had an eye on profits.  The monasteries made money from their tenants and now their tenants wanted to make profits for themselves.   It was during this time that farming was changed.  Ruth, Tom, and Peter celebrate Pentecost with a Market day.  Tom and Peter are raising geese to market day.  Tom comments that he is nervous around the geese.  Geese were considered a good source of revenue.  Geese were kept for meat, eggs, and fat.  Tom and Peter hope to make money with them on Market Day.

In 1500, the common lands were not enclosed.  Our time travelers turned their sheep out onto these lands.  Sheep produced thicker fleeces because of the grass the sheep were kept on.  May was the time for sheep shearing.  The time travelers work on making crooks to help drive the sheep from the grasslands back to the farm.  The crooks were invaluable to the Tudor shepherd.  With the aid of a sheepdog Ruth, Tom, and Peter drive their sheep back down to the farm.  It is comedic to watch Tom, Peter, and Ruth drive the sheep down back to their farm.

Tom and Peter wash the sheep.  The farming manuals at the time recommend that the sheep be washed before they sheer them.  They wash their sheep before shearing.  Washing the dirt, dung, and rocks out of a fleece helps the sheering process.  If a sheerer came across a rock in the fleece, the blades could get damaged.  Cleaning the fleece also increases the farmer’s profits because if a fleece is matted with dung it is not usable.

Peter who is feeling unwell with a cold, turns to nature to cure it.  The Tudor garden was seen as a pharmacy.  Many plants could be used to cure what ails the farmer. 

Ruth explores the differences with monastic herds because the sheep could provide different sources of income.  Sheep cheese had started going out of fashion because cows produced more milk.  Ruth milks a sheep to help supplement the farm’s income.  She will use the milk to make cheese.  She works in the dairy and makes sheep’s cheese.  Working in the dairy was considered a woman’s work during Tudor times.  Tudor Dairies were also cleverly designed to regulate temperature so the dairy was the coolest place on the farm.  They were built on the north wall and away from the sun.

Peter works on steam bending wood to make a bench to help sheer sheep.  He has never done it before but is willing to give it a try.  He explains the process of what he is doing to steam bend wood.  He digs a trench, lines it with rocks, fills it with damp hay, and builds a chimney to get the fire going.

Tudor Monastery Farm is an excellent show for the classroom.  If you need a filler for a substitute teacher or just to share some living history with your students.  You can show certain episodes in an agricultural classroom as well.  Grab some clips and use this series in the classroom as part of a lecture.  You are only limited to your imagination when it comes to using YouTube in the classroom.  I would pull clips out from the discussion on the Tudor Dairy or Tudor cheesemaking for an agricultural classroom.  Ruth is an excellent narrator as to why the Tudor Dairy was designed the way it was.

You can access the YouTube Video here.  The worksheets for this series are available on my Teacher Pay Teachers page.

We will kick off August with Tudor Monastery Farm.  This is a fantastic series to show in a history or an agricultural classroom.  While the monks prayed, they rented the monastery lands to farmers.  The farmers would work the lands, making money for the monastery as well as themselves.  Ruth Goodman, Tom Pinfold, and Peter Ginn are our time travelers going back in time to live as Tudor farmers.

Ruth, Tom, and Peter make their way to Weald and Downland to set up their farm.  It is 1500 and the monasteries were almost as powerful as the state.  They live during the reign of King Henry VII.  England was slowly emerging from the Wars of the Roses.  The world was heavily religious and religion weaved its way through everyday life.  The people believed they risked eternal damnation or social isolation if they did not follow the religious rules.  The church was central in Tudor England.  Religion explained everything, from the growth of crops to weather to personal wellbeing.

It is spring.  James Clark introduces Tom, Peter, and Ruth to their farm.  He explains how the Tudor farm operated.  The Monastic Farmers had to have a good head for business.  They rented their lands from the Monasteries.  Clark brings the time travelers to the house where they will live.  Tom, Peter, and Ruth tour the house.  Peter comments that the house will be hard to heat.  However, Ruth addresses this issue beautifully by stating that a fire in the middle of the room is a better use of heat.

Tudor farmers had to turn a profit to pay their landlords.  They have five acres of enclosed fields, as well as access to the common lands and woods.  The land was the most valuable asset of the monastery.  The Tudor Farmer raised sheep.   Sheep tied the farmers and the monasteries together.  English wool was of the highest quality.  They also planted peas and barley.  They may have raised pigs. 

Tom, Peter, and Ruth get to work right away.  Tom and Peter work on a pig enclosure since it was against the law for pigs to run free.  Tom picks up hazel rods for the pig enclosure.  There is a good discussion on the rules landlords imposed on their renters.  The higher the rent you paid, the more access you had to the supplies you needed for the farm.

Tudor farmers had to master a variety of building skills.  Tom and Peter work on the pig enclosure.  They weave hazel woods around the fence posts.  They also put together a dead hedge to help keep pigs in.  They finish the fence.  Peter comments that the Tudor building sources its materials from the landscape.  The fence they built can keep an elephant in the enclosure.

Peter forms a guild for the Tudor farmers.  Guilds were formed to help keep everyone prosperous and to help the transition into the afterlife.  There were saints for every day of the calendar year.  Peter forms a farmer’s guild with St. Benedict as their patron and St. Scholastica as a supporter. 

Tudor Monastery Farm is an excellent show for the classroom.  If you need a filler for a substitute teacher or just to share some living history with your students.  You can show certain episodes in an agricultural classroom as well.  Grab some clips and use this series in the classroom as part of a lecture.  You are only limited to your imagination when it comes to using YouTube in the classroom.

You can access the YouTube Video here.  The worksheets for this series are available on my Teacher Pay Teachers page.

Hello, our tour through Secrets of the Castle continues in Episode 4.  Ruth, Peter, and Tom continue their work on Guedelon Castle.  More castle-building secrets are being revealed through this archeological experiment.  Ruth, Peter, and Tom have lived on the Guedelon site for four months and are now exploring all the skills that were used to build a castle.  It was a combined effort of the community to build a castle. 

Blacksmiths, quarrymen, woodsmen, carpenters, and stonemasons all came together to build a castle.  The first castles were built of wood and there is a sample of an early castle on the Guedelon site.  These castles consisted of a walled enclosed area and a tower.  Eventually, these castles would be made of stone, especially if they were at a key strategic site.  In England, stone castles were a sign that Norman Rule was here.

The workers at Guedelon are reviving the old practices in building the castle.  They are proud of the job they have done at the castle.  The walls are made out of a combination of rough field stones with areas of smooth cut stones to strengthen the walls and towers.  There were leveling courses to help give the masons a chance to work on a flat surface.  Tom helps in the quarry to get a stone that is to be used for a leveling course.  He uses the techniques that the Medieval people would have used.  In the Middle Ages, quarrymen would have used the natural cracks in the rock to cut stone.

Masons were well paid and well-traveled men, their skills were in high demand.  They all gathered in the stonemasons' lodge.  It was where the masons’ secrets were kept.  Ronald Hutton joins Ruth as they tour the masons’ lodge.  Ronald discusses the history of masons and freemasonry.  Middle Ages masons had nothing to do with the Masonic Movement and the modern freemason movement was founded in the 16th Century and evolved from there.  Ronald sums up the Middle Age masons as doing God’s work because they were the ones that built the cathedrals.

Ruth, Tom, and Peter explore the next skill needed to use build a castle: carpentry.  They would have built doors and maintained the scaffolding.  Scaffolding was not built from the ground up but moved up as the walls moved up.  Guedelon is using modern processed wood and steel bolts for the scaffolding, but the scaffolding on the site resembles what would have been used in the castle building.  There have been compromises for health and safety, however despite that the workers still work as they would have done in the Middle Ages.

Blacksmiths were also seen on the site of the castle.  They made hinges for the doors and other metal implements for the castle.  He keeps the tools sharp for the workers.  Tom and Peter work to make a furnace to help smelt iron.  Together they make a bloom of iron for the blacksmith’s use.  By able to make steel they can make good tools.

The woodsmens’ skills were also used in castle building.  They carefully selected trees for use in the castle.  Each tree had a specific use for the castle.  Tom works on getting a tree chopped down.  Sarah the site administrator helps translate for the woodsman.  This section demonstrates how much thought the woodsman had to do for a tree to fall safely in the forest.

To continue to see the other skills used in castle building continue to watch this episode.  This is another episode that features STEM and STEAM activities for the classroom.  This is a skill-heavy episode and demonstrates how everyone came together to build a castle.  It also showed how much work was involved in building a castle.  If you do not want to show the full episode, then show clips to a class.

You can access the YouTube video here.

Hello, our tour through Secrets of the Castle continues in Episode 3.  Our time travelers Ruth, Peter, and Tom explore how a castle was decorated.  When we think of castles, we just think of a barren place that is cold and drafty.  However, this archeological experiment is proving otherwise.  Castles could be richly and colorfully decorated.  The material that early castle decorators used came from the earth.  Ruth, Peter, Tom continue to explore the Medieval World.

The castles people visit now are a far cry from what they were when they were in use.  They had tile floors, whitewashed, plastered, and covered with clothes.  Ruth sums up the difference between castle ruins and the historical experimental castle as “an entirely different beast.”  The experimenters are decorating the castle according to the period of King Louis IX of France.  The experimental castle is modest, decorated for a lower-ranked noble.

Sarah, the site administrator gives Ruth, Tom, and Peter a tour of the most important rooms of the castle starting with the Great Hall.  The Great Hall was the hub of castle life and it was a sight where the castle lord held court.  It had to show off the lord’s wealth and status.  They then make their way to the great tower where the lord and lady slept.  It was the one room that had a fireplace.  Peter and Tom are going to be tiling and painting some of the surfaces of the castle.  Ruth makes her way to the kitchen.  The kitchen is limewashed making it a bright and sunny area.  The limewash keeps things clean in the kitchen.

Sarah explains that castles were often limewashed and was glad that they had the chance to experiment with how castles were decorated.  The White Tower at the Tower of London got its name from being whitewashed on the outside.

Tom prepares lime mortar to put up against the wall.  Rendering was put on the walls to insulate them and to prepare the walls for decorate.  It was put on the wall roughly rather than in several layers.  It also helps preserve the masonry underneath.  They then move to make floor tiles for the site.  28,000 roof tiles were created and it took four years.  An additional 80,000 tiles will be needed to cover all the roofs of the castle.  Now production has shifted to floor tiles.  Producing floor tiles is often laborious as the workers had to separate hard elements from the clay to make tiles.  Tile making was one of the earliest industries to have regulations.  These regulations included what type of clay could be used for the tile. 

The toilets were a common element found in castles.  They were called guard robes and clothes were kept in them to keep them bug-free.  Ruth and Peter explore the history of the privy or guard robes.  The squires often had to prepare the privies before their masters went in them.  Often preparation included sweet-smelling herbs to help make going to the bathroom a pleasant experience.  What did the Medieval people use for toilet paper?  It was not leaves or moss, since you would have to deal with deforestation or have a moss plantation to keep people supplied.  Ruth and Peter conclude that everyone had a flannel or shared a flannel.

To continue to learn more about how a castle was built continue to watch the episode.  This episode is another fascinating look at how a castle was built.  This episode would be suited to an art class, especially if a teacher was discussing how to make tiles or painting techniques.  Ruth goes into a great deal on how the Medieval people made colorful paints.  Again, teachers, you are only limited by your imagination when you use YouTube in your class.

You can access the YouTube video here.