Medieval England's Top 5 Sites

Here on Gone Medieval we love to share the historical nuggets you won't commonly find. We are the insider's guide to Medieval times. and today Matt Lewis is taken on a whistle-stop tour of Medieval England by Julian Humphrys, to explore five noteworthy locations that might just be round the corner from your campsite or ferry stop this summer. From Viking raids and the Wars of the Roses to medieval architecture and the defense strategies of Dover, this episode is packed with intriguing stories and insights, offering valuable tips for those planning a historical day out, or just taking a day trip in your mind. MORE Rise of British Castles https://open.spotify.com/episode/3KTKsTMaiamMSAoxLqCKup 1217: The year that forged England https://open.spotify.com/episode/68DvpSKUnxPybL8T4ilgtZ Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis It was edited by Amy Haddow, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:01Matt Lewis?

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• 1:53Matt Lewis?

  Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots, and murders to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.

• 2:33Matt Lewis?

  Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. Here in the Gone Medieval Dungeon, we often think about going for a day out, seeing a tree, tasting fresh air, hearing the sea, maybe even the birds. They say that one day, we might be able to, but for now, there's episodes to make. So we thought the next best thing for us, which might be useful if you're wondering where to go for a day out, was an episode about some medieval sites in England that you might like to visit. When I think of tour guides for historical sites, the name that springs to my mind is Julian Humphrys. I've known Julian for quite a while now. He has a knack of bringing any place that you visit with him to life all around you.

• 3:17Matt Lewis?

  If you ever have the opportunity to go on a trip guided by Julian, I'd say do it. So I asked Julian to think of five sites in England that he'd like to recommend to you. Places you might be nearby on holiday and could have a day trip to. He's going to take us to Lindisfarne, Holy Island, to the site of the Battle of Tauton, to Chelmsford, to Southampton, and to Dover Castle, to reveal some of the medieval jewels that you can seek out, and to offer us some tips to keep the kids busy along the way, too. If this goes down well, we'd like to visit other countries as well. So let us know what you think of this episode and where you'd like us to do a little tour guide to next.

• 3:59Matt Lewis?

  Anyway, welcome to Gone Medieval, Julian. It's fantastic to finally have you here. How have you evaded me for so long?

• 4:04Speaker 03

  I really don't know. Our paths cross quite a lot, but we've never done anything like this before, so I'm looking forward to it.

• 4:10Matt Lewis?

  Absolutely. It's because you keep threatening to talk about Richard III if you come on, don't you see? We don't necessarily see eye to eye on that subject, but we're going to leave that alone. Because we're here to talk about a historical kind of quick trip around England. So if people are going on holiday somewhere, they're up in the North East or they're down on the South Coast and they're looking for a day to go visit a medieval site, where might they be able to go? So you've picked out some places for us, and the first one that we're going to talk about takes us up to the far North East, just off the coast of Northumbria, and to Lindisfarne. So what is so special about Lindisfarne? Why is this a historical site that people should visit?

• 4:46Speaker 03

  Well, if ever you have a sense of place, I think it has to be at Lindisfarne, and it was ever thus really. So historically, it's a wonderful place to visit. But the landscape and the surroundings are also wonderful as well. So it's just off the A1. And to get to it, you go on rather exciting drive, to be honest. You have to leave the A1 and then drive along this causeway which leads over onto this tidal island. Very important to get the timing right. There are warning signs there and pictures of people's Range Rovers who thought that they could beat the tide. Well, you can't. So you go on to this tidal island and you do get a sense, even when it's crowded there,

• 5:29Speaker 03

  and it can be at times, of the isolation that was there in the sort of Middle Ages, because it was a very important religious site. And it's very much tied up with the conversion of the North East to Christianity. Firstly by Saint Aidan, who was called over from Iona by Saint or King Oswald to convert the locals to Christianity. And especially by Saint Cuthbert, who, as I'm sure you know, was one of our number one saints for a very long time, and he still is in the in the North East. You only have to sort of Google anything up there and the number of Saint Cuthbert restaurants, tea rooms, churches that there are. There are vast numbers there.

• 6:12Speaker 03

  And really Lindisfarne was the seat of North Eastern religion. So it's where Saint Aidan founded a religious house. And then later it's where Saint Cuthbert became the prior there and also the Bishop of Lindisfarne. And he was a major influence in the area, partly in bringing about the introduction of the findings of the Synod of Whitby. You remember that thing where they decided whether the church should follow the rule of Rome or the Irish model of Christianity. And Saint Cuthbert brought about the latter there. And it became a really major spiritual powerhouse, really, and a very much a cultural powerhouse as well. They had a wonderful scriptorium there

• 6:57Speaker 03

  and had the Lindisfarne gospels were written there. And when Saint Cuthbert died, he was canonised. It helped by the fact that when they moved his body after 10 years, it had been Found to be incorrupt and we all know.

• 7:12Matt Lewis?

  Funny how that happens sometimes, isn't it?

• 7:13Speaker 03

  We all know that if you're incorrupt, your body's incorrupt. You must be a saint, mustn't you? Well, anyway, Cuthbert was. And it became a major pilgrimage centre. And so really, from, you know, the, the, the seventh century onwards, you've got people going to, to Lindisfarne. So when you go there, you're sort of following in the footsteps of those early pilgrims. Unfortunately, it's, it got some unwelcome visitors in seven nine three in the form of the Vikings, who must have known about Lindisfarne. I mean, it was a major European centre. And of course, they thought, well, here's an opportunity. And they attacked it for the first time in seven nine three and they kept coming back.

• 7:53Matt Lewis?

  Why wouldn't you? I mean, it, it's so easy, isn't it? They must have thought the Christians were so stupid that they put all of their wealthy monasteries full of gold and silver in the hands of people who don't know how to use a sword, have no intention of defending themselves. You could just kind of walk in and take it.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, e- easy pickings. And it must have been a bit upsetting for the Christians as well, because their saints, you know, St Cuthbert and God didn't defend them. So what's gone wrong in that way? Well, you, you're absolutely right. And, and in the end, actually, the monks of Lindisfarne decided to move the body of St Cuthbert, who was there, not in a, it, it wasn't like an overnight thing where they sneaked off. It was a planned move. And for over a century, they travelled over the, the north of England to places like, and Scotland is as it is now, Melrose, Chesterley Street and various other places, until eventually they settled at Durham. And that became the shrine of St Cuthbert and it still is today. But they never forgot the link with Lindisfarne, which gave them, I think, a, a certain amount

• 8:53Speaker 03

  of spiritual clout, really, that they had the, the remains of this saint that was so important in the area. And so they wanted to make that link. And so if you go to Lindisfarne today, you go to the remains of the priory there. It's, it's in ruins, but nevertheless, it's a very evocative place. And the style of the building there, for example, the carvings on the great columns that held up the nave roof are very similar to those at Durham. So what they're trying to do there basically is to is to make that that link with Durham. And indeed, it was monks from Durham that went up to to Lindisfarne. You go there now and you go into that that priory and the views are spectacular in all directions.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  But the main reason for that was that after the dissolution of the monasteries, a lot of the walls were taken down. But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to think what it must have been like and the sheer sort of spiritual excitement of going on the spot where, to misuse a poem, where these feet in ancient times walked, actually. You know, and and it's a strange priory really, and if you look carefully, you can get a sense of where it was and how it's affected where it was built and why it was built, because it's a bit of a dangerous place. Because A, you've got potential raiders, but also just up the road, you've got our friends, the Scots. Consequently, you know, it's a place that in many ways was a bit vulnerable.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  And so if you look, for example, at the west end of the priory church, it's got crossbow loops in it. Not many churches have got crossbow loops. And the outer courtyard of the castle has a barbican, a fortified gate has the portcullis and what have you. So, you know, you you've got that sort of spiritual sense there, but also you can see that it was a bit of a dangerous place in which to live and worship. But, you know, that's the priory and that's at the centre of the island. But you can really get out and about and it's very, very easy there, I think, to get a sort of sense of the solitude that somebody likes and Cuthbert wanted there, because although he was bishop, he was very much a hermit at heart.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  And just off the coastline there of the island, there's a tiny little tidal island called St Cuthbert's Isle, after him, of course. And it said that he used to live there quite a lot at the time and it was just within hearing of the people on the island. So if they needed a decision, you know, oh, Cuthbert, what should we do? And he could shout back in that way. And that's a lovely, that little beach there that is just quite near to where the priory is. It's called St Cuthbert's Beach and it's a lovely place to sit and and just sort of contemplate life, the universe and everything. And it's not totally quiet because you sit there and you get this baying noise, this mooing noise. And first of all, you think, what's that? You know, is that the the winds?

• 11:38Speaker 03

  But in fact, what it is, is this enormous colony of seals. That hangs out at Lindisfarne and on the Farne Islands outside and they beach at low tides and they don't half make a racket.

• 11:50Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, we went to Lindisfarne to do a little bit of filming and we did go onto St Cuthbert's Island and there were, I was gonna say, there was loads of seal that you can see out there, but it is somewhere that you can stand and get that real sense of peace and, and you're not far from the civilisation on the island, but, and you can see Bambara Castle in the distance, you're not far from places, but it feels remote.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Hundred percent, hundred percent. I couldn't agree more and I always make a beeline for there. And if you've got kids that need to be entertained, they have this thing up there that are called St Cuthbert's beads. Now, what they are actually are crinoids, which is some kind of medieval fossil. They're like miniature polo mints really, and they can be found on the beach there. And the story is, of course, they're from St Cuthbert's Rosary. And you can keep children quiet for quite a long time, hunting for those beads on that beach. I have to say, in 60 odd years, I've never found one, but I do know other people that have. So maybe I need to pray to St Cuthbert a little bit more. But it's interesting about the, about the seals, because St Cuthbert, I think he's a bit like St Francis

• 12:57Speaker 03

  in this. He was, he was well into wildlife. And, you know, there are stories about animals helping him and what have you. And he certainly liked either ducks. But why particularly either ducks, I don't know, but he did. And up in, in the area, they're known as St Cuthbert ducks, or Cuddy ducks, and that's after him. So a really superb place to go and visit. And there are great walks as well. Yeah, I, you probably did this, but you can walk along the coastline away from the priory towards the castle at Lindisfarne. Now, that isn't a medieval castle. It is in fact a Tudor gum platform that at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th, the editor of Country Life, a guy called William Hudson,

• 13:42Speaker 03

  got Luchins, the architect, to turn into a, a kind of holiday castle for him. And he also got Gertrude Jekyll, the gardener, to go up there and do a sort of walled garden. But walking out to that, you know, again, wonderful sense of isolation and quite stunning views out to the Farne Islands where St Cuthbert died, in fact.

• 14:02Matt Lewis?

  We could spend all day, we could spend this entire episode on Lindisfarne, but we need to maybe move on to our next spot. And this, I mean, apart from the fact that we've talked about a Viking raid, this is a little bit of a change of pace from life on Lindisfarne, because we're going to talk about Tauton Battlefield, which takes us not too far away from York, puts us in the Wars of the Roses. Why do you think people should go and visit this battlefield site?

• 14:25Speaker 03

  I think it's one of the most evocative battlefields that we have, and I'm sure you'd agree, I bet you've been there quite a few times. If you're interested in this period, you have to go there, don't you?

• 14:35Matt Lewis?

  There's a Battlefield Society that will do tours there. We did a bit of filming up there. There's a couple of YouTube videos you can watch that we did on it. But yeah, it's an incredible place, isn't it?

• 14:42Speaker 03

  I think it is. I don't know if it's because I know what happened there, but I do get that kind of tingle down my spine when I stand in the middle of the action. I think the thing about Tauton is that, A, it was quite a significant battle. I personally don't think it was as large as some people say, or as bloody as some people say. You know, people used to say that 28,000 people were killed there, but probably it's more like 2,800 in my mind. But even so, 2,800 people is 2,800 too many, isn't it? So you can't help but be moved by the thought of what happened at Tauton. But it's a battlefield that it's quite easy to work out what happened or imagine what happened, because essentially

• 15:26Speaker 03

  it's a plain with a little valley in the middle of it, which rises up above on one side, low ground that was once was boggy, and on the other side, a stream called the Cock Beck. The lance goes very down, steeply down to it. So in between those two features, you've got this raised plain where the fighting took place. And it's where the forces of Edward of March, Edward IV, defeated the Lancastrians ostensibly under Henry VI, but more likely under the Duke of Somerset. And in doing so, they essentially, I think, destroyed the Lancastrian cause virtually for good, in my opinion. They never really managed, I don't think, after that, to manage to challenge on their own without assistance

• 16:11Speaker 03

  from Sconce or Gyorkis, but you know, in 1470.

• 16:15Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. So this is kind of 1461. This is, this title is one of the climaxes of the Wars of the Roses, isn't it? It is a moment when, even if the numbers... Particularly the numbers of casualties are exaggerated. It is a seismic clash in determining the future politics of of England. And it's one of those moments as well where lots of the sources talk about, you know, brothers were fighting brothers and fathers are fighting sons. It's that real sense of of England is is chewing on its own guts here.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely. And it it clearly was a seismic change. It was crushing victory for York. And you can stand on the spot and you can sort of work out where things happened. It has to be said that the number of contemporary sources for the battle are scanty. And many of them are very brief. And I think they're more importantly interested, as you say, there in what Towantum meant. They're more interested in what it meant than actually saying exactly what happened. But it's pretty clear that the battle was very hard fought. It may have have lasted all day and been a running fight from a little bit further south. But very hard fought. And it seems to have been won because York's reinforcements arrived later on in the day under the Duke of Norfolk.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  And they crashed into the flank of this Lancastrian force and forced them back. And many of them were forced down the steep slopes of that plain, down into where the Cock Beck, the the river is. And some of the accounts claim that, you know, that ran red with blood. It may well have done so, actually. And that dead men formed a bridge for the living as they fled. Further evidence of what happened there was that right in the middle of the battlefield, there's been archaeological work and arrowheads have been found there. And also sort of teeth and little bits of bone. I think, well, what's all that about? Well, it clearly was actually a burial pit. And those bodies had been moved to be reburied elsewhere. And, you know, bits have been left behind.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  So the arrows that were found at Towantum there were probably in people. Which in itself is a, it basically step back and think, and then in Tarrington itself, there is a hall, and when they were doing work on that hall, maybe 20 years ago now, they were doing some digging and they found the remains of about 40 skeletons there, all of whom had died violently with head wounds, et cetera. And it has told us a lot, I think, about the brutality of medieval warfare, thinking they're only the wounds to the bones, presumably people had soft tissue wounds as well. And if you've had enough of all of that, there's an ace pub just around the corner, a place called Lead, and it's called The Crooked Billet, which actually was the literary badge of the Olds of Warwick. It's a ragged staff,

• 18:56Speaker 03

  actually, and they do some of the finest Yorkshire puddings in the county.

• 19:02Matt Lewis?

  I had a filled Yorkshire pudding there and it was epic. It's huge.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then opposite, you go over the River Cock and you go up to this beautiful little chapel, which is called Lead Chapel. And once, I think there was some kind of village around it, you can see the humps and bumps in the fields. Now there's just the chapel that stands alone. It's looked after by the church's conservation trust. You think it's locked, but you have to have the courage to stick your finger into the keyhole and raise it and hope that there's nothing vicious on the other side. Then you get in there and it's a wonderful, really, I suppose maybe 14th century chapel, which may well have had troops cabs around it prior to the battle or maybe afterwards. So a good place, I think, to end or start your visit there.

• 19:49Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I quite like Julian's guide to breaking into churches as well. Just stick your finger in the keyhole and see what happens. If nothing bites, you can probably go in.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  And it's quite, not recommended to everybody.

• 20:00Matt Lewis?

  It's quite a well signposted battlefield as well, isn't it? You can navigate it on your own using the boards that will kind of walk you through the flow of the battle and you can follow the rise and fall of the landscape with the rise and fall of the battle.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  Yes, you can. And I should have mentioned that the Tarrington Battlefield Society, which I'm a member, and they've done brilliant work over the years, have got these paths that lead around the battlefield. And you can, as you say, go to the key spots around the battle and they've got really good information boards that tell you, as you say, what happened there. One thing you've got to be careful about at Tarrington is that there's a lot of magnesium limestone there and it crops up in the ground quite unexpectedly. So if you don't look where you're going, you literally can fall at Tarrington.

• 20:45Matt Lewis?

  Oh dear, no one wants to do that.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  No, they don't.

• 20:47Matt Lewis?

  And I guess, Tauton, it's a, it's hard to say it's a good day out, isn't it? Because when you're there, you can't help but, but see these kind of, these ghosts of the people that were making their way through that landscape. You can follow it down to where the Cockbeck is and imagine people being chased to their death down there. But, you know, you can see York from parts of the battlefield, can't you? So if you're in York and at a loose end, it's not that far away to get out there and have a walk in the countryside and around a genuine Wars of the Roses battlefield.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  Absolutely, it's only about 20 minutes from York and even less from Tagcaster. So it is well worth a visit. And you're so right, I mean, it is said that the battle was fought in a snowstorm. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but it would have been pretty cold. And I always feel a bit guilty going there on a nice summer's day with a picnic, really. You feel somehow it's not appropriate. But whatever the weather, it's well worth a visit.

• 21:36Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. And we're, we're sort of staying with the Wars of the Roses a little bit for our, our next visit, which takes us a little bit further south, not too far from my neck of the woods. We're going to go and visit Chelmsford, which has Chelmsford Town, Chelmsford Abbey, and it also has a Wars of the Roses battlefield, so another battlefield that you can, you can visit. So why is Chelmsford an important medieval site?

• 22:00Speaker 03

  Well, I think it's got a bit of everything, really. As you rightly say, you know, so you've got a town with quite a substantial number of late medieval Tudor buildings, a lot of them of the, of the half timberd variety. You've got a superb abbey, the Tower of the Abbey is Romanesque, is Norman, but it's probably one of the, the most substantial in the country, if not the most substantial. And it's a wonderful piece of work with blind arcading on it and those very characteristic Romanesque pillars. And of course, you've got the battlefield. And the interesting thing is all three things sort of interplayed because the battle, so we're talking about May 1471, and it was really the last defeat, I would say, of the Lancastrians per se.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  You know, I don't really count Henry Tudor really as a, as a Lancastrian, he's something a bit different. And Edward IV, Richard of Gloucester and William Hastings defeated another Somerset at Chelmsford. Basically, the Lancastrians were trying to get across the rivers there. They, you've got the, the Seven and the Avon, haven't you, in that area? And they're trying to get into Wales to get reinforcements. Edward IV catches up with them and he defeats them in this battle just outside of Chelmsford, which in itself was significant enough. But some of the, of the Lancastrians thought... I know what we'll do. We'll get into the abbey and we'll claim sanctuary in there, which legally I think was probably a bit of a dubious claim. I'm not convinced that it was a place of sanctuary,

• 23:25Speaker 03

  but that's neither here nor there. But in they went. And Edward the Fourth, who, you know, hail fellow well met, but when he had to be brutal, he'd be damn brutal, wouldn't he? And he had them all hauled out and executed. So you can imagine them sort of trying to hang on in the, you know, but we're in the, we're in the abbey. You can't do this to us. Oh, yes, I can. Out they came and they were, they were executed. And so in the, um, uh, the, the abbey, you've got some quite significant graves, actually, not just from the walls of the road. Suspect you've got George, Duke of Clarence is supposedly buried there with, um, with Isabel. I don't know if that is definitely the case, but that's what I've been told. I don't know what you think, Matt. Do you think it's true?

• 24:03Matt Lewis?

  It's, it's hard because they're in the Clarence crypt and it's supposed to be them, but there is talk, there's sort of a, a perspex box that you can, if the crypt is open, you can go down and see it. And there is lots of suspicion that there's actually three bodies in there rather than two. And it floods a lot as well. So we're not entirely certain who's ended up in that box.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I thought you'd know a bit more about it. Yeah. Um, but there's loads of clairs and dispensers in the, in the area and some wonderful stained glass, actually. Maybe 14th century showing these, these figures in there heraldry in the choir, in the clear story of the choir. But back to the, the walls of the road. So who have you got buried there? Well, you've, you've got the, the Duke Somerset. Um, and what I, it amuses me actually, but you look for his memorial and you look in vain because it's in where the shop is. And there's a big sort of dispensing thing selling jams and postcards obstructing where it is, which I always find that rather, rather amusing.

• 24:54Matt Lewis?

  Which is exactly what the Beauforts deserve and you can't come into the otherwise.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  It is quite funny though, isn't it? They'll tell Nathan I'm in that, but he'll be pulling that, that display down, won't he? But also you've got Edward of Westminster. So in other words, the heir to the Lancastrian dynasty, who was killed probably in the battle, actually, um, and he's buried there. And there's a little memorial to him. Again, I think it's in the choir on the ground in Latin. It says, here, here, here he lies.

• 25:21Matt Lewis?

  And that can be a quite tricky thing to find, can't it? It's worth going and finding that because it's quite a sober, you know, a 17 year old who died in battle is buried somewhere near that, but it can be quite a tricky thing to locate.

• 25:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, you have to, you have to look on, on the ground and go up towards the choir to, to find it. And I think it's, they're sort of reddish, aren't they, the tiles? And it's, it's, it's red and yellow or something like that. But it's worth, it's worth thinking about that, you know, this, this lad. Mind you, 17 in those days, you know, he was up for it, wasn't he? You know, in, in the same way that Richard was up for it, or, or Edward IV was up for it. So he's not some innocent child, in, in my opinion. You, you play high stakes and you lose. That's how I see it. But, but there we are.

• 25:59Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned dispensers there as well. There's Hugh Dispenser, the younger at Chichester Abbey, isn't there?

• 26:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. Tell me what happened to him.

• 26:06Matt Lewis?

  We did a series recently on Edward the Second. So he's the one that was Edward the Second's last and most hated favourite, who ended up getting hauled up a ladder and, and gutted and having his private parts cut off and chucked in a fire and all sorts of stuff.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, terrible. In Hereford, wasn't it? So everybody could see it, you know, huge crowds. Yeah. So, you know, there's some, there's some pretty serious deaths there, if you think about it, in, in that place. And also, the sacristy door, it is said that the sacristy door is, is protected by armour that was found on the battlefield. Maybe, you know, I, I, I'm not sure, but it is worth looking at it. And maybe it was horse armour. It, it's possible. But that's an, an interesting thing to see there as well, I think. So there's a lot of links to the Wars of the Roses and the medieval period in a place like that. The fact it's still there, incidentally, is, is interesting, isn't it? Because it should have gone in many ways at the dissolution of the monasteries. But the, the locals bought

• 27:05Speaker 03

  it as their parish church for something like 450 quid. And therefore the, the church has survived, even though most of the, the monastic buildings haven't. Although I think that the gatehouse still survives and it belongs to the Landmark Trust. And you can hire it and, and, and spend the night in it, which quite appeals to me, actually.

• 27:40Speaker 01

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• 28:14Speaker 02

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• 28:48Speaker 04

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• 29:35Speaker 03

  But going back to, I mean, the big thing that I always think about, about Tewkesbury is it's really embraced the Wars of the Roses, hasn't it? So you've got this enormous medieval festival with about 2,000 reenactors from all over Europe that refight, refight the battle. And it's quite a sight and I'm convinced that the Tewkesbury pubs get about 50% of their sales in that weekend. But better than that, you've got the Tewkesbury medieval banners and the local battlefield society have created these brilliant banners, each of which has got the arms of one of the participants on it. And they're, they're painted up by local volunteers and then in sort of May of each, of each year,

• 30:18Speaker 03

  the local shops and residents go in and they, they sort of bid for one. They're not very expensive, but you get the banner which you put outside your house and you get a little sheet which tells you about the individual. And it's such a colourful site, you, you know, you're walking around through, through Tewkesbury and up above you, you know, you're, there's, there's the Stanley banner, which I'm sure you would like to have flying outside your, your house.

• 30:39Matt Lewis?

  I'm trying not to be sick.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  And the one that I'd never forget was, was when I first went there, Edward the Fourth's banner. Well, we know what Edward the Fourth was like as a bloke and it was so fitting that his banner when I went there was flying over a lingerie shop. I feel that he really would have, he really would have approved of that, you know, it would have been right up Edward the Fourth Street. So it's colourful, it's historical, loads and loads of historical buildings, brilliant stories, wonderful abbey. It's one of the great medieval sites in the country, in my opinion. And as you say, you're very lucky, it's just down the road from you, isn't it?

• 31:15Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah, I do. I like going to Tewkesbury. And, and it's another battlefield that you can walk. There are, the society will do tours of the battlefield all through the summer on a regular basis, you can, you can find on social media and stuff. But again, another fairly intact battlefield that you can walk around and, and see the landscape in which that battle. Happened, took place, unfurled. And if we leave Chelmsford behind us and we keep heading south, we're going to hit the south coast at Southampton, which may not be a place that people immediately think of medieval history. Why is Southampton an important medieval place?

• 31:46Speaker 03

  Well, it's a very important place because I was born there, actually. So that's one reason.

• 31:50Matt Lewis?

  There's nothing more to say in medieval times, I'm sure.

• 31:53Speaker 03

  Yes. Well, I mean, the thing about Southampton is that, of course, it's an important port. It's sheltered up so hand to water and it's got this unique double tide, which means that ships didn't have to wait for the tide to be right, you know, to come in for it for them to sail off. And so it did, and it still has this very important maritime aspect to it. So, you know, going back to, you know, the Middle Ages, it was very much where a lot of wine came in, that and Bristol. So it was, it was very important for that. It was a place where ships, you know, have always gone from. So, you know, the armies that ended up at Agincourt left from Southampton. The pilgrim fathers left from Southampton or is one of the places they left from.

• 32:38Speaker 03

  But Southampton is an odd place really, because the three things that define it are all disasters. Well, four, if you include the football team, but mainly, mainly three. And that is really Titanic, 1912, the Blitz in 1940, which unfortunately destroyed a substantial part of the medieval town, and the French raid, French Genoie's raid of 1338, which had a huge impact upon the, upon the town because it prompted them to improve the defences. And perhaps unexpectedly, you know, Southampton is one of the great medieval walled cities that England has, and about half of the walls still remain and you can walk along them.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  And now the land has been reclaimed, you know, you look out to where all the cruise liners are coming in. But at one stage, the water lapped up to those walls, you know, and you could look out, imagine sort of wooden jetties and medieval trading cogs and I don't know what moored up there. So you've got the walls, very substantial walls, also one or two quite impressive gates. So at the north end of the town, you've got the great gate that led out into, you know, Greater England, I suppose, and that's the Bar Gate. But perhaps the most interesting gate is a little gate called the West Gate. And the West Gate led down to the key and it was through there, for example, that the armies of Henry the Fifth, or at least some of them passed on their way to Agincourt.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  And then just around the corner, you've got an area which we tend to call God's House. You get to it down the brilliantly named Winkle Street, Winkle Street, which apparently it simply meant that it was kind of curved, the street was curved. And as you go down it, on the left, you have the remains of God's House. And a 15th century historian is quite interesting because there's a church there called St Julian's Church, which actually the French Eugene used it and it still has a French service. But it was in the grounds there that Richard Earl of Cambridge was buried after, you know, the unsuccessful plot against Henry the Fifth in 1450. So him, Scroop and Gray, wasn't it? And Richard of

• 34:48Speaker 03

  Cambridge is buried behind there. So maybe one day, you know, there can be a project to, you know, the Missing Cambridge project to try and find him.

• 34:56Matt Lewis?

  I mean, that would be fantastic. He's someone I'm interested in because, you know, he's Richard III's grandfather. So Richard, Duke of York, Richard III's father is someone I am very interested in. And Richard Earl of Cambridge is Richard Duke of York's father. He, as you say, on the eve of sailing for Agincourt, this plot is exposed to assassinate Henry the Fifth and he is cited as the ringleader, executed and buried there in Southampton immediately before Henry the Fifth leaves for what will become the Agincourt campaign. So it sits in this really fascinating moment in medieval history when things could have gone very, very differently. Like you say, it'd be amazing to wonder if we could find him.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know. So that's there. And then you carry on and you get to the God's House gate. And the God's House gate led out again down to really where the water was. But to protect it, they built an artillery tower, which is known as God's House Tower. And it was built, I think in the, in the 1417 maybe. But it's said to be the earliest purpose-built artillery tower in the country, you know, so that other places were adapted for artillery. But this was built for that purpose. And similarly, if you walk along the outside of the walls, you come across these keyhole gun ports in the walls. We state from it seems the thirteen thirties and again with the earliest gun ports in the country.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  So you've got the walls and then within the walls, there are one or two quite interesting buildings. Great number of sellers have survived. The stuff above, much of it was destroyed during the blitz. But there are one or two quite interesting buildings. There's the medieval merchants' house, which again dates back to the fourteenth century, although it's been added to. It's been restored, but it's one of those classic houses where you've got the barrel hanging down to show that the person that was in it was sold wine. And it's got one of those sort of counters that that comes down at the front of the house. So their family that had it lived in the back and they worked from the front.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  There's a quite stunning storeroom called the Wall House, which is right down by the by the water. As the name suggested, at one stage, wool was stored there. I think wine was stored there. Very impressive building. It's now a pub, actually, the Dancing Man Brewery and a good pub. So another good place to finish your walk around Southampton. And finally, St Michael's Church. Now, you know, Southampton had a substantial Norman French population. Of course, Saint Michel was a very popular saint with Normans. And it's got a very sort of French feel to it with a little square outside the church. But as well as some rather good Norman architecture, it's got one of those brilliant fonts, those torn eye marble fonts.

• 37:44Speaker 03

  Do you know what I mean? These great big solid black fonts. There's one in Winchester with the story of Saint Nicholas round it. There's a great one in Lincoln and there's one in St Michael's Church in Southampton. And I like it particularly because I was christened in it.

• 37:58Matt Lewis?

  It's biggest claim to fame, Hampshire?

• 38:00Speaker 03

  I think so, yeah.

• 38:01Matt Lewis?

  I think it should be.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:03Matt Lewis?

  It's amazing to think, you know, people could be, you know, waiting for a ferry at Southampton, heading off to the continent somewhere. You're there early, you're a little bit bored, wondering what to do. Well, there is a medieval smorgasbord on your car doorstep while you're waiting for your ferry.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 39:08Speaker 02

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• 39:55Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And if you're going over to the Isle of Wight, as a lot of people may well be doing, that God's House Tower and Gate, immediately opposite where the ferry is. So you're so right. It's right there, literally on your car doorstep. And you get down there and you've got a bit of time. It's just a great place to explore. And there's all these little places dotted in amongst the modern buildings that were put there because of the effects of the Blitz. I mean, it had a huge castle. Once Southampton, most of which is now gone. And there's actually a large block of flats on where the the keep would have been. So a sort of medieval replacement in a funny way, but little bits of it survived, including the garderobe tower, which pleases me. The toilet tower, yeah.

• 40:40Matt Lewis?

  Have too many toilets.

• 40:41Speaker 03

  No, you can't.

• 40:42Matt Lewis?

  No, I seem to remember going to Ludlow Castle with you and you having a fond interest in the garderobe at Ludlow Castle as well.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  I do. I love to stand by them and say, never stand here in the Middle Ages. That's how I see it. Yeah.

• 40:54Matt Lewis?

  Is the medieval history in Southampton easy to spot? Or is it something you have to be keeping an eye out for? You know, is it tucked away between more modern buildings?

• 41:04Speaker 03

  Okay, it's down in the, you know, Southampton is like all these places, it's grown enormously. So it's really down at the water's end of the of the town. And it is tucked away amongst the modern buildings. But if you follow the walls round, it sort of takes you to many of the of the key places. And once again, there are boards telling you about this, that and the other. So I think they call them Walk the Walls. So the logo is a couple of jester's shoes with those curly ends to them. And you look for those, you know, you're going in there in the right direction. So, you know, you get down to the bottom of the town, head down to, say, the pier, or where the ferry over to the island White is. And it's all there in front of you. And it's not that difficult to find it then.

• 41:46Matt Lewis?

  And we're going to end at a place on the south coast still. We're going to head out east to somewhere else that people might be waiting for ferries and making their way onto their their summer holidays and might have a bit of time. And that's Dover. What can you tell us about Dover? Why is Dover an important medieval place?

• 42:03Speaker 03

  Well, it's the key to the country, isn't it? So it claims. I guess, you know, so many castles, once their obvious military purpose goes, or once the people that have had them built have fancied were better to live, maybe they built a new Renaissance style home, you know, castles sort of go into decline. But Dover's strategic importance, and after all, it overlooks the narrowest point at the English Channel, and guards to a certain extent, the port of Dover. So up there, you can, you can wave at our friends the French on a on a summer's day, you know, they can wave back. If they have a powerful telescope. But anyway, it's it's position meant, but it was looked after. And so it was never allowed to fall into into rack and ruin. And as a

• 42:48Speaker 03

  result, it's a slight push, but you've kind of got 2000 years of fortification history there. And I and there are many other places that can rival that, I think, in in this country. There are one or two. And I think that Pevensey has a good go at it in many ways. But really, Dover's got the lot. So you know, there was some kind of Iron Age defence there. You've then got it as the as one of the headquarters of the Classes Britannica, which was the Roman fleet, that patrolled the Channel. And you've still got evidence of that, because one of the lighthouses that they used is still there. And it's it's probably one of the higher Roman buildings in the country. I can't think of many more that are higher than that. Maybe

• 43:32Speaker 03

  that wall at Leicester, the jury wall at Leicester, but I think it's even higher than that. And it survived, really, because next to it then was a Saxon church that continued into the medieval period. And and on more than one occasion, they used this Roman lighthouse as as a bell tower. So hopefully, Duke of Gloucester added an extra bit to it. So this Roman lighthouse is still there. Originally, there was one over at Boulogne, and one on the Western Heights, opposite to Dover on the English side. So I guess they work together in some kind of navigational way. So you've got that there. So you've got Roman, you've got Saxon, and then, of course, you've got medieval. And one of our great medieval castles, really, and one that, you know, joking apart, yeah, you could, if you've got a spare hour,

• 44:14Speaker 03

  go there. But if you've got a spare day there, go there, because there is so much, you know, and we're starting with in the middle, a great tower. I I I refrain from calling it a keep, because I think it's a bit more than that. I think it's a it was built by Henry the Second. And I think it's a it's not just a a military thing. It's a palace. It's a statement of his power, a statement of his influence. And it's something that if you arrived in the Dover area, you could not fail to miss. So you've got this keep. And it's built as sort of Kentish ragstone and flint in a very decorative way. And then it was done up again, on more than one occasion, Edward the Fourth did something to it, because it was a palace. And English Heritage have restored or recreated inside there what, you

• 44:56Speaker 03

  know, a an early medieval palace might have been like. And the word that most people say when they think see it is garish. Because it's so often in films, you know, the Middle Ages are brown, aren't they? It's brown, everything's brown. They weren't, were they? You know, churches were colourful, clothes were colourful, palaces were colourful. So you get a lovely sense of that as you go around. So.

• 45:16Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I think we're so often misled by what we still see today, aren't we? That it's grey castle walls, it's grey stone church walls. And we think it's always looked like that. And we forget that actually, these were the, the, church was the cinema of, of the Middle Ages, wasn't it? You went there to learn the stories and to see them represented in front of you.

• 45:33Speaker 03

  Can I nick that? Can I nick that? That's yours. I like that. Okay, I'll have that. Yeah, like it. Yeah.

• 45:38Matt Lewis?

  And the same with castles. This was how you display your wealth and your power and your position. And you don't do that by being drab and boring.

• 45:44Speaker 03

  No, you don't. And, uh, you know, often if you can, you're going to lime wash the outside of your, of your castles. They're bright and white. Think of the White Tower, for example, in, in London. So you've got that. And then around it, you've got an inner bailey with, um, walls around it. And then organically, it grew into what we might call a concentric castle. It's never planned as such, but it became one. In other words, a castle where you've got a defence within a defence within a defence. So that people could be shot at from more than one place. Or if they get into the outer part of the castle, there's still a wall in front of them and they have to find their way around. So a very powerful castle and you can see the development of fortifications, you know, from the, the earlier sort of square turrets to the rounder turrets of a, of a later period.

• 46:28Speaker 03

  And it was the scene of a brilliant siege, brilliant siege, probably not so brilliant if you were in it. But from the, the distance of, uh, eight hundred years, a brilliant siege. And this was towards the end of the reign of good old King John, who, as you know, I'm, I'm a great admirer of, uh, King John. I think he gets a, a very bad rap myself, but not many people share that.

• 46:50Matt Lewis?

  You are the single member of the King John Appreciation Society.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  Yes, I am. I am. But I live in hopes. I'll be, I'm going to be arguing for him a couple more times in the, in the next year. I don't expect many much support, but there we are. John would approve of that. But anyway, he, you know, he, he was so unpopular that, uh, after Magna Carta, as, as you know, many of the barons invited Louis of, of, of France to come over and replace him. Well, for Louis of France to do that, he really needed to capture Dover because the last thing that he wanted was this powerful fortress threatening his supply lines. And it didn't half hold up his conquest of the of the country. I mean, he conquered a lot of the southeast and the eastern side of the country, but he never managed to capture

• 47:33Speaker 03

  Dover, partly because John, who could actually be, in my opinion, a good selector of underlings. You know, you may not be very good to yourself. Good delegator. A bit like a bit like your hero Henry VII, really, you know, you you you pick the right people to do the work for you, don't you, you know? And John was like that. And Hubert de Boer, who defended Dover, he kind of knew what he was about. He was loyal to John, I think, because without John, he would have been nobody. And he would not surrender. And the French tried everything to get in. And one of the things they tried to do was to undermine the walls. And you could still go down into the medieval tunnels and see there are tunnels, which I'll talk about a bit more later, but you still go down and see where these tunnels were. So imagine the French undermining the walls. Old Hubert

• 48:18Speaker 03

  de Boer was a bit wise to it, and he worked out where the wall was going to collapse. It was the old gatehouse, and simply built a second wall inside it. So when the wall fell down, there was another wall for the French to get through, and they never managed to. He tried bombardment. He had a huge tributé, one of those counterbalance catapults, which were called Malvoisins, or bad neighbour. But he never managed to to get in. And really, once King John did the best thing that he ever did for the country, which of course was to die and was replaced by his son, you know, the the chief attraction of rebelling against the king had gone. And in the end, following a defeat at Lincoln, Louis had

• 49:00Speaker 03

  to retreat. But it led to a rebuilding of the castle in some ways. They had to rebuild the entrance because the original entrance had been knocked down. And you now go through a new entrance called the constable's gate, which is so called because it's where the constable of the of the of the castle lived. And that person was also a warden of the sink ports. So sank in French, sink in English, the five ports, which along with Ryan Winterson, supposedly supplied the king with ships when required in return for various privileges. So Dover, Hastings, Sandwich, Highbury, New Romney, I think they're the five original ones. But they were troublesome lot and they needed somebody to keep an eye on them. And so the warden of the sig ports did that.

• 49:43Speaker 03

  And he lived at, at that time at Dover, or at least he had a fortress at Dover. So they strengthened the castle after the siege and they built some outworks, including, you know, this new gate, they filled in the old gate and they built this tunnel which led out northwards, which you can still go down and you can emerge out there through this tower and get some really good views of the castle. And this fairly new because English heritage have opened up new land that way and you can get pictures of Dover that you have never had before. But that wasn't the end of Dover, so it's carrying on as a bit of a palace where people stopped off if they were going over to the continent. But of course, by the end of the 18th century, you've got a rather unwelcome potential visitor

• 50:26Speaker 03

  or set of potential visitors over the channel, our friends, the French and especially Napoleon. And so the castle was strengthened at that time. So now, as well as seeing all the medieval stuff at Dover, you've got this 18th century fortifications. So you've got lower walls, earth banks with cannons on them. A lot of the crenellations, you know, the battlements along the walls were taken down to give it a better field of fire. You've got all of that. And also, you know, at one stage, it had something like a brigade of troops there. So that's about 2,000 people. So where did you put them? So what they did was that this engineer called Twist, as well as strengthening the site, he built these underground tunnels, huge underground complex where these soldiers could live. And they duly did.

• 51:11Speaker 03

  And of course, when you come through then until to the 20th century, and once again, Dover is in the front line on talking about 1940, those tunnels were a godsend to the British High Command. And it was from those tunnels that Admiral Ramsay oversaw the Operation Dynamo, which was the retreat from Dunkirk. And English Heritage have sort of kitted out the tunnels with mat rooms and those sort of boards that you see in RAF films where people rent waft or other pushed little blocks of planes around, that's all down there. And also, there's a hospital down there and you can get into those and it's just an incredible veg underground as well as above

• 51:52Speaker 03

  ground. Ironically, they also thought that in the event of a nuclear war, that Dover could have been a seat of regional government, where those that got the golden ticket could go underground and carry on running the country. But I suspect that with the poorest chalk that was there, I suspect that their employment would have ended rather quickly, actually. But, you know, a stunning and superb place to visit, wonderful views. So you get up high there and look down over the sea and look over to France and imagine that channel full of cogs and ships and what have you. Imagine the French laying seed to it with sort of great rocks coming over, etc. You've got all of that there, but you can also go

• 52:33Speaker 03

  underground as well and imagine it being a hive of activity in nineteen forty. So, you know, a real three dimensional historical place to visit of, you know, two thousand years of interest. So well worth a visit and well worth spending some time there, really.

• 52:48Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, so much history to get amongst. I always think the interesting thing as well with those, as you said, point out, concentric defences around the castle. It's easy to kind of just walk in and just, you know, meander through. But if you actually think about where you are, think about the fact that you're being shepherded by the people that built that castle to be as vulnerable as you can possibly be for as long as you can possibly be vulnerable before you get anywhere near the inside of the castle. And it's almost quite arresting, quite chilling, isn't it, to think, you know, there would be people looking to shoot me if I'm walking here. I'm walking exactly where I want them. Sorry, I'm walking exactly where they want me to be to get shot.

• 53:23Speaker 03

  Hundred percent. I mean, you see it, don't you, in some of those castles in North Wales? I mean, Bo Maris, had it been finished, would have been the armpit type one. But you get it here and you're so right that, you know, even getting into the gatehouse, you had to walk parallel to the wall. So people are shooting at you then if you get through the gatehouse and you rush through into the outer bay, you think we're in lads, but all you've got in front of you is a great stone wall. You have to find your way round then to find the next entrance to the next spalion. And having gotten to that, you've still got to go around to find the way up into the keep. So as you say, you know, you're being pushed into a sort of killing zone all the time. Although, you know, I mean, yeah, that happened from time to time. But, you know, much of the time, it's an administrative centre, isn't

• 54:08Speaker 03

  it? It's very much a status symbol, David. So it's got a lot more to it than just the military side of it. If you're interested in domestic life at a high end, that's the place to go, I think.

• 54:20Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, fascinating. Well, Jules, it's been incredible to take this whistle stop tour around England in five important stops that, you know, people might be able to spend the day, spend a bit of time. There's some brilliant things to keep the kids busy in there. Go to St Cuthbert's Isle and try and find these little beads. Go to Tewkesbury at the right time of year and see which flags you can identify, see whose side you might want to take in the battle while you're there. It's been absolutely wonderful to pick at a few of these important places. And always a pleasure to visit any historical place with you. So to visit in one hour is an absolute triumph. So thank you very, very much, Jules.

• 54:56Speaker 03

  Right, great to talk to you.

• 54:57Matt Lewis?

  No, it's been brilliant. Thank you.

• 55:00Matt Lewis?

  I hope you enjoyed our trips out. Lindisfarne is a special place to be. Tauton is so atmospheric. Tewkesbury is just rich in history. Southampton is a forgotten gem and Dover, a spectacular testament to 2,000 years of defending a place. But it's back to the deepest parts of the dungeon for us. I hope you get to see some of these sites. If you enjoyed this episode, let us know whether we should do more like this. If you visit any of the sites and enjoy it, let us know. You can find an episode in our back catalogue on Dover Castle as part of a series we did all about castles. And there's an episode on that 1217 siege that Julian talked about with Cathanley too. Tewkesbury also features in some of our Wars

• 55:45Matt Lewis?

  of the Roses episodes if you'd like some more detail about the battle that took place there in 1471.

• 55:52Matt Lewis?

  There are new instalments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free. Head over to historyhit.com/subscribe right now. Go on, you know you want to. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hit.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.