Secrets Of The Castle review – good, old-fashioned medieval fun
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Version 0 of 1. Ruth, Tom and Peter have come to France to build a castle. A bit like everyone does on holiday, only this castle isn’t made of sand, it’s made of sandstone. And limestone. It’s not by the seaside, either, but at a place in Burgundy called Guédelon. This is Secrets Of The Castle (BBC2). Actually, they’re just dropping in for a few weeks of the 25-year project. It takes a long time to construct a castle from scratch when you’re only using materials, techniques and tools that were around in the 13th century. Tom Pinfold and Peter Ginn, who are archeologists, and historian Ruth Goodman get into the spirit of things – and into some medieval garb. For Tom and Peter, this means sack-cloth tunics, tabards (possibly) and pants so vast they make Bridget Jones’s look like the skimpiest thong. Ruth wears an orange carpet and bandages around her head; some kind of medieval zombie chic, perhaps. I’m no expert in style, but nor, I’d say, were 13th-century castle-builders. This lot seem quite happy, though. It becomes clear, as the show goes on, that Ruth, Tom and Peter should probably have been born, and would have fitted in very well, around 800 years ago. They throw themselves into their work, the boys under the tutelage of Florian the local master mason. He says he sees himself as a musical “condoocteur”, waving his medieval chisel about like a baton, keeping everything and everyone in time. Yeah, all right, maestro – it might be a castle, but it’s still a bloody building site, and that makes you a foreman in my book. Tom and Peter learn how to cut huge stones from the quarry into usable building blocks. Clink, click, clink goes the hammer on chisel. “Bonne musique,” says another mason, called Clement (what is it with these French stonemasons? They all think they’re Claude Debussy). Tom and Peter mix mortar, making jolly medieval banter as they work. They also make a rope to fetch water from the well. “I’m like a famous violin maker, stringing my beautiful instrument,” says Yvan, the castle rope-maker, as he lays lines of hemp yarn up and down the rope walk. Actually, he doesn’t say that, but he’s thinking it, I know. It might not be landing on a comet, but it’s oddly mesmerising and reassuring, the twisting together of the strands, first one way, then the other, to prevent unravelling. And the lathing of the pulley from a lovely hunk of ash. And the setting of the stones into the great, thick walls of the tower. My favourite thing of all is the two-man treadmill winch that is used to hoist half a tonne up the tower. Tom and Peter walk in their respective wheels, going nowhere. Weirdly, no one mentions hamsters. Perhaps they hadn’t been invented yet. Gender roles are quite traditional, too. So, while the merry men are merrily lifting rock, poor Ruth – bandage-head – is laying rushes on the floor, trying to turn a hovel into a home. And washing up, using washing-up wood ash. And grinding the barley to mix with the dandelions and nettles she’s picked for tea. Mmm, nettle pottage, to feed the hungry menfolk when they come home. It’s called a quern, her little mill stone contraption for making flour. See, this is not just good from a how-they-did-stuff-in-the-olden-days kind of way, it’s also useful for Scrabble. And interesting etymologically, too. So, flour-making on the quern was, quite literally, the daily grind. And the clay, to make cooking pots, was scooped up from wherever you could find it; the side of the road was as good a place as any, even if this left a pothole. These potholes made readers of the Daily Medieval Mail very cross. They weren’t actually readers – it wasn’t yet a newspaper, just a bit of gossip and tittle-tattle scratched onto a rough plank and shouted out, by a reeve, at the well. But people – the pious, reactionary folk of the village – came out in their hordes to listen. Sorry, I’ve gone off on a tangent. Secrets Of The Castle is interesting; I’m not completely convinced it’s five-episodes interesting, unless you’re a total medieval freak, but next week they’re looking at war and weaponry, so that should be good. Phwoar, arrows, crossbows and giant catapults called trebuchets. Ruth, I imagine, will be at home doing the laundry, scrubbing at the stains with a scratchy, old pig’s scrotum. |