Dan Snow Walks Through Britain’s Brutal Norman Past | Full Documentary

Walking here through the grounds of York Minster I'm in the shadow of the city's most famous landmark and the earliest part of the building, the crypt, was built by the Normans. On my walk today I'm going to be looking at how the Normans transformed York into the political and religious stronghold of the north of England. In the course of a fascinating century they brought first terror and violence to this part of the country and then long-term economic prosperity and they left behind them a legacy that endured if you mention the Normans to any true Yorkshireman you'll probably get an earful they have a long memory in these parts and what they're remembering in particular is the so-called infamous harrying of the north in the late 1060s there were a series of uprisings against Norman rule and these were repressed by the Normans with terrible cruelty nearly every settlement between York and Durham was destroyed The very fields were sowed with salt to destroy agriculture. 100,000 people were killed, and tens of thousands more died of starvation. There were even reports of people resorting to cannibalism. The harrying brought the North under control in the most brutal and effective manner. And it meant the Normans had achieved what the Saxons never quite managed. From now on, Yorkshire and Northumberland would be part of a genuinely unified England, with the city of York as its regional capital. There's such an incredible layering of history here at York. It was the stronghold for the Romans in this part of the country and was very important under the Saxons, Vikings and, of course, the Normans. And it went on really mattering. These extraordinary walls were built in the 14th century and the Minster itself wasn't completed until 1472. The Great Walls and Minster are a sign of York's prosperity right across the Middle Ages. The city benefited from a boom started by the Normans. On this walk, I'm hoping to see how the invaders not only conquered and controlled this region, but inspired faith, commerce, education and technology. The fabric of a new era for the North. From York, I'm going to be travelling into rural parts devastated by the harrying of the North. Today it forms the southern edge of the North York Moors National Park. My five mile walk will take me from Helmsley to the village of Revo, through an area reignited in the late Norman period, through the enthusiastic sponsorship of religion, in particular by the creation of one of our greatest abbeys. Today the Yorkshire countryside is littered with romantic ruins of medieval monasteries, but before I head out there I've come here to the edge of the medieval city of York to see where this link between York, the Normans and the monasteries really began. York Museum Gardens is where I've arranged to meet Professor Janet Burton, the country's foremost authority on the monasteries of Northern England. The gardens lie beside the Roman origins of the city, the Fort of Ibaracum. But I've come here to see a very different sort of landmark, established by our country's next great builders in stone. Twenty years after the massacre of the harrying, William II, son of the conqueror, granted this site to the Benedictines and started St Mary's Abbey. So is it unusual to have such a big monastery so close to the middle of town? No, it isn't really. In the 11th century, when St Mary's was founded, the late 11th century, it was really quite a normal thing to do, to found a monastery, either within a city or on a site like this, just outside the walls of the city. How were they useful to the king? Why was it in his interest to have this vast abbey in the middle of York? Primarily, it was the prayers of the monks. It was the spiritual services. The king looked on monks as spiritual soldiers. But Abbot Stephen himself, the founder abbot, wrote a short narrative of the foundation of St Mary's. And he makes the specific point that William II was quite aware that York had been a troublesome place. So when this stone abbey started to rise up here in the late 11th century, within sight of the stone minster you think of the stone castles that William the First had built these were all real symbols of royal authority so what about the link between this abbey and perhaps the more famous abbeys to the north of here where i'm heading next many norman lords this new aristocracy that settled after the conquest they start patronizing saint mary's they grant lands so in one way they're saying you know if this is the king's abbey we want to show our support for the king by supporting his his monastery but then they go and do the same thing by founding their own monasteries so they might build a castle they build a castle but they also found a monastery they get the prayers of the monks but they get a visible reminder of their power and their authority what about the effect of these monasteries on the population in these parts are these sort of little nuclei of normanness that are slowly making the country more norman I think they were, yes. William of Malmesbury, the Norman chronicler, comments on the coming of the Normans and how, I think he said, in every city and village you could see churches rise up in a style unknown before. I mean, they were building, they were building big. Sometimes we get mistaken impressions about monasteries such as St Mary's. They're thought of as being very inward-looking communities, little oases. But for all that, monasteries did interact with the societies, the communities in which they were located through developing their estates, the production of manuscripts, through education. Often Benedictine abbeys ran schools, St Mary's ran one. Local people did comment on the importance, as they perceived it, of monastic houses as providers of education and hospitality and the provision of charity. St Mary's would play a role in York's development for 450 years, and in 1132 it played host to 12 monks, travelling from Clairvaux Abbey in north-east France. They represented a radical new group called the Cistercians, determined to live an austere, self-sufficient lifestyle in the true manner of St Benedict. They were travelling north, to the area of my walk today, destined to become the focus of a new community that would drive development in one of the remotest parts of the country. And they came at the invitation of the new Norman lord. The town of Helmsley, gateway to the vast expanse of the North York Moors. Wild country, which would have been even more wild back in the 11th century, following the harrying of the Normans. The productivity and the population would have fallen dramatically. But now the Normans were keen to change all this. In particular, a man called Walter Espec, who built Helmsley Castle. Fifty years after the harrying, Walter Espec was a rising star. He was the Justiciar of the North, effectively the king's chief minister. He held lands across Yorkshire and Northumberland and would go on to lead forces against the Scots at the Battle of the Standard. But from 1120 onwards, this was Espec's main residence. Walter Espec was responsible for the building of this east tower, well in fact the bottom two-thirds of it. I love the way you can still see the original roof. It had been a wonderful home for him and his family, and the chroniclers tell us that he had a large library of books as well, so this was a scholar, a military man, and very wealthy as well. It seems that the erudite Speck was a man of his time, and the late Norman period was the golden age for the foundation of monasteries. This was Espec's opportunity to seal his passage to heaven, enforce his political dominance, and leave a positive legacy for this troubled region. My real interest today lies out there on the moors, and that's where I'll be walking. Because it was out there that Walter Espec gave huge tracts of his lands to that group of Cistercian monks that had been staying in St Mary's Abbey in York. And they would found the first ever Cistercian monastery in the north of England. And that's where I'm heading. With Helmsley Castle, Walter Espec had created an awe-inspiring symbol of his power and control. His next task was to establish a great institution to drive Norman colonisation. But as my walk leaves the town, Espec's impact was more subtle. He was guardian of the massive areas of Royal Forest, land which for the past three centuries has been the grounds of Duncombe Park. I'll be heading west, following the Rydale Valley upstream through Walter Espec's Moorland estate, and into the territory which he gifted the Cistercians. My destination is a small village, hidden at the bottom of Rydale and clustered around the ruins of Revo Abbey, one of Yorkshire's great monastic institutions, and a legacy that would far outlast the Normans. Back at Helmsley, my walk starts in a legacy of a very different kind, the back garden of Walter Espec's castle. For the past three centuries, this cleared area has served as the parkland of Duncombe Park, one of the great country estates of Yorkshire. Duncombe Park was set up by the Duncombe family in the very early 1700s. Now, they had made all their money in banking. They were new money. So in that way, they're an interesting parallel to Walter Espec, who, of course, in the 11th century was also a new face, a man on the make. It's said that the Norman lords created their own sporting venue right here, a clearing where moorland beasts were driven in and then hunted for the entertainment of guests watching from the castle. And to this day, you can still make out the faint ridge in the land that once enclosed the hunting area. Some of the Duncombe Oaks today could be as old as this medieval arena. This is exactly the kind of pile Walter Especk would have built for himself if he'd been around in the 18th century. Since 1700, Duncombe Park has sought to celebrate and indulge in the beauty of the local landscape. The Cistercians too revelled in the solitude ensured by the Norman forests and the remote Rydale Valley, but the monks couldn't succeed without bringing a degree of civilisation to the moors. Fantastic. This is my first view of this steep valley here, called Rydale, and Revo Abbey lies at the bottom of that, a few miles along here, and my walk's going to take me along the top of this escarpment. Beautiful views all the way, I hope. But the first thing I'm going to have a look at is actually the first piece of Abbey infrastructure that's been left behind. It's called, on the map here, the Medieval Village of Gryff, and this was all part of the Abbey's lands. In 1131, Walter of Speck agreed to give away a thousand acres of his Yorkshire lands to the arriving Cistercians. This was but a small donation from the great Norman Lord, but for the 12 pioneering monks, it was enough to establish their own abbey and remain true to their ideal of self-sufficiency. On the flat plateau above the Rye, I've come to the land of Griff Farm to meet the team who've investigated what took place here on the edge of Revo's first grant. So guys, on my ordnance survey map, this is marked as a medieval village. Is that true? Yes and no. I mean, Doomsday actually has reference to a ville, some sort of settlement on this location. We haven't produced any evidence of a settlement, have we really? We spent about six weeks up here a few years back, really getting to grips with the earthworks, trying to understand what was going on. Any surprises? Once you look at the layout and start to understand how all the elements of this site relate to each other, you realise it's not a village, it's a single unit, it's a farmstead. I suppose the surprise being that we've confirmed that it was a grange, not the deserted medieval village that we see mentioned on the maps. But certainly I think some of the more substantial buildings are a really, really good find. So it's a big prosperous farm then, is that what it is? That's exactly what it is, yes. It's a monastic farmstead, an outlying monastic farmstead called a grange. The building we're in is a barn, we think, from the plan of it and the size of it. And in old French, grange means barn. So this is the barn at the heart of the grange. How contemporary is this to the founding of Rievaulx Abbey? It was there absolutely at the beginning of the foundation. It was part of the original grant from Walter Espec. There was the grant of the Abbey site, grangeland here. The initial grant was for about the equivalent of 1,000 acres. It wasn't a contiguous area of 1,000 acres. It would have been split between various parcels of land. The parcel of land that would have come with Griff, as the bequest to the monastery at the outset would have been about 480 acres, about half the total land given over to the monastery. This area is not a blank canvas when the Normans arrive. It's been used since prehistory. The name Griff, which is given to this grange, is a Norse name. In other words, we've got a Viking community living here who are farming a substantial area of land, arable land, up here. So that's what the monastic community takes on, and they use that as a bridgehead for expanding out onto the North York Moors there. I mean, we look at this today and it is a relatively tame arable landscape that looks as though it's been like that forever. But when the monastic community came here, first of all, they inherited something that was more akin to an island of arable in a sea of heather and moorland, really. Quite unpromising land, and it needed real vision and real entrepreneurial spirit, really, to actually make something productive out of that. The Griff was the first of what became a network of grange sites. As Rievaulx grew, it needed more food, more support work and inevitably more income. By the 1300s, the abbey had 20 granges providing crops, fish and vast numbers of sheep. They were the engine room of Revo's economy. And as new benefactors continued to pledge land and resources, the reach of the abbey spread far beyond the moors. But from the very outset, the monks created a demand for wood. And here in Rydale, the steep valley sides have changed remarkably little. So how could this woodland here be productive? Well, I mean, this is a piece of ground which really isn't much use for anything else. So it's making the best of a bad lot, in a way, putting woodland on it. And I say putting woodland on it, it's been wooded since the last Ice Age, but throughout the medieval period and right up to today, as you can see, it's been managed woodland, intensively managed. and for most of the medieval period and quite a lot of the post-medieval period as well it's been coppiced in other words the trees have been cut right down to the base you get that crop of fresh new growth which after 20 years is perfect stuff for charcoal manufacture. So I never know how you know that something's an ancient forest or not? Well not necessarily by the trees that are here today I mean we're surrounded by very modern larch and pine but very often by the species that are at ground level which rely on this injection of sunlight that they get through the process of coppicing and this is a particularly good patch here we've got these little lovely little violets bluebells primroses just up there we've got wood sorrel and over there wild garlic wood anemones so we've got the full range of species that really characterize what is the best of our woodland flora whilst the demand for wood lasted centuries the first decades of Revo's life saw a demand for one special commodity stone between 1132 and 1260 the abbey itself was built rebuilt and regularly extended and right here in what is still called Quarry Bank Wood the scars of the building work are very clear indeed you can see some of the big blocks of stuff they haven't used Yes, it's almost left in situ as they stopped working. These were some of the rocks that were left behind that weren't needed. Just a mile downstream from Revo, the monks found a fine-grained limestone, which became part of the abbey's refectory. And we've seen a couple of others on the walk. I mean, were they quarrying all along this face here? Yeah, this outcrop of limestone comes along the edge of this escarpment, and indeed there are numerous other quarries along this area. With a keen eye, you can spot Revo's managed woodlands and quarries, all along Rydale. In 1145 Walter Espec was pleased enough with progress to grant more lands further up the valley and into the moors. But my walk now heads downhill into Rydale for the first time and towards the quiet hidden focal point of Revo's world. It's my first proper view of Rievaulx Abbey. I always think those extraordinary buildings and this setting combine to make it one of the most evocative ruins in the whole of Europe the grand site owes much to Rievaulx's third abbot Ailred a theologian of international repute he presided over the abbey for 20 years at the very end of the Norman period he was introduced to the area by none other than Walter Aspeck and was so impressed that he never returned to his native Northumberland by the end of the Norman age Ailred red had laid the framework for this site's development and had set Rievaulx up as the biggest hub for commerce and community in the region it's an absolutely massive ruin isn't it i mean was this the biggest abbey in the north of England well getting on that way it's certainly it was the headquarters of the uh the Cistercians in the north of England and was the first Cistercian abbey in the north of England so it's uh it its size warrants its status shall we say in that way and how many monks would there have been here well at its height there were 150 choir monks, so this is mid 13th century, and upwards of 450 to 500 lay brothers looking after them, so they were doing most of the manual work. That's a big settlement isn't it? It is indeed. So which parts are Norman? Principally the nave that we're in now. If you turn around and look at the walls you can see we've got two sets of Romanesque Norman arches and then on top where the stone changes colour, that architecture is more or less a hundred years later. So those rounded ones are Norman? That's it, absolutely, that's the Norman part of the the Abbey. That's a key piece of generalised. Absolutely, the round ones are Norman, once you start to get more pointed you're into Gothic. Okay so this either side of us is Norman as well? So this is more or less Aelred's Church and then the rest of the architecture, going further, building higher and It's about a hundred years later, you're about 1220, finished by about 1260. So as the abbey starts making more money, it starts to build extensions? Absolutely, yes. You can build higher, nearer to God, and you can build longer because you can. And so what are the monks up to during that golden age? I mean, some of them are in here studying and praying, others are out reclaiming land and farming and things like that. Yes, I mean, because they were a self-sufficient community, the more land they got and the more the population grew here, Of course they needed more supplies or whatever to keep that community going. But they were very quickly into trading in wool. Wool was the principal economic measure at that time. And they were foremost, certainly in this country, in formulating the Middle Ages, the wool industry in this country. The farming implements all had to be made. So they were very much into iron smelting. They were mining iron further up the valley, bringing it back here and smelting so there were furnaces here during the monks time and continued well after the dissolution. So you think the legacy of the monks here actually continued you know well into modern history? Absolutely with the dissolution the industry, the iron industry carried on for another 100 years because it was an important economic area and it's a result of the iron industry that we have the village now. So what happens to the great founder Walter Espec? Well it's interesting the reason for the founding of the Abbey was that he'd lost his son in a riding accident and so declared that God would be the heir to his lands. He then ended up, in the last 10 years of his life, coming back here as a monk. So he gave up all the power and prestige of being a Norman though? Really? Absolutely yes. So he entered as a novice and was accepted into the orders and spent the last years of his life here within the Abbey that he'd helped to found. He must have been seriously worried about his soul. Well, there's that about it, although giving the land, of course, makes sure you get through the pearly gates, that's for sure. The remarkable actions of Walter Espec show just what kind of people the Normans were, men of action and ambition. Perhaps his motive was no more than to gain his own entry into heaven, but the greatness of his institution is undeniable, and the ruins still dominate this valley. The simple Cistercian aims of solitude and self-sufficiency attracted so much support that they would end up controlling the wool and mining industries, building lines of communications across the moors, and back to the trading hub of York. This sturdy Georgian bridge may be only just over a couple of hundred years old, but it's replacing a Norman bridge which would have been doing exactly the same job, and that That is, connecting the abbey there with all sorts of things like granges and wool houses, quarries and ironworks further up the dale. The Normans imposed an infrastructure here of bridges, roads and drainage ditches which ensured that the moors would never be the same again. And the true extent of the Normans' legacy in the north only becomes clear when you look at the range of other institutions they founded. The monks of St Mary's were so impressed with the visiting Cistercians that some quickly left to establish their own Cistercian abbey at Fountains. This site, and Revo, would become medieval giants, but would sit alongside Kirkstall and Roche, Kirkham and Byland, Whitby, Jervaulx, Selby, and in the north-west, Furness and St Bees. In medieval England, only the king could match the monasteries for wealth and power, a fact that Henry VIII would find intolerable. But the dissolution of the monasteries couldn't change the fact that for four centuries a nationwide network of Norman institutions had developed everything from faith to farming. And here in remote Yorkshire, the Norman abbeys are celebrated more than anywhere. Quarries, mining, woodland, and ruins are all part of the fabric of a national park. And to end my walk, I've climbed up here to Revo Terrace, which 150 years after the dissolution became part of Duncombe Park. Sir Charles Duncombe bought both the Helmsley Estates and the Rievaulx Estates for the sum of 90,000 pounds. The lands that Walter Espec had divided in 1132 were back together once again. Ah, there we go, lovely gap in the trees there. you can see Rievaulx Abbey, the grandest folly imaginable for the Duncan family estate. I find it hard to believe that Walter Espec, the powerful Norman Baron who helped found this monastery, ended up swapping his castles and his lands to end his days as a monk down there. Seems hard to imagine with our 21st century sensibilities. In Yorkshire, we can see the Normans at their most barbaric, but as illustrated by Walter Aspect, also at their most devout and forward-thinking. For me, Revo really embodies all things Norman, the love of ambitious building projects and the obsession with power, wealth, and Christianity. Walter Speck died in 1154, which was coincidentally the same year as the last Norman king, Stephen. But by that time, this abbey and others like it were transforming this landscape totally. They were ushering in a new era of prosperity and international trade and commerce. And they were helping to cement this part of the country into the new Anglo-Norman kingdom.