BBC Two Northern Ireland

Secrets of the Castle with Ruth, Peter and Tom

Ruth Goodman

Peter Ginn

Tom Pinfold

David Upshal

Giulia Clark

Lion Television Scotland

Secrets of the Castle with Ruth, Peter and Tom: Episode 5

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Factual: History

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Episode 5

BBC Two - Secrets of the Castle with Ruth, Peter and Tom, Episode 5

The team come together to help construct a spectacular limestone window for the chapel.

Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold learn how to build a medieval castle. The team come together to help construct a spectacular limestone window for the chapel.

As their time at Guedelon Castle in France draws to an end, the team look at the castle's place in the wider medieval world. 

Thirteenth-century Europe was a busy, developing, connected place, where work, trade, pilgrimages and crusades gave people the opportunity to travel across the continent and beyond. 

Peter visits Vezeley Abbey - from where Richard the Lionheart set off on the Third Crusade - to examine first-hand some of the influences that were shaping the stone architecture of the period. Back at Guedelon, he helps build an ornate entrance to the chapel, inspired by ideas from distant lands. Ruth looks at pilgrimage, the means by which anyone, regardless of class, age or gender, could travel afar.

Tom works on a new door for the castle kitchen, vital for protecting all the valuable spices kept inside (some worth more than gold), and Ruth makes an exotic treat from eastern luxuries. She also explores the textiles trade, colouring silk with expensive handmade dyes, making gold thread, and bringing them together to create immaculate embroidery, one of the few tradecrafts where women were the boss.  

The team come together to help construct one of the castle's most ambitious projects to date, the spectacular limestone window for the chapel. They stand on top of the tower as the keystone is eased into place - it's the perfect spot to end their medieval adventure.

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Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold reveal the skills of medieval castle builders.

Historian Ruth Goodman and archaeologists Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold turn the clock back to learn the skills of medieval castle builders.

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