Gone Medieval - Anglo-Saxon Treasures at Norwich Castle

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

Norwich Castle was designed by William the Conqueror to be a royal palace. But no Norman kings ever lived in it. Instead it became a gaol and then - in the Victorian era - a museum, which is today packed with archaeological finds that lift the lid on life in Anglo-Saxon East Anglia.In this edition of Gone Medieval, Dr. Cat Jarman takes an exclusive tour of Norwich Castle with Dr. Tim Pestell and learns more about its extraordinary history and collection.The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie. The Producer was Rob Weinberg. It was edited by Seyi Adaobi.For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Mondays newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman. England is home to some incredible castles from the medieval period. And this week I've gone to visit one of them. I've come to Norwich to visit its Norman Castle and Keep. This castle was once a royal palace and now a major new project is on the way to regenerate it. So I'm here to find out more about that project and what it's like to manage a collection in a building that's been in use for 900 years. The museum here is also home to one of

the finest collections of Anglo-Saxon artefacts in the country because it contains fines from all over East Anglia. To find out more, I'm going to be shown around by Dr Tim Pestall who's the curator of archaeology here. So join me now for a behind-the-scenes tour of Norwich Castle, Museum and Art Gallery. Okay, so here we are. And Tim, thank you so much for meeting me and taking me around today. It's absolute pleasure. It's lovely to see you. So can you just introduce to our listeners now where we are? We are in Norwich Castle and more specifically the castle as it survives today is principally

the mound, the mop that was at the centre of the castle complex and a stone keep. the Norman building. And of course a lot of people described the keep as the castle, but a castle is a far, far larger structure. And being a royal castle, Norwich had a number of these baileys with outer earthworks that supported it. So we had a whole series of ditches that you had to go across via bridges. There would have been palisades or wooden walls, and then later stone walls built above them. And you went through three of those before you even got to the keep. So it was an enormous complex. and we know that over 90 houses were destroyed just to cite the castle at Doomsday.

I guess it's recorded in Doomsday Book. And so it's a reminder really of the devastation that the Norman Conquest wrought. And very sadly, we're seeing this same sort of occupation going on right now in Ukraine. It really reminds you how an occupying army has to really establish itself as a military centre. and the reason that Norwich has chosen is almost certainly because at the conquest, Norwich is one of the stellar towns of Anglosaxon England. It's one of the places that is booming economically. It's getting richer. It's therefore growing in size. And fairly obviously, if you're a incoming Norman, a conquering Norman, you want to put down a marker that you now control this centre. And of course, you're going to get richer by controlling all of the trade in that centre.

And so that's why a royal castle gets established here. And, okay, so we're going to go and talk a little bit more about the keep, especially, and what's going on with that in a moment. But what's happened to this building later on? Because it's got quite a rich history in the time since the Norman period, hasn't it? It is. This is one of the challenges of doing a redevelopment on a site like this, that it's been continuously occupied for over 900 years.

And so wherever you do, you can't put a spade in the ground or a screw in the wall without hitting some sort of historical or archaeological fabric. It's originally, obviously, a Norman castle, but it very quickly becomes used as a prison, and a royal prison for the entire county of Norfolk. And then subsequently, because their prison buildings were considered inadequate, they were rebuilt in the 1780s by Sir John Sown, and very quickly they in turn became considered not fit for purpose.

And so they were rebuilt in the 1820s by William Wilkins, and in turn by the 1880s they were seen as outdated and a new prison was built outside the city and this is I guess one of the strange things that the high security prison for the county was right in the centre of the city all the prisoners were then marched up to marshold Heath where the new prison was built and then they had this enormous complex and there was a decision that had to be made about what to do with it and it was turned into the county museum and that's what you see here today Fantastic. Well, let's go inside and have a little look around. So, Tim, what are we doing now? We're walking through a tunnel and where are we going?

Well, we've walked through a passageway that takes us through the actual Norman mound and we're now going up a staircase that is the hole at the top of the tunnel and that goes into the wider museum. And actually, this is where the archaeology department used to be. And it's now the Learning Department. So you can see we've got some of the Victorian cabinets here that belong. to the original Victorian Museum, which we used to house our archaeology in. They're now in up-to-date containers and cupboards downstairs in our stores. But this is part of the prison that Edward Baldwin then converted into a museum in the 1880s.

And so this is why it's a beautiful Victorian space. Wow, so it's almost like the archaeology of the archaeology, isn't it in a way? We've had to start really looking at our own history a bit more. And if we come through here, they were actually in. to a museum proper and this is our natural history gallery. Oh yes, we're just facing a tiger. Not what I was expecting. Roaring.

As you've come through. Not a local tiger, I'm presuming. No, no. And this is one of the interesting things about this particular space is very, very popular as a natural history gallery. And of course, with lots of stuffed animals. It's not very politically correct having the stuffed animals, but it's certainly very popular with the kids. Particularly the polar bear, which is at the moment, often, often. but it's being something that generations of children like the tiger have enjoyed.

Well, that's the thing about museums like this, isn't that? There's a legacy of a long time period of museums and what they were and, you know, who they were for and all of that. A museum like this, it's been all about families coming back and back and back and people can remember certain things. And it's always a challenge to be able to have things that are familiar, that people want and enjoy and remember enjoying themselves, but at the same time having changing displays and also being able to reflect changes. in scholarship. And so one of the things that a museum is all about is research and being able to bring across those latest stories and interpretations. And that's particularly true in things like archaeology where we know the picture is changing so much. And just thinking back 20 years

when we first put some of the displays up, we know a lot more now, not just we've got new objects, but we know more about how those objects were used and we have to reinterpret those displays and change them accordingly. Absolutely. I mean, it's something we're constantly working on. It's organic, isn't it? It's not set in stone. And this is what I really love about working in museum

that you see so much new material all the time and it's changing the way that you look at what you've already got. And it's incredibly exciting if you're working in an academic field as well as being able to present those stories to the public. So it's not just about writing high-falutin stuff that no one reads. It's actually getting stuff out there when it's still at the cutting edge and everybody can sit and enjoy it, which I really like. Perfect.

Brilliant. So where are we heading now? Well, we're now in what we call the rotunda, which is the central part of the museum. And this is actually where the governor's house stood at the centre of the prison. So when the prison was rebuilt in the 1820s, it was built on a panoptican idea with the all-seeing eye at the centre of the prison. And we have all these radiating prison wings,

which then got turned into galleries very conveniently in the 1880s. And so what we're going to do is go through our Budika and the Romans Gallery and up into the Anglo-Saxon Viking Gallery. Perfect. Thank you. So we just walks up some stairs now and into a museum a little bit of turmoil because of the building works going on. So we walk past some railings of medieval costumes and we've got bits and pieces everywhere. I mean, it must be so challenging to sort of manage what is a fantastic historic building, with later heritage of the Victorian parts to it

and you're trying to turn it into a new modern museum and you've got all this collection. So quite a challenge. It is and these big projects don't come along, luckily, that often. They seem to come along regularly enough. I mean, I was lucky enough to be the curator of this particular gallery which we opened in 2004. And as you can see, it's now a storeroom

because we've closed a lot of other parts of the museum off because we're rebuilding in them. And so this is temporarily. closed. We've also got only displays left on the north side of the gallery because the south side was on the other side of a wall that was having steel

joists moved around by a crane so we didn't want anything slipping, lumping through a wall and knocking an Anglo-Saxon pot off. Sounds sensible. Yes, definitely. That's been closed off, but what you can see in the dim and dark cases that we've got here

is one of the finest Anglo-Saxon collections in the UK. It's absolutely amazing. And it's It's not surprising because East Anglia, Norfolk's a big county within East Anglia, is the first place that you would have bumped into when you rode across from the German homelands as a migrant. Now, of course, we know that migration is a lot more complex than that,

and the early Anglo-Saxon period is certainly a lot more complex than that. But the material culture that we have here shows how there was this general trend towards a more Germanic way of living and dying, particularly burying your family and friends with their objects from life. and we can see a particularly good selection of them in this particular case. The one that stands out here, of course, is the Binnam Burycteat Horde. And Bacteat is these gold pendants that get used in the 6th century,

particularly in Scandinavia. There's only about 1,000 known from the whole of Northwest Europe, in particular in Scandinavia. And the importance of this one is that it was found as a horde. And that is the only time that we found Bractets used as a horde in England. And that in turn suggests that, in turn, suggests that we were found. We've got the same ritual practice going on. It's not just they're wearing the same sorts of jewellery.

They're actually believing in the same sorts of things on the continent and then bringing those beliefs across with them to England. And that's what makes this so fantastically important. And I know this isn't an easy question to answer, but does this suggest that we have quite a lot of contact with Scandinavia directly in this part of the world in this period? I think there's an enormous amount. And one of the things that I know we were talking about earlier

is just the lack of research that has been done. done, the amount of research that needs to be done to try and bring to bear some of the modern analytical techniques that we now have, to look at the skeletal populations in particular to see where people were brought up and where they died. There's an enormous potential for looking at this. And you can see in this particular case, there's material from the North German plains, from Scandinavia, from Norfolk. It's all linked. And bearing in mind that they were very, very able seafarers. It only takes with a good win three days to get across from Norway to Norfolk. What else would you expect? That's such a good point I think. We tend to forget that.

We tend to think that people were just more or less mobile and just stuck back home when you don't have the modern technology. But actually, it's three days. It's not a lot. And these people are used to it. Look at Scandinavia, boating and maritime activities have been since at least Bronze Age, if not earlier. Well, and absolutely. And this is the point, really. they're going around in ships in the Bronze Age across the open sea. And so if you've got that going on 3,000 years ago, then why on earth shouldn't the Anglo-Saxons one and a half thousand years ago be doing that? They're extremely sophisticated people,

and the sea is with rivers by far the quickest way of getting around. And so there are going to be these international connections between people. And you can see here we've got a pot with decorated face on it from Markshul. and very sadly there was one almost identical parallel from Verden in Germany which the RAF successfully destroyed in the last war but from photographs and drawings of it we can see that they're probably made by the same Potter and it just shows you this sort of close connection between peoples that are on different sides of the North Sea yeah and I think maybe we've created more recently this idea of our separate countries and nations

as being so distinct but that's a very modern concept doesn't it? But actually looking at things like the pottery and the material culture is actually showing that connection. It's really quite... Completely. And you need to think not in terms of nation states, which really only developed in the 10th century, but more kin groups, family groups. And that's what the heroic poetry of the period starts to really give you the picture of, isn't it? It's individual war leaders and their war bands, and a lot of that is going to be kin-based. So the villages where you grow up are likely to be extended kin groups. And That's why you're going to get feuding going on between different kin groups.

And that's really the origin of building up these bigger and bigger territories. Okay, so let's bring it back to where we are. So we're in Norwich. And we are looking now at what we sort of really talk about as very much the early medieval period or early Anglo-Saxon period, I suppose. What is the situation for what then becomes Norwich later on? What's here? Well, the interesting thing about Norwich is not a lot in this period.

the centre is just outside Norwich as the present medieval city. So the real focus in the 5th century is Caster, Caster by Norwich. And that's mile or two outside the city centre. And it's the site of Venter Isanorum, the venter of the Icini, the market town. And it's a Roman wall site later on. And that provides a focus of occupation in the Anglo-Saxon period. And in fact, it's probably all the way through, to something like the 8th or 9th century.

Now we know that we have settlement in Norwich from the 9th century, but it looks as though it starts off as a series of smaller settlements along the river, and then gradually it takes off. And that's probably due to the navigability of the river. It means that they're able to bring material up the river to what then becomes Norwich far more easily than along the task to Kaster, and that's what economically leads that centre to expand and then to take off. and you can see that in the subsequent archaeology,

which is a little bit further over there in the gallery. Can we go and have a look at that? Yes, absolutely. Oh, right, okay, so manhandling some big packing material here and we've got another display cabinet. What are we looking at now, Tim? Hidden behind the packaging is the material from Harford Farm, which is a cemetery site that overlooks that Roman town, Kaster,

and it shows an exceptionally high-status series of burials. So this is the local aristocracy that almost certainly would have ruled the town. So we know, for instance, that one of the graves here has a couple of coins, early pennies, or colloquially called shatters, and they are of the same type that we found in a trading area just outside the wall town of Kaster. So there's obviously economic activity that's going on here in the 8th and 9th centuries, and the people that were probably overseeing that chose to be buried with their finery. in a site on the hill overlooking that. And it's almost certainly a territorial claim that they're making.

This is our landscape. We control it. You can see our market down there and look how rich we are. And it is an absolutely exceptional brooch that one of the ladies was buried in. And she had been wearing this brooch, which was obviously an heirloom piece. It's been repaired. And the best thing about it is the back, because it has a runic inscription, says Luda repaired the brooch.

Fantastic, convenient. That's great. Packing material goes back up. Let's have a look at the back. So there's the back of the brooch. And we can see very crudely, there's an interlaced decoration along the bottom, and he's got his name scratched in above.

And the name Luda is a personal, masculine name. And depending on the sound value of the run, It's either Luda or Tudda, and that's a name that we also find in the Norfolk villages of Luddham. So, again, you can see how these personal names then lend themselves to the settlements that we drive around today. So that suggests that this is someone local who's doing that work, who's repaired it, pretty much, or? Possibly. They broach itself is of a Kentish type, and that probably accorded it greater prestige when it comes to East Anglia, let alone the fact that it's made of gold on the front with garnets that are inlaid,

fine workmanship and a silver back to it. But there are a couple of runes that are on there, which are the earliest type of run. We can't say specifically, well, these are East Anglian, but it does show that the craftsman himself was literate and therefore an educated person, so much so that he was wanting to display this on the back of the roach. It's quite odd that you just have the repair, not the maker, not the owner,

but it's the repairer. Yes, absolutely. And the irony is actually the repair is pretty crude. I think his writing is probably better than his jewellery. So he's showing off a bit or these other skills going, you know, yes, I'm not that good at repairing, but I can't write. Throughout June on not just the Tudors, we're honouring Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee

by focusing on queenship in the 16th and 17th centuries. I'm Professor Suzanne Lipscomb, and all this month with my guests, I'll be exploring the coronations of Tudor queens, Queen's regnant and Queen's Consort, who wielded power in ways we haven't thought about. Really, when we begin to look at Queen Consorts, we notice that there's a lot of ways at the Renaissance Court

that women could hold informal power through their relationship with the king. Then there's the Queen who ruled over the Spanish Netherlands and the female Swedish king. You heard that right. What did a 17th century person actually mean by saying, oh, she dresses like a man? If she would have worn male clothing, she wouldn't have been able to rule Sweden.

So for a month of all things, magisterial and monarchical, look no further than not just the Tudors from history hit. Well, it's nice. This gives you that personal perspective, because you've got several people here. You've got the person who was buried with it and the people who were involved in this object's biography, I suppose. That's right. And one of the other things I find particularly fascinating from a human dimension is that very recently we had another gold and garden. pendant of the same sort of date as the Harford Farm brooch, there was excavated from another female grave, wind farthing, on the county border between Norfolk and Suffolk. And when you think about the very few people

that would have had the money to have these sorts of brooches, they almost certainly knew that each other in life. And it again reminds you of these social circles that the county set, if you like, of the 8th century, the 7th century. and it really brings alive the fact that it was a very limited society and your chances and opportunities within that society were almost certainly predicated by your birth. And of course we don't really have the written sources

to illuminate so much of this in this particular part of the country, do we? No, we don't. We're very poorly served by Anglo-Saxon documentary sources in East Anglia generally. And so a lot of the picture that we can build up of Anglo-Saxon, East Anglia is down to the archaeology, and these particular sorts of objects that have come up. But in a sense, it's not only what makes it so fascinating, we're also very well served by the archaeology in East Angley.

We have such a fantastic array of material and a really good record of discoveries and publication within Norfolk and Suffolk. A bit of an untapped resource, I suppose, in many ways. Yes, it can keep many people going for many generations yet with just what we've got. And, of course, we're discovering new stuff all the time, which is even better. Yes, absolutely. And are you getting a lot of metal detectors finds to add to this as well?

The metal detecting is absolutely crucial. They are the archaeologist's eyes and ears, and this is why it's so important to have a good relationship with those metal detectors because by and large, metal detectors are fantastic. And it's the usual one or two that spoil it for everybody by giving a bad name, but we're really lucky in Norfolk, and it's the same in Suffolk. We've had very good relationships for 30 years. And so we've got really good fine spots for a lot of the material. And it's absolutely crucial. It's those fine spots that then tell us about the patterning

to see where certain things are more popular if there's a local trait, for instance, to a broach. So we can see, for instance, brooches over here that we've got arranged. And these are actually 10th century brooches, but they are of a distinct East Anglian style. The vast, vast majority have been found by metal detectors, but because they've recorded their fine spots, we can see, well, yes, most of these are found from Norfolk and from Suffolk.

Therefore, this is almost like a badge of local identity. It's easy to create any number of designs, but the fact that people have chosen to have this particular design for their brooch that they put on their clothing suggests not just that it's maybe cheap, but that there is a conscious thought behind it, and therefore there is a certain way of dressing, and in turn that is your identity.

And that's something that you see throughout the early medieval period, and especially later when you have more Scandinavian input and you've got people coming in in the Viking Age across this part of the world especially, those identities are very much expressed in things like jewellery, aren't they? They are, and I think one of the intriguing things when it comes to the Scandinavian involvement in England. Again, largely found through metal detecting,

are things like emblems which show a religious nature. Now, we're very familiar with the Anglo-Saxons being Christian, and there's a great deal of Christian iconography. The broaches that we were looking at a minute ago have a cross in the centre of them, and it's not accidental. But one of the things that we do have from the Viking world are things like Thor's Hammers, and Norfolk has more Thor's Hammers than anywhere else

in the UK. That's, yeah, and that's quite something actually. So there's a lot of Viking evidence here. Absolutely. One half of our display cases still at least stocked with material. We haven't had to take the ones here off display. And these are a case in point.

So you can see here that we've got seven Thorshammers on display. I have another two in the stores waiting to go on display. And there is an enormous number of these thaws hammers relative to the overall finds from England that have come from norfolk now is that just because we've got better liaison with metal detectors that's quite possibly something to do with it is it the fact that norfolk is a big county anyway yes that's again probably got something to do with it but i do also wonder whether there was actually more of a predilection for wearing thawshammers

in norfolk and east anglia it may be more of the local viking religious belief that focused on identity with Thor, wanting to wear Thor's hammers. That's speculation, of course, because their picture is constantly emerging. But it is very, very interesting. And is that perhaps, again, something to do with more of a Danish Viking population settling in East Anglia compared to, say, more of a Norwegian one in the north? Are they more keen on adherence to Thor? We don't know.

But these are the sorts of questions that we're now able to ask. because we've got the objects. And of course, I'm going to have to bring in the Great Army here looking at these, because actually a couple of these hammers that we're looking at the display here are very similar. One is extremely similar to the one found at Repton, the Great Army. There's a similar one from Torxie, which again is the Great Army Camp. And there's another almost identical match that's found in southern Norway at Kaupang as well,

which is practically identical, almost the same mould as the one from Repton. And of course, we do have a link nearby, certainly to... Thetford and Burry St Edmunds as well of the Great Army coming here. So could another possibility be that these are actually, you know, this area is linked very closely to sort of these military groups? There has to be. And just to make you happy, number three up there, that led for Osama is from Thetford. Perfect. Well, exactly.

That's what I wanted to hear. Yeah. So I think, you know, that's the possibility as well, isn't it? That we know that we have these military, early military groups, whereas perhaps in the north, you have more settlement, again, from other areas, possible. but we don't actually know that much about these Viking armies here, do we really? No, we don't know nearly enough about the social dimension to the army on the move. We hear from little snippets in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle about the camp followers, the women and children being besieged,

but we don't really know enough from the physical evidence that we have yet. And that's really, I guess, partly because we've only really understood things like the overwintering camps in the last 10 years. Yes, we knew about Repton because of the excavations that were being going on initially under the Biddles. But the discovery of these new camps

has really only been a relatively recent phenomenon and again, down to metal detecting. And it's all down to this liaison, isn't it? And one of the things that intrigues me is that one of the Thor's hammers that we have here has a gold filigree inlay to it and there's only one other Thor'shammer from Britain that has that.

Very sadly, it was published in a metal disclaimers. detecting price guide with no location, just Norfolk. So we don't know whether that's true or not. But presumably the fact that we have two, probably from Norfolk, suggests that there is some atelier here producing these deluxe thaweshammers in silver with gold filigree inlay, and therefore that there is a regional population that you can make these things for, that there enough of them sitting around wanting to buy a Thor's hammer to go and buy this particular type, which again, I think is fascinating because those ones aren't really paralleled in Scandinavia.

No, that's a good point, actually. That's a really good point. And also it suggests a slightly longer lasting presence as well. These aren't just coming in one big battle moving on. No. But if there's enough an industry around them, that's... Absolutely. I think this is the really crucial thing. A lot of the sort of Viking material that we have here shows that they're maintaining these connections with the homeland. And I guess it's not dissimilar to the fact that we have in the second half of the 20th century, for instance, a large Asian population that has moved into Britain, become British, but still maintains very close relationships with the Indian subcontinent. And I think that we have to look at the Vikings in a very, very similar way to this. And I think

that's why you get the latest Scandinavian styles coming in very quickly. They appear in Britain because you could invent your latest Ringerike design, and three days later it can appear in Norfolk. There's nothing to stop that happening. Exactly. And I think that's the thing, isn't it? If we look at migration from a modern perspective, it's not a sort of one-off thing you just go off and then you never go back. There is that constant connection back and forth. And I completely agree that must have been the case in the Viking Age. And earlier and later as well. Absolutely. I think this is, again, we were talking about this earlier on.

I think this is one of the missing gaps in our knowledge. We have focused a lot on, early Anglo-Saxon migration, on Viking migration. But what we've never really done is looked at that middle Anglo-Saxon period, which we tend to think of as English, but actually is almost certainly combined with a lot of ongoing immigration and movement between not just the Scandinavian world, but I suspect France and Germany. Fantastic. Now, I do just have to mention what we are looking at right next to this.

You've got several weapons. So you've got lots of swords. you've got an axe head, you've got some arrowheads here. Are these local as well? Where are these objects from? These are all local finds, but again, you draw attention to them because they're effectively of what we think of a Scandinavian style.

And it suggests that people are bringing their weapons over with them or potentially later on they're actually having weapons made for them in a familiar style or maybe even, just like we saw with brooches a minute ago, as part of their own cultural identity. They wanted to show themselves as still part of a cultural group. And you only need to think of,

I don't know, somebody moving for work, they can still remain, dare I say, Norwich City fan if they're working in Leeds, and they probably want their son to grow up as a Norwich City fan. And it might well be the same with your Viking warrior settling down in Fetford

that he wants his son to remember that he was born in Heddeby rather than anywhere else. And I suspect that we have a lot of fashion dictated by that, those sorts of underlying feelings, and then they recreated in the weaponry. And interestingly, 14 that you can see here

was found buried with a skeleton in Thetford. And so it suggests again that they are clinging on to those earlier beliefs. So although it came from a Christian cemetery, they're almost certainly wanting to be remembered in the way that they were brought up with burying objects with the dead. Absolutely. And the whole idea of what that means and religious meanings of grave goods, you know, have this idea that if you're buried without grave goods,

you are a Christian, if you're with, you or not? But I think it's not as simple as that, is it? No, it really isn't. And I think this is where it's really interesting, going right the way back to the 7th century now, where things like Sutton, who we used to see as a strictly pagan burial, but we know now from other burials

like Prittlewell that it could easily be a Christian burial as well. So there's so much more nuance and understanding. It leaves bigger questions, of course, but it does make it incredibly more interesting to try and interrogate that data now. Okay, well, Tim, I think we've got a little bit sidetracked here, haven't we?

I came here to talk about the Norman Keep more than anything in the castle, and we got stuck in the Middle Saxon Viking Age galleries. Yeah, yeah, we just couldn't not. But let's move on to talk about the Keep, and unfortunately, we can't actually go into the Keep now, can we, because you've got this huge big development work going on there. Tell me more about that. It's a really exciting development now, I know.

so that wouldn't I? But it's something that I've been involved in now for over 10 years through the planning stages. And the idea is that the keep, which had been completely stripped out to make it into a prison, is going to have its original Norman floor levels and rooms put back into it. So it'll be the first time that people will have been able to have appreciated those for centuries. And it's going to enable people to really understand the way that the building worked a lot better. And it's been one of the first time. And it's been one of the building. of the challenges that our visitors we know have wanted to come to Norwich Castle to see the Norman Castle and I found it really hard to interpret and one of the reasons for that was that when

boardman the architect who turned the prison into a museum came here he wanted to put the floor levels back where they had originally been but every time he wanted to do that he was overruled by the museum's committee because it was too expensive nothing much changes so this project is enabling us to strip out the Victorian floor level and put the Norman floor level back in, which means that rather than walking in Norman mid-air, when you walk across the Victorian floor, you will actually be able to go up into the Great Hall via the original four-building staircase. You'll then be able to go into the King's Chamber and see the chapel, as it would have been, in the full size. And I think most remarkably, and one of the things that gives me greatest pleasure, actually, although I'm getting a

medieval gallery out of it, is that for the first time ever, visitors will be able to visit all five levels of the keep, including the battlements, even if you're in a wheelchair. And I think, as far as I know, it's the only castle in the whole of the United Kingdom that if you're in a wheelchair, you'll be able to see the view out of the battlements. And I think that is an incredible gift to everybody to be able to look out and really enjoy the building. And as I said, I'm getting a medieval gallery out of it. One of the things that we're really excited about is that we are producing a new gallery of the medieval world

in association in partnership with the British Museum. And so we'll have over a thousand objects on display and it will take you through the medieval world right away from the conquest all the way up to the dissolution of the monasteries. Fantastic. So that's really going to put this site into its context, I suppose. So it's not just a keep in a castle, but actually get the visitors to understand the world that this was part of.

That's right. And one of the key things that we're keen on showing is that a castle isn't just about knights and battle. The castle is a wider symbolic place. It's a royal palace first and foremost. When it was built, it was designed, yes, as a defensible structure, but actually when you look at it militarily, it was not very well designed. So, for instance, the four building, if you snuck underneath it, you could light a fire and break your way through the wall. And there was no way the defenders actually defending themselves. So it is all. about might power, projecting that power and being a very comfortable place to live in at the same time. And it's a royal palace which is showing itself to be built by and used by the new Norman elite. And so we want to be able to show the whole world that they occupied and took over right from the most humble people that did all of the work, all of the people that prayed, and then of course those who ruled, those who fought in society and established those three orders. And another one of the things that I think we really forget, particularly in the modern world, but which we want to draw out, is the absolutely essential role of religion and

Christianity in the medieval world. Everybody was Christian, apart from, interestingly enough, a small but very significant part of the population, which was Jewish. And we had a very important Jewish population within Norwich. We actually have some of the only surviving poetry by a medieval Jewish person, Mayor of Norwich, and we have his poetry surviving, which we will again be giving due attention to within the gallery. Fantastic. You really are. Gave so many different voices that represented Norwich at the time, I suppose.

Well, this is the whole idea, and Norwich, of course, is not just an island. It floats within East Anglia, which was an incredibly rich and powerful place within the whole of England. Again, it's one of those things that in our post-industrial... Revolution history we tend to forget. But East Anglia was in many ways, and it still is, the breadbasket of England, and that to be able to spend your time making jewelry or whatever, you needed to eat. And it's only by production of food and surplus production of food that can then move into

towns that you're able to put your eye on other things. And Norfolk was a very, very wealthy county. It's an agricultural county. that's what made it so powerful. It's surrounded by the sea as well on two sides, effectively. And so it had all of those international connections across the North Sea. And we can see that, again, in the archaeology of Norfolk, there's an enormous amount of material that comes from overseas.

We've got a fantastic chest that was made of Baltic oak, and that's because the best oak by then comes across from the Baltic. We've chopped all of our trees down, so we're now importing the stuff. and it's those little things that really helped to make you realise that Norfolk, Norwich were part of an international world and those are the stories that we really want to bring out. Fantastic. Well, I can't wait to get back and see it, what is all done. I know you've got a lot of hard work in front of you to get it across the line. When is it meant to be finished? We will be opening next year, at the end of next year.

So we're already starting to finish off certain elements. So we have, most importantly, a new two-story toilet block, which is just on the other side of that. wall and that will be open this summer and then we opened the new front entrance and a new cafe restaurant and then the keep itself with all of the displays in association with the brish museum and VR learning experiences a new early years gallery and of course all of the recreated rooms and when i say the room spaces we're not just talking about rooms we're actually furnishing it with fabrics with furniture they will be open at the end of next year Fantastic. Well, I can't wait to come back.

Tim, thank you so much for taking me through. I can't wait to see what this turns out. And thank you so much for indulging a little Viking Age detour along the way. It was an indulgence for us both, so let's be honest. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Tim. Absolute pleasure. That brings us to the end of this episode and to our exclusive tour behind the scenes of Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery.

That was Dr Tim Pestall, the curator of archaeology. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you did, do feel free to leave us a review and press the subscribe button if you haven't already. Don't forget, there's also a newsletter that you can subscribe to called Medieval Mondays, which gives you all the important medieval news you need in your life directly in your inbox.

Just look at the episode notes for how to do that. Do join us again for the next episode. We'll have Matt Lewis, my co-host, back on Saturday for another episode, and I'll be back next Tuesday. Thank you all so much for. listening, I'm Dr. Kat German and this has been Gone Medieval from History Hit.