Gone Medieval - Norwich Castle

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Medieval Norwich comes alive as Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega visit Norwich Castle, once a hulking Norman fortress, royal palace and later a Victorian jail. Matt tours the huge Keep with archaeologist Dr Tim Pestell, exploring fire-scarred vaults from medieval sieges and exquisite high-status finds unearthed in recent excavations. Matt also gets to attend Henry I's feasting hall where he spent Christmas in 1121.MORECastles, Kings and Courtly LifeListen on AppleListen on SpotifyCastles in RuinsListen on AppleListen on SpotifyGone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. Audio editor is Amy Haddow. 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. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on 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, 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.

Welcome to this special episode of Gone Medieval. Elena and I have jumped aboard a train to journey to the second city of Medieval England, home to more medieval churches than any other city north of the Alps, and boasting the largest and one of the oldest covered markets in Europe, Open daily for the last 900 years. Have you guessed where we are? It's the stunning city of Norwich. Yes, but not just Norwich.

We're in medieval Norwich, where the Wensom and Year rivers twist together. England's cheeky little understudy to London. This is a city that punched way above its weight for centuries, born from humble Anglo-Saxon roots around the 5th to the 7th centuries, when settlers dubbed it Northwick. which translates literally as North Harbour.

This spot blossomed into a bustling hub, thanks to its prime real estate. We've got fertile farmlands for grain and wool, easy river access for trade, and a strategic perch in East Anglia that made it a natural magnet for merchants, swapping everything from pottery to coins across Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and even Viking longships. By the 10th century, it had its own mint churning out silver pennies stamped, Norvik, turning the place into a clinking treasury of commerce that even caught the eye of kings

like Athelstan, who formalized it as a proper town around 924 to 939. But whoo! The drama did not stop there. Enter some of my favorite guys, the Normans in 1066, who swept away Saxon homes to build Norwich Castle on a man-made mound. It's a hulking symbol of conquest that screamed, This land is ours now. The city shrugged off a Viking raid by Sven Forkbeard in 2004. You know,

they rebuilt because Norwich folk are tough like that. And it evolved into a powerhouse of wool and cloth production, exporting fabrics that clothed Europe's elite and flooded the city's coffers. This boom funded a skyline of spires.

57 churches were crammed into its walls. A grand Grand Cathedral started in 1096 by Bishop Herbert Delossinger to flex Norman muscle, and friaries popping up like mushrooms after the rain. Think, you know, Franciscans in 1226 and Dominicans soon after. Turning Norwich into a holy hotspot amid its rowdy markets and guilds. So exactly what made Norwich tick as England's second city from the 12th to the 18th centuries. It was a perfect storm of brains, brawn and money.

A royal charter from Richard the Lionheart in 1194 supercharged its textile trade, making it a go-to for everything from fine linens to Flemish immigrants bringing some weaving wizardry. The castle doubled as a palace for kings and a justice hub, while the cathedral quarter hummed with pilgrims, peddlers and the occasional riot. Even its 2.5-mile city walls started in 1297 with 12 gates, were an impenetrable barrier against unrest. Enclosing a vibrant mix of Anglo-Scanadian traders, devout friars and wool barons,

who turned this Riverside village into a medieval metropolis rivaling the capital in both size, and swagger. Eleanor will be heading deep into the city to learn more about the communities that thrived and perished here in the Middle Ages. And we'll bring you that episode next week. But today, I've had a special invitation to visit the castle and find out more about its construction, its royal guests and the treasures that have been found in its foundations during recent excavations. So, Eleanor, I'll see you a bit later on, and if you're lucky, maybe we'll get into the castle for a bit of mead.

Fair enough. Off I go. I will see you later. See you later. So we're here at Norwich Castle, standing up here, looking out over the skyline of the city, underneath the looming chalky white walls of Norwich Castle, all these. lit up against the dark, wintery night sky. And we're perched up here on this man-made mound that looms over the River Wensom. The castle was first raised in the turbulent years after the Norman conquest, when William I pushed into East Anglia and stamped his authority on this rich but restless region. This was more than a fortress. By the early 12th century, it was a royal

palace keep, looking very much as it does today. And joining me to help me find out more is archaeologist and curator Dr Tim Pestall, who's going to be our guide around the castle. Tim, hello, and welcome to God Medieval. Hello, good to meet you. It's great to be here. So out here, when we look on these kind of original exterior walls of the keep and stand on top of this massive mot, how much of what we're seeing belongs to that initial post-conquest phase? If we were stood here in the late 11th century, how different would it look?

If you stood here in the late 11th century, it would look actually very, very similar. but seeing isn't believing because actually the stone walls that you see now were refaced in the 1830s. There was a big debate at the time locally about how they should be treated and the decision was taken by the city authorities that they should be replaced pretty much as they were originally when it was first built. The slight problem for them is that it was the city jail at the time or rather the county jail in the middle of the city, and they weren't very keen on a crumbling building, letting people out.

So they wanted to make the walls good, and as part of that, they completely refaced it, but using bath stone, the original stone was imported from Kahn in Normandy, and the base of the keep was originally all flint, and it had got a render over it, presumably, something like a limemortar to render, and they actually faced that in Ashlar as well.

So with that notwithstanding, what you see would be pretty much the same in the early 12th century. And it really underlines what an amazing piece of architecture it was for the time. It is absolutely stunning to look at today. I mean, quite a fancy 19th century jail as well, I guess. I'm not sure you'd say that if you're inside, because the cell blocks were all brick-built. They were put in by Sir Johnstone in the 18th century. But I'm sure we can come on to that later. And before we go inside and we take a closer look in the keep,

out here in the bailey and on the mot, you've been leading some of the excavations that have been going on around the castle and we're going to find out more about what secrets the castle has given up to you over recent years. But while we're out here, can you give us a sense of what this might have looked like in the medieval period?

Because baileys would tend to be kind of bustling hubs, lots of people working out here. What kind of evidence has come out of the ground? That's right. Sadly, very little evidence. has come out about the 12th century motte here and the reason for that seems to be that the fact is the castle has been in use continuously for 900 years

and a lot of those early traces have been simply erased. Now around the edge of the mound that you see today we have a nice Victorian iron railing and what we have to imagine for the 12th century is a palisade, a very large substantial wooden palisade So effectively a sort of defensive wall made of logs which would have provided the first line of defence up against the keep walls itself on top of the mound.

So the view that we see today is something that you would only really have been able to have got from the walkway on the top of the palisade rather than the top of the mound itself. Yeah, fascinating. Can we head inside the keep? Because I know the castle's closing. Yeah, you're probably getting cold as well.

Can we get the gone medieval audience inside a closed-up castle and take a closer look inside? the keep. So as we entered the doorway into the keep, can you describe what we're looking at here? What is the stonework that greets us here? Well, the scene that greets us now is the result of a change. We've

recently reopened the keep and some of the surrounding areas so you can see our beautiful glass-filled atrium. But the walls that you can see are effectively a reworking by Sir John Sown of the

original four building. Now the four building was the staircase that allowed you to enter the keep on the eastern face. And the archers that you see have now been filled in by Sown, because when he was building here, this was the prison. And this was the debtor side of the prison. And so the rooms that he created underneath the archers were used by the debtors. There's a flint facing to it, which wouldn't have been napped flint in the 12th century, but a flint work wall nonetheless.

But in the larger of the two buildings with this big arch, we still have the original 12th century vault. And it's got pink stonework where it's obviously been burnt. And that probably means that we've got evidence of one of the sieges that took place here. Oh, wow. Incredible to be able to see that today. And once this was finished, which king finished this off? And what do we know about kings coming to stay here? We've got limited amount of evidence for royals coming to Norwich, although it was a very strategically important part of the country.

And it might strike people as odd because it's kind of built as a bit of a royal palace. It is. It is. It is. So the first castle structure here is built by William the Conqueror, very soon after the conquest. And that's part of a wider program where he's wanting to put down fortifications across the country. And within this, East Anglia and Norwich are. particularly important, Norwich, because it's economically a very, very wealthy place. It's an

economic driver, but more worrying for the conqueror is there's a big Scandinavian population. And we know that the Scandinavians are ready to invade if they get the chance. And so he's trying to guard against that. So this is a part of his new kingdom. He feels like he needs to get a good grip on. It's an immensely wealthy part of the kingdom with a large Scandinavian population. and those two things make it a key thing to hold down and a key danger for him. So Tim, what's so important about this space in terms of this castle story as a defensive building and as a palace? Well, it shows that it's a really crummy defensive structure because effectively this is built as a royal palace. But you have this staircase going up on the four building and there are two large archers that support that structure.

The problem is if you're a defender and somebody runs under the floor, under one of those archers supporting the stairs, you can't get at them because there's no hole in the floor to throw things at them. And that seems to have been the case at some point in the history, because we have, in a room that we'll just go upstairs and have a look at,

pinkish stonework. And that's a sign that there's been intensive heat and therefore a big fire, probably a bonfire. So if we got this little spiral staircase. So somebody wasn't quite thinking about defending the castle properly, and it's kind of... I think they might.

have been confident that they wouldn't need to. But here, this is the original 12th century vault that holds up the staircase. And you can see it's an amazing structure that's normally hidden from view. But all the pink mortar and stonework there shows that there's been an enormous amount of heat and a big fire basically downstairs. And one of the ways that you breach the walls of a castle is by building. a big fire, heating up the stone until it cracks, and then it's easier to pick away so you can mine your way through the walls. And bearing in mind that these walls are about

three metres thick at the base, you want every little bit of help that you can to get through them. Yeah. It's amazing to see that kind of evidence of what, 800 years ago, someone desperately trying to attack this place and getting them. We can stand here now and look at all of that pink. And you can see what a fantastic structure, if you're not having to defend it, but you're wandering around as the king, were your architect, it must have looked an amazing structure. We're upstairs because this is an 18th century floor

that's been put in, but originally you would have been twice as far down. It would have been this enormous big vault up in the air. And if you look really carefully, you can see the little teeth on the bolt. Yeah. So you've got sculpture, which would be hardly visible from the ground,

but it shows the sort of extent that they're going to in decorating. this. It's a palace fit for a king. And that's just showing off... Yeah. To show how much money you've got, because as you say, literally, we're what, twice as close as anybody else would have been at time walking through. Nobody's really going to notice that, but the king knows it's there. The king knows it's there. Yeah, that's amazing.

And do we have any sense of when this might have happened, when Norwich Castle was attacked in... We know there are two sieges in the history of the keep in 1173 and in 1216, but we can't say, A, for sure, that it was a... siege and B that it was one of those two sieges. But the likelihood is if you've got a big fire next to your keep, it's going to be because somebody's doing something they shouldn't be doing and it must relate to one of those two dates. Yeah, absolutely fascinating. As you say, big palatial entrance, also great spot for a massive bonfire. Yes. I'm not sure it's what the king had in mind. Right. No, see what else we can find? So what finds have you got to tell us about

More of the history of Norwich Castle. One of the things that I think is most evocative is this wonderful little bobbin that you can imagine wool being wound around. But unlike a lot of bobbins, this is a really, really high status piece. It's not made of wood, it's made of walrus ivory. It's 11th or very early 12th century.

You can see it's pure Romanesque in its styling. So at one end you have this dragon-like head and then at the other end you have a human head and again the way that the dragon has his ears and a little flick of the main behind the ears are exactly what you see in manuscript illustrations of this time and the little human face with these pupils that have been drilled in

it's a really really beautiful piece but it's also high status and so a woman undertaking this would be participating in needlework, which is a high-status occupation for females. And this is exactly the sort of thing that Queen Adeliza herself might have been doing in the castle at Christmas in 1121. Now, obviously we can't say this belonged to her and that she dropped it. But it's exactly the sort of object that she would have owned or one of her entourage. And I think that really speaks of the

sort of sumptuousness of even humdrum objects. Yeah, yeah. And how they were changed. and could be made to look like this. And if visitors want to come and find this, we've come into the gallery in the keep, we've turned left, we're a case marked noble pastimes and it's number 10, and we've got, what, maybe three,

three and a bit inches of really pale, white, walrus ivory. And the detail on it, for something so small, the detail is incredible, and for something that's just used as part of needlework, yeah.

You imagine having a whole set of these. And, you know, you can wrap wool around a stick, but they're not going to be doing that, instead of which they turn objects which would normally be every day into works of art in their own right, let alone the works of art that then they're going to create from those pieces of textile.

But again, it's just showing off how much money you've got, even a bobbin. It's all this good. And again, something like this points to the fact that there are these high status women here in Norwich. It also points to the fact that there must be good materials available for that needlework, you know, thread, and all of those kinds of.

things. So there must have been a focus on this as a royal castle, a royal palace, somewhere that is buying up high-status goods in the area too. It must become sort of almost an economy of its own. It's generating a marketplace. It must have been exactly that. This is a centre of wealth. Wealth has been pulled in through taxation and all sorts of other dues and levies. And they're going to be spending their money. And they're going to be going out and buying luxury goods like this. And Norwich as a really important trading centre, not just in the European context, but of course with a lot of the Northern world, Scandinavia, the Baltic, they're going to be pulling in things like walrus ivory from there, which can then be carved. And again, it speaks to,

as you say, walrus ivory, speaks to the reach of Norwich because that's not a local product. No, it's not. That had to have come in from a long way away, which speaks to these connections that Norwich has across the northern European world? Absolutely, absolutely. And it's that reach, particularly to the northern world, that makes Norwich so strategically important and exactly the sort of place that William, then his son, William Rufus, and then his brother, Henry I, are going to want to build such an amazing building as they do. So we're going to say, not Queen Adeliza's bobbin, maybe Queen Adelises bobbing. Yes, it's possibly Queen evidence of really high status activity going on at this castle and the connectivity that Norwich is enjoying and which is helping the whole city around the castle to increasingly thrive throughout the medieval period.

Have you got anything else you can show us that you found? We have an arrowhead and it's exactly the sort of thing that you would expect to have in a castle. And so one of the, I guess, disappointments of the excavation is, that we didn't find more artefacts. But what we do have is an iron arrowhead, which is exactly, again, the sort of thing you might expect to see in a castle, even one that's designed primarily as a royal palace. And we obviously have a number of other arrowheads,

and we have a cannon, all sorts of things, swords here on display. But of course, these are the sorts of things that generally don't survive, because swords are really expensive pieces of a question. equipment, they're handed on from father to son or from person to person. Sometimes they'll be given names. Certainly, we know for the Anglo-Saxon period, sorts will be given names. So you don't tend to just leave them lying around. Whereas something like an arrowhead, it's far more likely to get lost and forgotten. And so, sure enough, one of these came up from the excavations in the basement alongside other dumped material. Primarily what we found in the basement, though, are

bones and pieces of pottery. And so does that suggest that this is perhaps an arrowhead that's seen better days than someone's thrown it away rather than it's been fired in anger at the castle? It almost certainly is because it's found inside the basement rather than outside on the mound. You can imagine if it was embedded in the mound itself, who knows how it had got there. But if it's inside the basement, then it's likely to have been a casual loss rather than something in conflict. And if we go over a little bit further to the north, we can see, exactly what I mean.

Lovely. And this is where we can really see this basement. So here we're just looking over the edge of the gallery. And this is down to the basement where that arrowhead was found? That's right. So the area in the northeast corner of the Keat basement was totally excavated.

And the arrowhead was found from within this area. It's absolutely huge. It's far bigger than it needs to be just to stick a few barrels of wine in. It's obviously all about size, status, and probably elevating the first floor even higher so that the area of the King's Chambers is up high and it has therefore more status.

It couldn't just rely on a single spine wall at the centre. It had to have a second sub-spine wall because you'd never get tree trunks long enough to span the whole way across for the King's Chamber, which is directly above us here. So you've got these open areas. These are the bits that you mentioned that you've left where the excavations were undertaken. That's right. You can see the bases of where, as you say, those arches would have reached over.

And again, it's structural, it's needed, but it's also going to look impressive to have all of these big arches. And how many people are going to be in here? Is the King going to be in the basement? Probably not. But it's a really, really big, big space. it also shows some of the problems that were encountered during the construction of the building. The first castle, the first keep, was probably a timber structure,

and it was sitting on a mound that was probably quite large, but not large enough for the stone keep. So they had to build even more of a mound to plonk this stone keep on. And the well that is behind us predicated where the keep had to go, so you don't have to re-dig the well. and that meant that the northeast corner of the keep butts over the edge of the original outline of the mound onto the new expanded mound

and that ground isn't settled and so the wall starts to crack and so where your window would once have been is now a whole filled in bit of wall with stitching to hold that wall together and it was obviously a dramatic change in plan because they've not only had to block the window build it as a solid wall.

They put a buttress on the other side as well to help. And then we can actually see the crack still surviving in the bottom of the wall. Just at the bottom of the state. So I guess if people are coming to Norwich Castle, we're standing now looking over the gallery. We're looking down on the open excavation pit where it says cutting stones through time and phase one peers. And there's a staircase directly in front of us.

And so the zigzag of stone kind of rises up from the bottom of that staircase. and the remaining crack that you can see is literally at the bottom of the staircase. It is. It's the bottom of the staircase. And we've left a glass floor here because when we excavated it, you could see the crack going all the way down into the foundation of the wall. So you can now stand on the glass and see the remains of our excavation with the crack running all the way down. And there's another glass floor. And that shows one of the walls that the piers were built off. And in that there's a big crack.

And what that shows is that it wasn't just the north wall pulling apart, but it was the whole of the northeast corner that was pulling away and tipping out. And so the crack went all the way through this wall that's even further into the building. So it was really quite a dramatic event that must have happened, which they needed to suddenly think, oh, oh dear, we need to put this right. Yeah, yeah. And do we have a sense of what they did to repair it and when? Well, we don't know exactly when, but because this is in the basement, this has to be one of the earliest phases of the structure. And so it means that it must have been presumably about 1,100. And it's one of those early phases. The interesting thing about this north wall is, because we excavated it, we could see how far down the wall goes. So it has footings that are about four feet deep. Whereas when we excavated a pit on the south wall, it's about,

12 inches deep. So they were aware that they'd got a settled mound where they were building the south wall, but the north wall where they were jutting out over to this new ground. They needed a deeper wall, but even that deeper foundation wasn't enough for them. This is the benefit of coming to a place like this

with an expert like you, and hopefully the benefit for the gone medieval audience, because I honestly would have walked past that and not had a clue that any of that was there. And standing here talking to you, gives it a whole new view of that wall and its role in the history of the castle, really. And suddenly it makes sense, doesn't it?

Yeah. It makes sense of why you don't have this symmetry in that wall. It's all just been bodged together slightly. Yeah, fascinating. I wonder, amongst all of these fascinating items and artifacts and the architectural history of the building that you found, did you find any human remains within the castle? We have.

So within the castle, but not within the keep. Keep is this central stone building at the heart of the castle. But on the mound itself, we did have to excavate a few pits because we were putting a tower crane in place as part of the redevelopment to bring up materials. And the pit that had to be dug before we did that revealed a number of skeletons and bits of skeletons. Now, they almost certainly weren't medieval. Or if they were medieval, they were very late medieval. or probably into the 17th, maybe even the 18th century. And they almost certainly relate to prisoners that were buried on the mound

who had been pulled into the keep. Because we know that the keep was used for holding prisoners from the late medieval period all the way through into the 19th century. It becomes the county jail. And therefore we know people end up dying within the building, let alone some people being able to. executed. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that those come after its time as a medieval palace, because if you're the king and you're building this fancy building that's got all of these

elements that you spent so much on, even the bits that nobody can see, you're not going to be burying people inside, aren't you? No, you're not. And it really reflects the long history of what the keep is put in to do when you are king. So you are dispensing justice in your kingdom. And part of that will involve holding people on a charge, they can have a trial and then as a result of the trial they might be set free they might be punished and some of the punishments could involve being hanged and therefore you needed somewhere to bury those people and it was only later on when it stops being a royal palace and it maintains itself as the shire house where the courts are held and as the county jail that you're getting

that concentration on prisoners here and there's therefore, as we found in the excavation, potentially with the skeletons. And I wonder if you could, I'm looking while you're talking behind us just over there, there is what looks like a little lead coffin. This is from an excavation that was undertaken in the 19th century at Windham Abbey, which is just down the road from Norwich. And it's a very, very evocative object because it's, as you can see, a tiny little lead casket.

and inside it originally was the skeleton of an infant, probably who hadn't even been born. And it was found next to another sealed lead coffin which had the body of a woman in it. And they were both examined by a local surgeon at the time. And he pronounced them to be mother and child, and that the mother had probably died either in childbirth or before. the baby had been born. Now we don't have any of those skeletons. We don't have the adult coffin either, but this tiny coffin has been examined and the flax that was used to make the shroud has now been identified. We know that there were various seeds that were inside it. They've been

identified as a cumin, so being buried with herbs, make the body sweet smelling. And we've more recently had a radiocarbon date on it. Now originally when it was excavated to the west of the chapter house, it was thought that it would be the remains of the Dalbini family who founded the Abbey at Wyndham and who would have therefore been in a benefactor's position to be buried near the chapter house. In actual fact, the radio carbon date shows that they're not 12th century. This is 15th century. And we have two samples. And one is 1428 to 1460 and the other is 1428 to 1461.

So not only do those two at 95% probability match, but they're really tight dating. And what we hope to do in the future is look at who was buried at Windham Abbey at about that time that might fit the fact that it's potentially a mother and child being buried in a high status position by the chapter house.

Yeah, but I guess it's a reminder even if they're not from the castle that we've been talking an awful lot about this is a high status place and a lot of money being spent on it and kings using it for Christmas celebrations and things. But this is a really poignant reminder that death was around the corner. Absolutely. For everybody, you know, high status people. Exactly. It doesn't matter whether you're rich or poor, the same challenges await you.

And for most medieval women, the biggest challenge of all was child. earth because it genuinely was something you could die from. And I think that this object, and it is just an object, there's no human remains in this, still provides a really powerful reminder of that. Yeah, very moving little objects. So Tim, I'm wondering, I mean, for you, I guess a collection like this must be like your children, so I'm going to ask you the most and reasonable question ever. Do you have a favourite child? I know what's coming. You have a favourite child locked away in here. Maybe something that people might miss if they didn't have your advice.

Well, for me, it's a very personal thing because I actually was part of the project that revealed them. And we have a number of little lead objects here, which in themselves don't look particularly exciting. But they come from Bromholm. And Bromholm is the site of a Cluniac monastery that was founded in 1113. and it came to have a relic of the true cross that was brought there by a priest who had escaped from the fall of Constantinople, and he hawked a relic of the true cross around until he was taken in, having been turned away everywhere else, as a sort of ne'er do well, by the poor brethren, and subsequently miracles occurred. And it became a national centre for pilgrimage.

It's mentioned in the vision of Pierce Ploughman. It's mentioned in the Canterbury Tales. and kings came to the shrine, and this fantastic pilgrimage trade grew up. And one of the things that I was very interested in looking at, along with a colleague of mine, Phil Emery, who used to work for the local archaeological unit here, was to see what we could see as part of the priory that was manifestations of the pilgrimage trade. And so although it's a scheduled ancient monument, we had to get permission from Historic England to work the site,

we had a project and we found a number of these items. And you can see here, there's a little number 57 in our case here, has got this portrayal of a sort of swaying woman, which is typical of the 14th century. We get this sort of swaying posture. And 61 next to it is this little ring with looks like serrations. It's a crown of thorns. And they're both ex-voto, in other words,

offerings that you would make and put on an altar. And I think it really brings alive how, yes, it's all very well to have a silver-plated ship if you're a king to make as an offering. But if you're an ordinary person, and you can't afford that, these little lead trinkets are exactly the sort of thing

that enable you to interact with the shrine and its power. And they're really powerful because of that. And then there are three little identical tokens of some sort, and they have on one side the head of Christ, and on the other side you can see this double-barred cross, which is the cross of Bromholm. And it's this sort of patriarchal cross that you get in the Eastern Empire. And then next to it is this wonderful manuscript.

And it's a prayer roll, this early 16th century date, and it comes from Bromholm Priory. And we were there working on the site when a couple came walking towards us. as we're working in. We think, well, who are they? They owned that. Wow.

And they were on their own pilgrimage to see Bromholm and to see where their manuscript had come from. That is an incredible coincidence. Exactly. As though it was meant to be. And so they very generously loaned it to us to put onto display.

And so we've been able to bring these elements from the site back together again. And I think, you know, so you can see, see why it's a favourite son of mine in this particular gallery. It's a very personal thing to me. But I have to say, if you're more neutral than I am in your choices, there are some amazing, amazing things here. I mean, we're very lucky. We've got nearly a thousand objects on display in this gallery. There's a lot of stuff and a lot of stories. Yeah, yeah. And each one of those

has a story. They do. Absolutely. Absolutely incredible. And we're looking at the Piety and Pilgrimage case here. We're in the back. Would this be southwest? This is the south. This is the south. side, yes, the southwest corner. South West corner. And we're looking at items 56 to 64 in the case there that came from Bromham. And then that vellum prayer roll is hanging up right next to them, which is a magnificent thing to look at. So yeah, definitely don't miss those if you come to the Castle Gallery. Another of my interest in pieces, if you like, where the tiny little fragments, we've got some oblong cutouts of silk, which look pretty manky and rusty.

but actually they're part of the vestments that were worn by Bishop Lihart in his tomb in the cathedral in Norwich. And they were discovered in the 19th century when some workmen actually accidentally broke into the tomb when they were repairing flooring. And so we have some of the silk. But what we were able to do as part of the project was to do dye analysis. And so we could work out what the original colours of that silk was. and so we've actually woven two panels of silk with the original colours and the original design and those cutouts are fitted onto the exact place that they would be on the pattern.

That's an incredible exercise. So looking at this, it says it's the 1420s. That's an incredible exercise in using science to really bring something back to life. Because as you say, that looks really dull and faded apart. It does. But this really helps us to imagine. the colour and the splendour of a medieval church service. Yeah.

And it really reminds you that what we see today and the artefacts that we have are very often a pale shadow, literally a pale shadow, of what was once here. They were really into their colour. Lovely. Can we go and take a look? Yeah, upstairs. The upstairs, please. Oh, wow.

I mean, we've just come to the top of the stairs, Tim, and we've turned a corner, and there's a big blue door, and beyond it, is wow. What are we looking at here? Yeah. This is the entrance, the only entrance, to the medieval key. And this is why it's such a fantastic and a grand structure, because to be allowed into this palace, you had to come through this door.

And the door itself really speaks of the sort of status and wealth that lie behind the overall building. So we've gone for an archaeologically and architecturally evidenced door. So it's made of oak, but it's also covered in leather. And we've got an expanding amount of archaeological evidence now that doors were once covered in leather. And the ironwork that you can see, it's asymmetric, but this is based on the door at Ravenningham Church, which is early 12th century in Norfolk. So again, it's a contemporary design. We know that it's right for the period. The strap hinges are based on Castle Heddonham, but

again they're quite generic in their way you have effectively a strap a horizontal bar that comes out with a C so it looks like a sort of rounded E doesn't it with a big bar coming out sticking its tongue out and the end of the tongue it's split in two and it curls back on itself and these split leaf curls are absolutely characteristic of the metal work of the period and again things like this door latch here is based on an early 12th example from Essex, and this is a Scandinavian door escutcheon. And we know there are a few surviving door escutcheons like this, but we know with our big Scandinavian population, something like this wouldn't be out of place. And then the whole door, the leather is painted blue. We know that they're keen on painting their doors.

We actually have a manuscript called Liba, Florida, from Arbara to 1120, which shows a vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, and it has white doors and blue doors on it. And then the ironwork has been tinned. And again, we've got good archaeological evidence that the ironwork can be tinned so it stays looking shiny. So the whole effect is of grandeur and it's certainly not modest and shy. No. And allows people to get close to what it would have been like to step inside this castle 900 years ago. And, you know, I just want to drive home. When you step past this blue door as well, got what five foot of walls here the original medieval entrance to the castle

so if you were going to come and visit Henry I for Christmas in 1121 you would have been walking past these walls you would be touching the same stones that they did yeah it's one of those things I really like touching the stone that people have been touching for 900 years and thinking who else has made their way past there but I mean if you made it up into Henry the first keep as well

this room is absolutely splendid laid out for a feast We've got the high table with a throne on a slightly raised dais at the front with some rich red curtains behind it. We've got the benches laid out for the less important people. That's right. And then we've got a gallery above it as well. And as you said, this is a riot of colour, isn't it? This isn't the grey, matte brown, muddiness that we sometimes associate with the medieval period. This is all about showing off your wealth?

And is this what we think or what you think this would have looked like when Henry I first held his Christian? Christmas Court here in 1121. The configuration is as near as we can make it on the evidence that we have. So we know that the spine wall, the wall that runs right the way through the middle of the building here, was put up by Edward Bordman in the 1890s, and it had open arcades. So the original wall would have been solid, and we don't know whereabouts arcades might have been within that, but we do know that there would have been a door at this east end that ultimately goes through into the chapel. We do know that there would have been a door that takes you

into the King's Chamber, which we can go through in a minute. We do know that there's a mezzanine at that position because the wall passage that still survives has a set of stairs that go up. And so that preserves the scar that there was something there. And we know that the kitchen area beyond is really unusual because normally you put the kitchen outside for the risk of fire. But the staircase in that northwest corner, at some point when they were building the structure, they decided, actually, we don't need a third staircase. Let's put a fireplace in. And that's what they did. And that fireplace with the smoke louvres still survives within that corner. It's incredible how much you can recreate from that to be able to walk in here and step back

in time 900 years and see all of the splendor. This is why the castle was built, isn't it? Because a king wants to sit there and let you know that all of this is his. Yes. Everything that surrounds it is his and you can't have it back. No. And I'm your boss. You do what I say. And when you think that we know at least 98 Anglo-Saxon houses are destroyed to make way for the building of the castle,

and that each of those Anglo-Saxon houses was probably the size of probably an average family room today, then it gives you an idea of just how magnificent this. Great Hall alone is, it was a real social statement in the early 12th century. Yeah, absolutely incredible. The throne itself here, we have two thrones, one for the king, one for the queen. So this is based on the Edwin Assalta, a manuscript of the 12th century. So we had enormous fun designing our own furniture based on manuscripts to be able to make them as accurate as possible to the period.

and this sort of open work arcading is, again, and the finials, something that you see on contemporary manuscripts. So it's not make-believe. This is based on as far as we can make it, the archaeological, art historical evidence that we have. Yeah, incredible. I mean, there is just so much for people to come here and see, isn't it? I mean, it's not that long being reopened, but you must be hoping that lots and lots of people come and see it. And having had just a glimpse of what you've got here, I can't recommend it highly enough. People really, really need to come here and experience what a castle can tell you about its own history, the stories that it can tell you about the people that were here,

and life that took place within these walls over the last almost a thousand years. Yes, absolutely. It's 900 years, isn't it? You know, there are so many hidden treasures within here. We've got graffiti, medieval graffiti that is on a lot of the walls that tells you about ordinary people that were here subsequently when it was a prison most likely, probably appealing to the Lord to be let out, as well as just the beautiful architecture

that you can see that was originally designed for the spaces. Yeah, absolutely incredible. Like I say, people need to get to Norwich Castle and have a look for themselves because there are just endless rooms here. we're walking through more rooms that I'm sure we could talk about all day long, but we ought to leave something for people to come and see, I think. Yes.

But yeah, I mean, it really gives a sense of the colour, the richness, and the vibrancy of living here in the medieval era. Yes. Well, thank you so much for your time, Tim. Thank you for giving us a guided tour, or the beginnings of a guided talk, because I feel like there's so much more to discover, and hopefully a few Easter eggs for people to come and look out for if they come down to watchcastle too.

More than enough Easter eggs. Thank you very much. Pleasure. Eleanor, welcome back. Welcome to my castle. I've saved you a throne beside me. Matt, what a lovely home you have. Okay, but listen, really, what have you seen here? We've walked from the battered outer Bailey dumps into refined royal apartments via a basement and an incredible display of medieval objects.

And it's been incredible to get a sense of what this space would have looked like in the early 12th century when Henry I was here. This is Norwich Castle from being a Norman power statement becoming a royal residence. It's an administrative hub. It's hosted kings. It's held off rebellions.

We've seen where fire has scorched a ceiling where people have built a bonfire to try and break in. And I have to say a huge thank you to Dr Tim Pestell and to Norwich Castle for such a wonderful afternoon here. We've literally stepped back through history. And if you want to do the same

and stand where Henry I first himself feasted, then Norwich Castle is waiting for you. I highly recommend a visit. If you want to hear more about Henry I first or the Pastern letters that relate to Norfolk too, there are links to those gone medieval episodes in the show notes below. You can also watch my documentary on the Normans

the makers of this incredible castle. By subscribing to HistoryHit. Go to history hit.com slash subscribe. and I will be back on Tuesday with my episode on the Jewish community of medieval Norwich. And don't forget to tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Right, Eleanor, time to find a pub because I promised you me. I'll take ale.