500 years ago, England was emerging into a new era.
After years of war, plague and famine,
the kingdom was enjoying peace and prosperity
under the reign of the first Tudor king - Henry VII.
A new class of business-savvy farmer was thriving,
boosting food production.
And then over she goes.
While wool from their sheep was generating half the nation's wealth.
Many of the nation's farms were under the control of the biggest
landowner in England after the king -
the monasteries.
Their influence could be felt in every aspect of daily life.
They were not just places of religion,
they were at the forefront of technology, education and farming.
But with the daily lives of monks devoted to prayer
they depended increasingly on tenant farmers,
who worked and tended their lands.
Steady girl.
Now historian Ruth Goodman
and archaeologists Tom Pinfold and Peter Ginn
are turning the clock back to Tudor England,
here at Weald and Downland in West Sussex,
to work as ordinary farmers
under the watchful eye of a monastic landlord.
That's the way, nice.
To succeed they'll have to master long lost farming methods.
Watch those flanks, they're going again.
And get to grips with Tudor technology.
SCREAMING
Quite noisy.
It's a really violent process.
While immersing themselves in the beliefs...
ALL: Amen.
..customs...
..and rituals that shaped the age.
This is merry England for heaven's sake, so to speak, let's enjoy it.
SCREAMING
This is the untold story of the monastic farms of Tudor England.
In 1500, England was at a crossroads.
The subsistence farming of the medieval era
was giving way to a modern spirit of commercialisation.
A world dominated by the Church and the rhythm of farming
was now opening up to a new force -
money.
As great landowners, the monasteries had capitalised
on their land and their tenants for centuries...
controlling everything, from crop production
to new technologies and trading relationships with merchants.
But now as more and more monastic farms were being rented out,
Tudor tenant farmers realised that they too
could make a profit from the land.
Ruth is doing the monthly accounts.
In 1500, those farmers who are in a position
to rent large parcels of land from people like the monasteries,
were becoming much more businessmen, and perhaps businesswomen.
They were thinking much more in terms of profit and loss
and, erm, accumulated wealth than perhaps had been the case before.
I mean, this is a moment which farming is beginning to change
into something that's closer
to the buying and selling and trading and merchant thinking
that we're so accustomed to these days.
But for even the most industrious farmers,
the farming calendar was still shaped
by the cycle of religious festivals.
It's May and the feast of Whitsun,
also known as Pentecost,
is on the horizon -
traditionally celebrated with a special market day.
Falling seven weeks after Easter,
it commemorated the descent of the Holy Spirit to Jesus' disciples.
Although the team's main income will come from their sheep,
Tom and Peter have also been raising geese to sell.
We've got two sitting over there, and six very angry ones there.
So we're going to have a load of little goslings pretty soon.
That's very exciting. Just hope these ones come out then.
A bit of hissing starting up.
They look pretty good condition, those ones, don't they?
This is when it gets exciting though.
They're certainly good mothers, aren't they?
Cos they're hissing, they're protecting their nests.
Yeah. I'm always a little wary of being in here.
So if we don't feed them in here, they might not go out for food,
so they'll start losing condition,
they won't be able to rear their young properly,
we'll have massive problems,
but little bit of, er, pottage goes a long way.
Looks better than it did last night actually in my opinion.
HE LAUGHS
Most rural households, including monastic ones,
kept geese for their eggs, meat and fat,
which was used in medicine.
GOOSE HISSES
Back in the Tudor times, good source of revenue.
Exactly, and we are here to make money.
We, we've got Whitsun fair coming up,
so it might be nice to take a couple of our geese to market.
Especially since we've got little goslings coming on.
In 1500, the farming landscape was very different.
Common lands had not yet been enclosed
and farmers had the right to graze their animals
on lush upland pastures -
kept fresh and green by the wet climate.
It meant sheep produced longer, fuller fleeces,
putting English wool in great demand.
Raw fleece and woollen cloth
accounted for 75% of England's exports.
For hundreds of years the monasteries had dominated the trade,
keeping huge flocks of up to 20,000 sheep.
May was the time of year for flocks to be driven from the uplands
back to the farm,
for the most profitable job in a sheep farmer's calendar - shearing.
Claire King is an expert in the history of shepherding.
She's making some Tudor style crooks to control
the sheep on the journey -
made from hollow cow horns.
So your mud, stones goes in there. Yep.
And basically you just swing it.
Yes, almost like a slingshot.
Are these going to be any good for controlling our sheep?
They will be in the confined spaces of the lanes.
If you've got a gap you don't want them to go through,
or they're hesitating,
then you can throw some stones ahead of them
and that will frighten them out of that gap.
Yeah. That's the plan.
Obviously they've got a practical purpose. Mm-hmm.
They do look quite fun.
They are fun.
RUTH: Hopeless.
I just missed them entirely.
The crooks, known as hulets, were invaluable to the Tudor shepherd
who looked after a whole community's sheep in the wide-open countryside.
Oh, that was a bit better. Oh, yeah, that's better.
Whee!
But gathering the sheep out in the open was a difficult task.
In addition to the crooks, the team have enlisted the help of Bess,
and her owner Hugh Emerson, to drive the flock back to the farm.
Sheep naturally flock together. Right.
So that's an essential characteristic of sheep.
There are only really three commands -
go left, go right and stop.
That's the key one.
Nice and simple then.
If you don't stop your dog,
then she'll just drive them off and they'll disappear.
If you've got those three commands, your dog will work sheep.
Walk on. Go on, Bess. Go on, Bess.
Getting them moving.
Bess is a bearded collie, a traditional sheepdog.
Bess, this way. Bess, here to me.
The breed traces its roots back to 16th-century Scotland.
You see how she drops her head down to the ground, can't you?
She's tracking them. Yeah. She actually tracks them, Bessy.
They don't seem too spooked at the moment.
Bess, Bess, this way. Bess, here to me.
Go on, Bess. Go on, Bess. Walk on.
Worth her weight in gold, eh?
Once out of the field, the team need to get the sheep down the lane
and back to the farm.
Oi! They're off.
Crook time, isn't it?
Oh.
And that did nothing.
SHE LAUGHS
Come on, sheep. Heh! Heh, heh.
Good sheep, they know where they want to go.
They'll get there.
Tudor shepherds lived on a knife edge.
Disease commonly claimed up to a third of their flocks.
So safeguarding healthy sheep was vital.
Watch those flanks, they're going again. Stay on the lane.
These crooks are actually pretty good, erm...
I'm going for the scattergun approach with stones.
Love it.
SHE LAUGHS
That... Oh, they've seen the grass now, no bother now.
Yeah.
Safely back, there's one more job to do in preparation for shearing.
Because sheep were so valuable,
the farming manuals of the day
had plenty of advice on how to rear them.
To secure a good price it was recommended that sheep must be
well washed before their fleeces were removed.
Yeah, who's going in first, you, me or the sheep?
Normally sheep would have been washed by swimming in deep water,
but the pond on the farm is shallow
so the team have decided to wash them by hand.
Sheep seems happy.
Is she coming up clean?
No.
Not really compared to before, to be honest.
We want to get all the dirt out the fleece,
not just so you've got a nice clean fleece at the end,
but also if the shears come across anything it will blunten them.
But things aren't going quite to plan.
SHEEP BAAS
Yeah, runaway sheep.
It's going back.
Peter's just driving her round to the other side of the pond.
SHE LAUGHS
Right, another victim. Come on.
Come on. Come on, girl.
You'll enjoy it once you're in there, everyone else has.
Oh, here we are. Hello.
I mean what was the, the deal with the wool if it,
I mean, if it's really mucky?
Well, if it's all glued together by dung then you can't use it,
it becomes unsaleable and unusable.
Argh, that was a good dunk.
So doing this increases a farmer's profit margins essentially?
It does indeed.
She's done, let her out.
I thought they were supposed to be white sheep, these ones.
LAUGHTER
I know they look dirty on the outside,
but if we've managed to get the dung off from underneath
and out of the matting, a bit of surface silt might not be that bad.
I don't know how efficient we're being, but we're definitely quicker.
Apart from naughty sheep, we did quite, did quite well.
It sort of worked, didn't it?
I'll be honest, I thought it was great fun.
SHE LAUGHS
The sheep will need to dry out thoroughly in the sun
over the coming week before they can be sheared.
Oh, it's cold, cold, cold, cold, cold, cold.
In Tudor England,
religion formed part of the ebb and flow of everyday life.
But people also turned to the Church in times of need,
especially during illness.
The Church taught that saints interceded
on behalf of those who worshiped them,
bringing good health and curing ailments.
But people didn't rely solely on the saints.
There was also a firm tradition of turning to nature to produce cures.
Unfortunately I've got a summer cold
and it's starting to get into my throat,
so I'm going to try and find myself a remedy.
And in a Tudor garden we've got a number of plants that I can use.
We have ground ivy, they called alehoof,
partly because it looks like a hoof
and the leaves are also used to flavour ale, alehoof.
Alehoof is rich in Vitamin C, perfect for treating a cold.
Very interesting concept, the idea of edible weeds
and essentially this is one of them.
Peter adds honey to the alehoof.
Back in Tudor times it was always honey,
because sugar was so exotic, it's so expensive, it's got so far to travel.
So I'm just going to add a bit of hot water here.
And you know what they say, what doesn't, doesn't kill ya...
That's really nice, that's really good.
Hopefully that'll work its magic, so for me it's back to work.
Getting stiff.
In addition to revenue from sheep's wool,
money could also be made from their milk.
Like many Tudor farmers, Ruth plans to supplement the farm's income
by producing cheese to sell at the upcoming Whitsun market.
Milking sheep for sheep's cheese
was really common through the high Middle Ages,
but was already beginning to go out of fashion,
if that's the right word, in 1500.
Basically a cow gives so much more milk than a sheep,
more than ten times much, as much milk.
So many people were beginning to leave off milking their sheep
and turning for milk instead to a cow.
But monastic herds were a bit different.
Basically because they were so large.
When you've got these huge flocks up on the hill
and somebody's got to be there looking after them
day and night anyway...
..milking them, making use of that produce
just makes a whole lot more sense.
And the milk itself?
Well, that was mostly used for cheese making,
and that's what I plan to do.
Keep your feet out of it, girl.
SHE LAUGHS
To guarantee a good return on their wool,
the fleeces will need to be of impeccable quality.
To help protect them during the shearing process
Peter is making a special Tudor contraption -
a shearing bench.
Made distinctive by the unusual shape of its seat.
They look a little something like this, it's kind of bottle shaped.
So you've got these curves, and then there's slats in between.
This whole bench it's going to keep the sheep off the ground,
it's going to keep the wool clean.
This bit's where the sheep's going to go
and this bit is where you're going to sit.
Now the bit I'm trying to do at the moment,
and I think the really hard bit, are these outside edges.
I'm going to try and steam bend two pieces of hazel.
Now I've never steam bent a piece of wood in my life.
Erm, so it'll be interesting to see how it goes.
I know the theory.
Peter's first task is to dig a pit in which to steam the wood.
It looks disturbingly like a grave at the moment,
but I think it's just the right size.
It'll contain a fire to generate enough heat
to turn the water into steam.
These stones are going to act as a radiator,
they're going to retain the heat of the fire.
I'm then going to cover them with wet straw and wet grass
into which I will put the pieces of wood that I want to bend.
And the heat from those stones, that'll heat up the moisture
in that grass
and that'll turn into steam and force itself into the wood.
To make my fire I've essentially built a chimney,
and inside that I'm going to put a few oak shavings,
and around it I'll put my...my, er, wood upright.
And the thing about the wood being upright
is it will transport this heat up and just get that fire going.
Relatively more successful than I thought it would be.
A dairy was a vital part of any substantial Tudor farmstead.
Run by the woman of the house,
the profits traditionally belonged to her rather than the household.
Ruth is getting straight to work making her sheep's cheese.
I've just heated the milk over the fire next door,
bringing it up to blood temperature,
and now I'm going to settle it in wooden bowls.
And I'm doing that because I don't want it to cool down too quickly
and I want the wood to insulate, to keep my milk as warm as possible.
Ruth adds rennet to the sheep's milk.
Rennet is an enzyme extracted from a lamb's stomach and it will
coagulate the milk into solid curds and a liquid called whey.
Having stirred it I now want to leave it very still,
and if I've got the right temperature and the right strength of rennet,
over the next sort of half an hour or so it will set into curds and whey.
Seemingly simple in construction,
Tudor dairies were cleverly designed to regulate temperature -
vital, especially in the summer months.
The dairy's attached to the north-facing side of the farmhouse,
so that the main building shields it from the heat of the sun.
Then you'll notice the windows.
You can see that they provide loads of light,
but more importantly they provide ventilation.
I've got a through draught.
The next thing to look at is the floor.
Tiles - these tiles are not glazed, they're porous,
which means that they will hold water in
and that is really important, that's where the clever bit comes in.
Here we go.
Whoosh.
The water sinks into the pores of the tiles and sits there,
and then gradually over the next few hours it quietly evaporates.
And as it evaporates it cools the room,
and with my strong cross draught
between my north and my east windows,
it's drawing that damp air out all the time,
allowing more to rise and fill its space.
This room will sit at between five and six degrees
almost regardless of what the weather does outside.
Oh, my! Heat coming off this is intense.
We're pretty much ready to steam our wood.
Ah, dear.
Either that or we're going to set fire to our straw
and then we'll have to start again.
Peter is soaking his straw in hot water, to ensure it's saturated.
On it goes.
It's this water that will be turned into steam by the heat
of the fire stored in the stones.
There we go.
Oh! Right.
I think I've got to be pretty fast with this.
Can already see the steam coming up,
some sort of...
vision of hell.
There we go, wood in.
Of course this isn't going to catch fire,
cos fire needs three things -
it needs heat which it's got,
it needs fuel, which I'm giving it,
but it needs oxygen,
which I'm about to take away.
This technique dates back to Anglo-Saxon times
but would still have been used in the Tudor period
for the production of ships, weapons and tools.
The reason why I have to work so quickly is
because already you can see the steam coming up
and I've got to keep that steam in there,
cos otherwise the straw will dry out
and there won't be the moisture to steam my wood.
Every inch of the wood's diameter needs an hour of steaming -
for the next two hours all Peter can do is wait.
OK, just...
Ooh, that's a good set!
After sitting for half a day,
Ruth's milk has transformed.
Really pleased. They've all set beautifully.
So now I have to start separating out the whey from the curd.
You can see little bits of it already here,
this very pale greeny, yellow liquid.
That's the whey.
And the next stage now is to cut it and to try
and drain some of that whey out.
In later centuries you'd use, you know, fancy knives to make
perfect cubes of curd.
In 1500 you use these.
Ruth transfers the curds and whey to strain through the cheese mould.
Right, now, if I just pop that up on the draining stool
you should start to see the whey is dripping through.
Once all the whey has drained, Ruth can salt the cheese
and start pressing it.
Hopefully this has had enough steaming time.
Ugh! Up it comes.
Oh, look you can still see a bit of steam there.
That's a good sign.
Right, let's just get it in here.
Yeah, and there it goes.
That is pretty hot actually.
And there we go, we've got our two sides of our shearing bench.
Brilliant.
Tom is also preparing for the upcoming shearing.
He's using a Tudor recipe to make a sheep first aid kit.
What I'm doing is making a salve for our sheep
just in case of nicks or cuts, which stops the parasites
getting in there, prevents things like maggots,
which will obviously harm the sheep
and also affect the quality of the wool.
Normally shearers would use tar to seal any wounds,
but Tom is making a budget alternative.
Quite simple, just... Ah, here we go.
"To make broom salve."
Four ingredients -
broom, which is what I've just been cutting up.
I need suet, I need brine and I need urine.
Right, I'm just going to finish off this bit of broom here.
Most parts of the broom plant have a medicinal use -
for everything from curing a hangover
to clearing the skin of parasites.
But the salve's crucial ingredient is the urine.
And the reason the urine works well, if you leave it for three weeks
it reacts with the air, creating ammonia.
Ammonia is what actually gives our salve
its healing and cleansing properties.
Mix it together.
Clear that out.
Interesting thing, the crafts when they were using things,
they weren't 100% sure why they worked, I mean it was acts of faith.
The mixture will solidify as it cools.
A lot of me in this, and hopefully it works.
So this one now has had a full press on both sides,
it should be ready to come out of its cloth.
Let's have a little look.
In she comes.
What I'm doing now is maturing it, and I...
I need to sort of develop a rind on the cheese,
so that's where the salt comes in.
From today onwards I'll wipe it down each day with brine,
and then tomorrow the next one will join it on the shelf.
At the end of the week there should be five or six
ready for Whitsun market.
It's 19th May, St Dunstan's Day,
and it's time for spring-cleaning.
Ruth has made herself a brush from butcher's broom -
the same plant Tom used to make his salve.
Works really well this broom, this seems to get everything
out of all those little crooks and crannies.
Oh, I might stick a bigger, longer handle in it.
The geese are fattening up nicely for market.
But there's some bad news about the eggs.
I'm having a look around and there's just no evidence
whatsoever of any eggs hatching.
We've got a goose here that's sitting -
but it's over a month now and no sign of any goslings.
And that means we can't actually increase our gaggle.
It's not the end of the world, however,
we want to make money, I mean, this is why we have them,
this is why we're feeding them, looking after them.
Best we can hope for -
sell them for meat and feathers and that's about it.
But there's welcome news elsewhere on the farm.
After a run of fine weather
the sheep are dry and ready for shearing.
In some areas of Tudor England the right time to shear sheep was
determined by astrological signs and the phase of the moon.
Good girls, come on, nice and steady.
Timing was crucial.
Shear too early and the sheep might die of cold,
shear too late and maggots would grow
in their overgrown hind parts.
It's not going to be easy, is it?
Oh, right, let's get this shearing bench together.
Your Tudor flat pack. My Tudor flat pack.
It's very impressive, actually.
Right. Ah, look, made to measure, almost.
Specialist shearers were often brought in to help get the job done.
That's it.
Brilliant, right you go and get the hurdle.
Ed Noble and Doug Winkfield have come to give Peter and Tom a hand.
You've got the front end. Got the front end.
Ready one, two, three, up. And she's down.
It's a lovely rich fleece
and hopefully your shearing bench will be up to the mark.
HE LAUGHS
Monastic flocks were sheared using a production line system.
First, the most experienced shearers removed the best wool.
And that is really this, the flanks.
You don't want to go too high to the head
and you don't want this belly wool.
The other team will get that off.
The second, less skilled team then remove the rest of the fleece.
Today Tom is trying his luck with the best wool.
You're right-handed, aren't you? So you want your left hand
and your left arm just to pull the skin tight,
and try and make the blades, you want to kiss the skin.
Remember this is your high-value wool,
you want as much of it as possible.
And remember you're trying to do it all in one smooth motion.
Some of it's come off really easily. Yes.
The blades go right through.
And if you get it right, you will feel it almost fly through the wool.
That's it. Is that far enough?
You're probably going just a little high.
Can you see you're a bit higher than me?
Remember, this is high value wool. You want as much of it as possible.
Just get down as close to the skin as you can.
You're doing really well. LAUGHS
No, you are, really.
Oh, one slight cut here.
I'm going to apply some salve to cover that up.
Obviously we don't want maggots and stuff getting in, do we?
No, that's it. Brilliant.
Right, well, I think we're about done on this side. Shall we turn her?
That sounds interesting.
And if you bring her up here,
I'll have a go at shearing a bit of her sat down.
If you get that other leg, that's it,
on to her back to start with, one, two, three.
And then over she goes.
Still lively, isn't she? Yes. Yes.
Shearing benches were designed to protect the wool,
but also to save the shepherd's back while shearing hundreds of sheep.
Only going out of fashion
with the advent of machine clippers in the 19th century.
Actually, this is quite comfy.
It's well made.
It's quite sturdy, isn't it? Yeah.
It's coming off quite well.
This method of shearing was the first stage of quality control -
keeping the good wool separate from the scraps.
There you go, girl.
Let's grab another one.
Why not?
Sheep in Tudor England were not yet organised into breeds.
So wool buyers used a system of classification
based on the quality of the wool - its colour, length and coarseness.
Claire is helping Ruth select the best wool to be sold.
Not going to be doing a perfect job as a shearer,
there'll be bits of field, there'll be bits of manure or dung.
Yes, a bit like that.
That would be hard to pull apart nicely. Get rid of it!
Right, I'm getting rid of it.
The quality of fleece in the wool trade varied enormously.
Tudor tenant farmers had a reputation for producing
inferior wool, and some merchants even refused to accept fleeces
that weren't farmed directly by the monastery.
Why then is it that the monasteries have this reputation for really good wool
and tenant farmers have a reputation for much poorer wool?
Money.
Money! If you own the land, you'll put your sheep on the best bits.
If you have lots and lots and lots of sheep you can choose
from a huge number for good genetic stock, good breeding stock.
If we're going to send this off to the monastery, we have to select
only the VERY best of our wool in order to meet that quality bar.
Now the wool just needs to be weighed for the farm's records.
OK. So just move it along.
No, that's still a lot heavier, that side.
Is that level? Yeah, it looks about level.
So that's just a smidgen over 20lbs.
So for ten fleeces... Very good.
That's not bad, is it? They're pretty good fleeces, then.
Any wool not good enough for the monastery
is now Ruth's to make cloth for the home.
Peter and Tom are ready to take their wool to the monastery.
As dominant players in the industry,
the monasteries had strong relationships with the merchants
and the boys will need to strike a good deal.
1500 was a good time to be a wool producer.
Under Henry VII, the value of sterling had fallen,
meaning British goods were now cheaper to buy in Europe
and the cloth trade was expanding.
Not only was English wool fine,
it also grew longer than on European sheep,
a result of better nutrition from English pastures.
Professor James Clark and wool grader Richard Martin
will judge its quality.
If it was good enough
it would have been sold along with the Abbey's wool to the merchant.
What do we actually think about this wool?
Well, you're a big chap, so I think it's absolutely fantastic!
When you look at some wool like this,
you could judge some of it by just looking at it.
You're looking for wool which is fairly even-coloured,
and then if you feel the wool,
there's all sorts of things you can tell about the quality.
If you sort of spin a bit of yarn in your hand
and break it next to your ear and it goes "ping",
then the fibres are strong and the yarn will be strong.
But if it pulls apart, the chances are there's weakness in the fibre.
What would happen to it now?
The monastery of course is going to look after its own interest and they are concerned
to manage their brand image.
They want to collaborate with their tenants
but only if they hold to that quality threshold.
If so, then we will include it in the deal we do with the merchant.
And if you produce something that is substandard we certainly will overlook you.
We could end up with absolutely nothing, all that work? Yeah.
With wool prices fluctuating constantly,
farmers would often delay selling,
gambling on when they would get the best price.
Assuming I will pass the test,
are we likely to see any money at the end of the day?
Er, well, don't hold your breath. LAUGHTER
It's going to take a while.
We deal with the middleman,
the middleman brokers a deal with the merchant,
the merchant then sells the wool on the European market
and really it's only when that sale is concluded
that money begins to pass back down the chain to the producer.
You're putting your faith in the whole deal coming off.
I guess the question is, are you going to buy our wool?
I am going to recommend
that we put this into our brand wool, as James says.
One thing I didn't think was that I was going to go home empty-handed.
Well, as we say in the monastery, you have to have faith. LAUGHTER
For the time being!
Faith wasn't just part of business transactions.
Religion was a thread that ran through everyday life.
Contributions to the church on the main holy days of the year
were obligatory, and took many forms.
It's just coming up to the Feast of Pentecost, or Whitsun,
one of the many religious festivals that punctuated the year.
And part of the celebrations, a live dove is released in the church
or in some parishes, a mechanical dove,
and I get this year's star prize of making a mechanical dove!
Ruth is using a mixture of soft cheese and lime
to fix the feathers to her dove.
The religious calendar of course was THE calendar.
That was the way that people kept track of time -
knowing when to plant a crop, when to re-pit.
Also knowing things like when you've got a meeting coming up, you'd say,
you know, I'll meet you the day after St Agnes' Day.
All sorts of ordinary practical things were linked and tied
and counted by the religious rhythm of life.
GEESE HONK
Come on!
In preparation for the upcoming Whitsun market,
the boys have been nurturing their flock of geese.
I reckon he's the gander. Oh!
It's good exercise for us! Give me a sheep any day!
In the Tudor period, geese would have been driven many miles
to be sold, and required protection for their feet.
GOOSE SQUAWKS Good job. Good job.
Now these feet, they're going to have to walk long distances.
These feet are designed for swimming, aren't they?
Now, that beak's designed for pecking. Yeah!
I appreciate you holding that.
Many Tudor farmers would have used tar and sand
to form a hard coating on the feet
but some used cloth or leather boots.
Peter and Tom are testing out their own version.
There, what do you think? Mmm.
Doesn't look convinced. I'm not overly convinced.
Let's pull that tight, and tie that on behind.
I'll tell you what, her heart isn't hammering or anything like that.
She's perfectly calm.
That one seems pretty secure. Looking pretty good.
Give her a go? Yeah, stand to one side in case she's...
Oh, boots off. The other one's all right.
That one's on. No, it's not.
Back to the drawing board.
In 1500, manufacturing was the growth sector of England's economy.
And at its centre was cloth.
Before the Tudor period, England's main wool export was raw fleece.
But competition from Europe meant
demand for English fleeces had fallen.
However, the demand for woollen cloth made in England was growing.
English producers made some of the finest woollen fabrics,
which commanded high prices on the Continent.
By the mid 1500s, cloth exports topped £1.5 million a year.
The first process is to card it.
I mean, really, it's a sort of cleaning process.
Cleaning and organising the fibres.
As a well-off farmer, Ruth would not have sold cloth,
but she is processing her wool in the same way
as commercial producers, to make cloth for the farmhouse.
I think you can see that already it is starting to look more like soft, fluffy wool.
Once the wool is prepared, it's time to spin.
Now, some people call this a great wheel, cos it's big,
and others call it a walking wheel
because you spend such a lot of time walking backwards and forwards.
Indeed, somebody once estimated that it could be
about 30 miles a day, a really good spinner walked.
I'm not quite up to those standards. So a really good spinster,
and that, of course, is the female form of somebody who spins,
and they were mostly unmarried girls, so you can see why it was
that the word spinster came to mean an unmarried girl
as well as somebody who spins.
Give the wheel one flick and walk backwards
controlling the fibres with one hand.
15 maybe even 20 feet before,
by moving her arm round and changing direction,
giving another flick,
the same motion wound the thread onto the spindle.
When you look at the textiles that were actually produced
during this period, on this technology, it just blows your mind.
There are threads produced by hand like this
that rival anything any modern machine can achieve.
Wool was not the only source of revenue
for wealthy Tudor farmers,
who constantly explored other ways to make money.
In 1496, Henry VII was preparing to go to battle with Scotland,
and needed iron for the campaign.
He invested in a revolutionary new method for producing iron,
the blast furnace.
The results were so impressive
that Tudor farmers began building their own furnaces,
a development encouraged by commercially-minded monasteries.
This is new technology. This is the new way to make iron.
A half-size replica blast furnace
has been built at the Rural Life Centre in Surrey.
Expert Jeremy Hodgkinson is showing Tom and Peter its possibilities.
The charcoal is fed in from top of the furnace, as is the iron ore
and it slowly descends down through the furnace over the course of time,
and as it goes down it melts, held in the bottom of the furnace
in a liquid form, and then you'll allow it to run out into a mould.
Right.
Right. Have a feel.
Pretty solid!
About every 12 hours, you produce a length of iron
probably ten feet long.
Weighing about half a ton.
Wow. That's huge!
It is. Very heavy. It is very heavy!
The blast furnace produced the intense heat necessary
to create liquid iron, which was easier to purify.
To generate such heat required oxygen provided by the bellows.
The key to the bellows of course is water power,
because what is powering those bellows is a water wheel,
so that they'll pump that blast of air into the furnace.
Hence it's a blast furnace. It's the blast furnace, yes.
Am I right in thinking that these things ran for months at a time?
Yes. They'd go into blast, they'd blow them in as they would say,
blow them in after the harvest, so once your labour force is available.
Yeah. And then you'd work the iron through the winter
because then you've got a more reliable water supply.
Once the iron was produced,
it was re-melted in a refinery
and any impurities hammered out.
What you get eventually is this, which is bar iron, suitable
for blacksmiths to make into objects and ironmongers to sell.
Here's a couple of pieces you can take back to the farm.
I'll take this one, it's like me, it's broad and flat,
where as that one is... Thick! Square and thick!
LAUGHTER
Thank you very much!
OK, good to see you. Pleasure. Thank you.
What are we going to make?
This new, plentiful source of stronger,
better quality iron opened up a world of possibilities.
Without the blast furnace
the Industrial Revolution would not have been possible.
In the rapidly expanding cloth industry,
loom technology had also been mastered by 1500.
With a sharp eye for business the monasteries rented out
commercial premises, reaping the financial rewards
of other people's enterprise, including cloth production.
Ruth has brought her wool to weaver Diane Wood.
The first job is to set up the loom, a craft in its own right.
I mean, we're putting all that yarn that we produced onto the loom,
and we start with each thread at that end,
and they all have to pass through these here, these shafts.
The strings are called heddles.
They have got two important knots here in the centre,
and the knots create a lovely little eye,
through which every thread goes
and the threads go one thread through one heddle.
So if we could take that thread there, that comes through to this.
That comes through shaft number one.
The threads are passed through either the first or second shaft,
alternating across the loom.
Pull it through the eye there. That's it.
Not many to go, but still let's get them right.
Once all the threads have been passed through the heddles,
they must go through a comb structure called a reed.
The reed is designed to keep the threads evenly spaced.
We have something like 600 threads here.
We need to keep them all under control
and that's what this stage of processes are,
putting order into the threads.
Otherwise we'd just have a giant knot.
You'd have a terrible mess on your hands.
The threads are tied to a beam at the front of the loom,
known as the cloth beam.
I'll just check that the tension is even all the way across.
I suppose this only comes with practice, getting the feel.
It's the feel, it's in your fingertips, yes, yes.
It is very technical, isn't it? Tiny subtle changes
make the difference between success and failure. Indeed they do.
Rods are inserted to spread the threads away from the cloth beam.
These threads are known as the warp.
The ones that Diane will weave, adjacent to them, are called the weft.
So you press down on one of the pedals
and one of the shafts comes up and the other one comes down.
So now we've got half of our threads going up,
half of our threads going down and a gap between the two.
The gap's called the shed. The shed.
And that's where we pass the shuttle.
It's the first thread through and we pull the beater,
and beat the first weft into place.
And then you press the other pedal and the other shaft comes up.
So now all the threads that were down are now up
and all the threads that were up are now down. That's it.
And there we have weaving.
That is it, isn't it? It is.
In some ways this is a really simple piece of technology.
In other ways it's really quite subtle and complex,
but whichever way you look at it, it hasn't actually changed that much.
Yes, the only difference is it works a little bit faster.
It's just to do with speed.
With the cloth finished, Ruth needs to take it to the monastic mill
for a finishing process known as fulling.
The monasteries had invested heavily in water mill technology,
and for cloth production, the fulling mill represents
the first transition from a domestic craft to a factory industry.
Miller Dowey Jones is in charge of operating the machinery.
So this needs fulling. What exactly is it that fulling does?
What would happen now, if we're to go outside and hold this to the light
you'd see the light coming through the cloth.
After fulling, what happens, the cloth will tighten down
and there'll be no light coming through and it fats it up, gives a nice, soft effect to it.
Right. So it changes something that looks almost like sacking
into something that looks like this.
Yes. Probably over time, yeah, will change into that.
And we do it by bashing it with hammers?
These two hammers here will do the work for us.
Just make sure we don't get our hands caught!
It's like this effect, up and down.
It'll be quite noisy, so it's quiet at the moment.
When the water is running through and the hammer's going,
it'll be quite noisy.
A water wheel is used to power the stocks.
Ruth has soaked her cloth in stale urine.
Full of ammonium salts, the urine will clean and whiten the cloth.
OK. Ready?
Out.
Woo!
WATER GUSHES
MACHINE CLATTERS
Quite noisy! Wow!
It's a really violent process, isn't it? It is.
I mean, as somebody who put so much work into spinning
and weaving that cloth, this is a bit terrifying, frankly!
It is a bit, but the end results will be nice. It's worth the effort.
But using the fulling mill didn't come free.
The monastery would have charged its tenants.
As a tenant of the monasteries, we were required to use their mill.
They had something of a monopoly.
If we want our cloths fulled,
we have to bring it to the monastic mill.
Mills, therefore, were a really important source of income
for the monasteries.
It's another way, I suppose, of taxing your tenants.
For centuries, fulling was the only mechanised part of cloth production.
Wool would go on being carded and spun by hand until the 18th century.
SHE LAUGHS
Look how it's changed!
Look!
It's all gone fluffy! It's all knitted up together.
Needs a bit longer yet, but we're definitely getting somewhere.
The fulling will take six hours to complete.
For the final stage of Ruth's cloth production,
Peter is putting the iron from the blast furnace to good use,
by making tenterhooks.
The hooks are attached to a frame
for the fulled cloth to be stretched across.
You stretch it out on the tenterhooks,
get it under tension, which is obviously where, you know,
why we say somebody's on tenterhooks
if they're feeling really highly strung.
Because that's exactly what I'm going to do to the cloth.
Stretching the cloth after fulling
is one of the most important parts of the manufacturing process.
If you don't stretch it, you end up with a sort of rumpled effect
on the cloth. It never lies flat, it always sort of lies puckered.
You also find that you can't abide by the law.
Legally, if you're going to sell the cloth you've got to be able
to produce a perfect product, a consistent product.
So if your cloth shrank too much, it would be unsaleable
unless you could stretch it back out
to the prescribed legal length and legal width.
The cloth is stretched under the weight of rocks.
Nice and taut, and when it's dry it'll have set square.
It's Whitsun morning. The feast commemorating
the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Disciples.
The team are attending church to see Ruth's mechanical dove,
a biblical symbol of the Holy Spirit, take flight.
Yep, I've seen it all.
The cloth is finished.
A chest of cloth like this
represents a serious amount of wealth,
as, to be honest, do the clothes I'm stood up in.
Ruth has loaded up her cheese.
The boys have finally got the shoes on their geese,
and they're off to Whitsun market.
Come on. Come on!
Let's herd you to market.
LIVELY MEDIEVAL MUSIC
Attended by the whole community,
the market was one of the few times in the year
when strict trade regulations were lifted,
and ordinary farmers, rather than merchants, could sell their wares.
Be glad to get rid of these guys.
I know. I'm sick of them.
They're so vicious, aren't they? Just aggression, isn't it?
Geese for sale, anyone want a goose?
Yes, I'm interested in the geese. I was going to say, if you,
if you don't want a whole goose, we've got parts of geese!
Processed dairy products, cheese and butter,
were often traded across considerable distances.
Ruth's cheese might even have found its way to the markets of London.
With the geese sold,
the boys are off to see what their profits can buy them in the market.
The Tudor era saw the world begin to open up.
Advances in shipbuilding meant people were sailing further
and trade routes to the Middle East
brought new and exotic products to England.
All this sort of stuff we take for granted.
It would have been new and exciting in Tudor England.
And a most wonderful luxury.
Not many people have seen these, lemons,
and don't know what to do with them.
Well, I suppose England's wealth was built on the wool trade
and this is competition coming in right here.
Well, if it brings things like this in, a bit of flavour,
something we're not used to, I think it's very exciting. Yeah.
Hi, Ruth. Hi, Ruth. Oh, hello.
How's your cheese?
I've only got a little bit left. That's fantastic!
You sounds like you've got a bit of time for a bit of fun, a bit of Morris dancing.
A bit of ale. Bit of ale, bit of music. A bit more ale.
Let's go. HE LAUGHS
Folklore historian Professor Ronald Hutton
has come to join the festivities.
Whitsun, around 1500, is party time, for two reasons.
The first is it's a gap in agriculture.
You've done your ploughing and your sowing and your weeding, and there's
a bit of a space in which you can relax and actually have some fun.
Other reason is, it's warming up!
THEY LAUGH Yes!
Around about 1500, ordinary people have a serious shortage of
indoor spaces, which are warm, where they can gather in large numbers.
The church is usually off limits
because it's a sacred building, so you can't party in it.
But come Whitsun, usually England's warm enough to be able to get outside
and in the open spaces, you can have as many people as you like.
The Maypole was a central feature of Whitsun celebrations.
Decorated with fresh foliage, it symbolised growth and new life,
particularly significant in agricultural communities.
But while young people still danced in this traditional way,
there was also a new craze sweeping the country.
The Morris Dance is really, really hot and new
and exciting, round about 1500.
It's a courtly dance
and it's leaking out into the villages around the royal palaces.
In the original courtly form,
it was an elaborate game by which strapping young men competed
to show how far they could leap in the air,
to dance with and woo a lady.
RUTH LAUGHS
Quite fashionable then. Very, very much so. Cutting edge.
By Tudor times, Whitsun had become one of
the most popular feasts of the year, where people let their hair down,
indulging in revelry and merry-making.
The Church, initially, was rather worried about this development,
because alcohol plus crowds
equals misbehaviour.
But then it learned how to cash in.
So the Church ale was invented, the Whitsun ale, which was this
wonderful arrangement by people in the village would provide
the raw materials for the food and drink, and then the villagers,
when all this was ready, would pay an entrance fee,
and the Church would take the profits to supply its parish needs
for the rest of the year, and everybody was happy
and it worked like an absolute dream.
This complete intertwining of social life and religious life
and economic life, is so typical of this period, isn't it?
Everything has a religious element to it,
it's sort of almost like the air you breathe.
Yeah, and pretty free of tension. On the whole it'd got it right.
They'd created a perfect medieval society.
In many ways, too perfect.
People began to worry there might be
something wrong in the middle of all this. RUTH LAUGHS
I mean, you sleep on that for a bit, you get a reformation. Yes!
So should enjoy the calm now before the storm begins?
Well, this is Merrie England, for heaven's sake, so to speak.
Let's enjoy it!
THEY LAUGH
Ha-ha! Yes!
Next time on Tudor Monastery Farm,
the team learn about the rhythm of life.
Little ones are ready to go, get the boar in,
get them pregnant, carry on.
What sustained people.
Looking forward to this, going to be a proper treat. That is fantastic, that.
And how to celebrate summer.
RUTH GIGGLES MANICALLY
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd