04: HISTORY OF THE VATICAN MUSEUMS-ITALY 🇮🇹

Hello, welcome to Through Lucy's Lens, weekly videos where I go somewhere interesting and hopefully you will find them interesting too. Now I'm in my back garden, there's no denying I'm not anywhere interesting at this moment because I forgot to record an introduction to this video. It happens sometimes, I get too carried away with what I'm doing when I'm out and about but in today's video we are going to go further back in time than we've been before looking at a house that was built in 1450. So we're coming to the end of the medieval period, we're in the War of the Roses, we're going to look at a manor house from that time and then there's a little extra juicy toll house at the end as well because I've seen now toll houses as like fan favorites on this channel so if I see one I'm in there for you and it is a lovely one indeed. So go ahead, relax, enjoy and let's go through my lens. I've never said that before, it's taken me long enough haven't I? Come on let's go. This beautiful house can be found at Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings near Bromsgrove and it was built in around 1450, right on the cusp of where the middle ages come to an end and the early modern period begins. Henry VI is on the throne, the last Lancastrian ruler in England and the Wars of the Roses are dominating his reign. At this time the population of England is around 1.9 million and the average life expectancy for a male is 42 and for a female 33, significantly lower due to the risks of child birth. The building itself is timber framed in oak and the sections in between are filled with wattle and daub. Woven lattices of wooden strips called wattle are covered with a sticky material, typically mud or clay which is called daub and this creates the walls of this house. The 15th century is a time of bustling market towns, wool merchants and the slow rhythm of medieval life. This house is not a castle or a manor, it's a house where ordinary people lived, worked and raised their family. The house was originally located at the corner of Worcester Street and Station Street in Bromsgrove. This house would have belonged to somebody of modest success, a merchant, likely in the cloth trade. Bromsgrove was deeply tied to the wool industry of Worcestershire. This man wasn't a lord or a knight but he likely had a standing in the community. He was a trades person who had a skill. The house itself is a type of home called a hall house, a large central space with a high open roof. This main hall served as a living room, dining room and sometimes bedroom. There were smaller chambers at either end for sleeping or storage. While I was in the house I imagined the day-to-day life of the people that lived here. I imagined it's early morning in the 1400s. The town is just stirring, dawn breaks and the mistress of the house is already up tending the hearth. There's no chimney in this house yet, just a hole in the roof to let the smoke drift out. She's stirring a pot of pottage, a thick stew of grains and vegetables. The children of the house rub their eyes and shuffle barefoot across the timber floor. The master of the house, our cloth merchant, checks his goods. Bolts of wool and fabric dyed in soft blues or russet browns, maybe some finer imported cloth for wealthier clients. He'll be off to the town market soon with the samples under his arm and a coin pouch under his belt. The house as well as being a home was also a workplace. The front room might serve as a shop where townspeople come in to browse the merchant's wares. Apprentices and journeymen would also live here, moving about, brushing cloth, measuring yards of wool and learning the trade under their master's eye. At around midday the family will gather in the hall for their main meal. A loaf of dark bread is torn and shared along with cheese, small ale and perhaps some salted fish or meat. Vegetables and herbs are grown in the garden. There's no potatoes, they haven't got here yet, and carrots in the medieval period were in fact purple. The herbs in the garden would be used for medicinal reasons. Wormwood, mint and balm were used to treat stomach issues and sweet smelling herbs like rose, lavender and sage were used to alleviate headaches and aching joints. Medieval herbalists are a video on their own, endlessly fascinating and very useful even in our modern lives today. Herbs aside there's little privacy in this house. Everybody eats together on wooden benches using their fingers and occasionally a spoon. The plates they use would be simple trenches, either a flat round of bread that could be eaten at the end of the meal or wood. After lunch the day in the house continues. The mistress might spin wool by the window or check on a batch of ale brewing in the back room. Small ale is a type of watered down beer and it was commonly drunk throughout the day. It was safer than water from the well which could sometimes carry disease. Evenings in the house are quieter. As the sun begins to dip it casts long shadows through the shuttered windows. The fire is stoked once more and the household gathers around the hearth. The children doze, perhaps to the sound of a tale or a psalm. The smell of wood smoke will cling to everything. There's no running water here, no toilet. Waste is emptied into a cesspit or the street outside. Bathing is rare but clean linen underclothes were worn daily, washed in the stream using wood ash which created a powerful cleaning solution for washing clothes. The ash would be soaked in the water to create a detergent like substance. The people who lived in this house would have clothes made from wool and linen and they'd be hand dyed with plants. Woad for blue, madder for red and onion skins for a yellowish brown. When darkness comes the family climbs into bed. A bed was a real luxury, even many of the middling sort still slept on wooden pallets. Parents and children may sleep in the same chamber while apprentices or lodgers would find a corner by the embers and sleep wherever they could. The shutters would be drawn and the door is barred. The town has settled into the quiet hush of the medieval night. The rhythm of the medieval night is really interesting. People would typically go to bed around sunset and sleep for a few hours. This was referred to as the first sleep. In winter this could be as early as 4pm here in the UK. They would then wake up for a period often referred to as the watch which could be used for prayer, socialising or other activities. After this period of wakefulness they would return to sleep for a longer period until dawn. This was known as the second sleep. The length of the first sleep and the wakeful period varied depending on the time of year and the availability of natural life. People here were living with the seasons. Over time this house changed. A second floor was added and glass windows were fitted. And by the 19th century it had been split into cottages and even housed a small shop. But the bones of the building, the beams and the joists remain the same underneath. The house was rescued in 1965 and took two years to rebuild opening to the public here at Avoncroft in 1967. The house still stands here giving us a rare chance to step into the world of medieval people. I really like this house and it's really popular with reenactors who still use the house during special events at the museum where they'll cook on the hearth, gather and fan favourite and I say this because whenever I feature a toll house it seems to go down really well. There's something really attractive about them and this one is no exception. The toll house at Avoncroft is significant in its structure and it was originally located in Little Malvern in Worcestershire. This toll house was constructed in 1822 by the Upton upon Severn Turnpike Trust at a cost of £56. This would roughly be equivalent to around £6,160 in today's money. This gives a good sense of the investment made by the trust. It's a fairly modest building but a purposeful structure. Little Malvern toll house was strategically positioned at a road which is now the meeting point of the A449 and the A4104. Its design featured angled walls to provide the toll collector with a clear view of approaching traffic from multiple directions. The two-storey structure included a kitchen, parlour and living space and two bedrooms above. The bedrooms were accessed via an internal staircase. This is unusual for a toll house. Tenants rented the toll house from the trust collecting the tolls from travellers and retaining the proceeds as part of their agreement. This system provided a livelihood for the toll collectors while ensuring the trust had the necessary funds to upkeep the road. The toll house today is displayed as it would have been for a toll collector and their family here in about It's simple but comfortable. It's a spa living space with a living room and scullery downstairs and two bedrooms above. The ground floor has quarry tiles, an iron range for cooking and heating and a very basic array of pine furniture. Upstairs there's an iron bedstead with a wooden child's cradle and a chest of drawers. Under the bed is a necessary chamber pot because there was no inside plumbing here. The house also had an earth closet or toilet in the garden and when the building moved to Avoncroft they moved that here too. I always think this is the life of another era but so many of you comment when we watch these videos that these places are not too different to homes you remember even into the 1970s and 1980s. To end this video we have a windmill another kind of structure that has always really fascinated me and this is the first time we've seen a windmill on this channel. Along with lighthouses I love beautiful buildings that have a practical use and it is actually one of my ambitions to stay in a lighthouse so if you know of any I can do that reach out. This windmill originates from Dansey Green Warwickshire. It's a typical West Midlands post mill with a simple but effective design that enables it to be operated by a single person and turned in any direction to face the wind. Essentially the whole structure revolves on a central post. It's so clever! Postmills were widespread on the landscape during the 18th and 19th centuries. They were used to grind grains such as corn or wheat to produce flour to produce flour for bread. A staple of course of people's diets during this period. Windmills entered steady decline as steam-powered milling machinery increasingly began to take over during the industrial revolution. Many windmills fell into disuse and eventually became lost and it's wonderful to see one here and you can still even buy flour milled here today and the wonderful tea loaf I had in the cafe had been made using Avoncroft flour. Thank you as always for coming with me. Just a little bit of my little life. There's my little house, my little Victorian house, well the back of it anyway and then here are actually a row of nailers cottages. So a lot of these videos that I make have got real personal connections to me. Anyway moving on, as always thank you for watching, thank you for your support. This is just my favourite thing to do in the world and having you come with me is just that little bit of extra magic. I've got a little favour to ask. I've got a big birthday coming up in May and I would really like it if I could get to 20,000 subscribers by then. You know I've said it before I don't like chasing the numbers. This is just what I love to do and the fact that I get to share it with however many people is a dream come true but the fact of the matter is the more subscribers you have the more opportunities open up for you and the more places I'll be able to take you. So if you've watched a few and you think oh she's all right hit the subscribe button it really does help. Until next week where I've just got back from a beautiful couple of days in Norfolk. So if you've watched a few and you think oh she's all right hit the subscribe button it really does help and from next week there'll be a couple of videos concentrating on some of the amazing places that I found there. So until then have a beautiful restful week. If you're here in the UK continue to enjoy this beautiful early spring. See you soon. Bye bye.