BBC - Tudor Monastery Farm (2013) Part 4 Mining and Fishing

Historian Ruth Goodman and archaeologists Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold turn the clock back over 500 years to run a farm at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum in West Sussex exactly as it would have been in 1500, during the reign of the first Tudor King, Henry VII.

Part 4: Mining and Fishing

The monasteries' lands covered a variety of terrain, which would need to be exploited by the tenant farmer to raise income for themselves and the monastery. Lead was an important building material and Tom and Peter mine their own, using Tudor techniques while Ruth makes a stained glass window. On the rivers owned by the monastery, tenant farmers could rent fishing rights and Ruth makes baskets to catch eels in. Back on the farm, the team learn how aspirational tenant farmers would have decorated their farmhouses. Ruth produces a wall hanging and Tom experiments with a camera obscura, while Peter sees if his pigs are pregnant. The team's hard work is rewarded with a fine meal of eels in their newly decorated home.

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