- 5/30/2025
Hidden Treasures of the National Trust 2025 episode 4
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00Every year, millions of us flock to the houses and gardens of the National Trust.
00:11Taking a step back in time to delve into our history.
00:15How they did it, you know, in them days, amazes me.
00:19Whether in the grandest residence...
00:21Visitors always say, oh, I could live here.
00:24Or a modest farmhouse.
00:26To open up the house when it's just you, it just tingles with the excitement.
00:31But out of sight is a hidden world.
00:34I like to see all the secret looks and crannies behind the scenes.
00:37Where an army of dedicated experts...
00:40Oh, my word, look. I'm slightly lost for words.
00:44...and devoted volunteers...
00:46Quite intimate with it, really. Can I say that?
00:49...are battling to save treasured objects.
00:52Look at that.
00:53It's history, isn't it? You've been putting history together.
00:56...making new discoveries...
00:58Ooh! This might be it.
01:00Quite genuinely excited.
01:02...that tell the history of us all.
01:05These objects have stories to tell, and their stories should be heard.
01:09This time, the homes of two formidable women who refuse to bow down to the enemies at their gates.
01:26She is a badass woman who is making her mark in the 17th century.
01:30The Riverside Villa, filled with treasures by a dynamic duchess.
01:36We can't lose sight that these are 350 years old.
01:40You're concerned.
01:41I feel concerned.
01:43And the castle, defended by an English wartime heroine.
01:47It would have been quite scary times.
01:49Three, two, one.
01:50You've got an enemy on your doorstep, trying to take your home away from you.
01:54Okay, boys.
02:02Come on up. Come on.
02:03Come on, Frank.
02:04Stay here. Stay here, son.
02:05Come on. Come on.
02:06Come over.
02:07Come over.
02:08Come over.
02:09Come over.
02:10Come over.
02:11Come here.
02:12In a leafy London suburb, on the banks of the Thames, sits one of the grandest residences in England, Ham House.
02:25All right, come on.
02:26Let's call some.
02:27Quick, quick, quick, quick, quick.
02:28All right, fork.
02:29Oh, well done.
02:30Good job.
02:31Put on.
02:33Come on, then.
02:34Off you go.
02:35The current residents are house manager, Sarah.
02:38See you later.
02:39Bye.
02:40And her family.
02:43I have been working here nearly 16 years.
02:46The kids have only lived here, so they just think this is completely normal.
02:51It's a large house.
02:52It is impressive, but it's not imposing.
02:55It's not daunting.
02:56It really gives you the sense of a full life lived.
03:00It's not a show home.
03:01The tastemakers who lived at Ham in its 17th century heyday were the influential and flamboyant Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale.
03:15As the power couple of the time, they needed a home that represented their status and their wealth.
03:25If you're thinking of the top tier 17th century interior design, then Ham is definitely the place to visit.
03:33While the Duke brought the wealth, the Duchess Elizabeth brought the style, as well as her own contacts at court.
03:43Elizabeth was born at Ham and for the first 16 years of her life, she enjoyed being part of a family that had royal favour.
03:50Young Elizabeth wasn't just well connected.
03:56She was clearly very, very capable.
03:59She was very clever.
04:00She was very ambitious.
04:01She was not just sitting back and letting life happen to her.
04:04She was making it happen.
04:09And one of the best illustrations of Elizabeth's achievements currently resides in Ham's East Wing.
04:16This is Ham House from the South by Henrik Dankert to celebrate the completion of the renovation of the house that Elizabeth and her second husband did to essentially ensure that it befitted their new titles as Duke and Duchess.
04:35This painting captures Elizabeth and her new husband at the peak of their influence during the reign of Charles II.
04:46They even commissioned the King's own go-to artist, Hendrik Dankerts.
04:54He was a very desirable artist for the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale because of that connection with royalty.
05:00And it shows you not only how they inhabited the space, but how people around them reacted to their grand presence.
05:11It's really them saying, this is us. This is what we're all about. This is how important and tasteful we are.
05:18One, two, three.
05:20Now 350 years old, this snapshot of Elizabeth's golden age is looking a little tarnished.
05:27This painting has some severely discoloured varnish, which really obscures some of the finer details and lots of the richness of the colour.
05:36And even some of the figures themselves are quite sort of lurking in the background in the darkness.
05:42Today, the painting is leaving home to be cleaned and conserved.
05:46It's a really lovely painting.
05:47At her studio in Sussex, it's down to conservator Sophie to turn back the clock on this moment in time at Ham House.
06:00So I think the painting has not been touched for a very long time because you can see there's a very, very thick yellow varnish on the surface.
06:09I hope by cleaning the painting, we'll be able to see much more detail and sort of bring the painting back to life.
06:14To start this intricate assignment.
06:18Optivisors are very important.
06:21Sophie's applying a light solvent to peel back those layers of old varnish.
06:27As I sort of see the faces a bit more clearly, say the Duchess is lacking a smile. She doesn't look very happy, to be honest.
06:36A new piece of work always means that I have to really get to know this artwork. It sort of takes time.
06:46Once I sort of feel like I've got the confidence and understand what I'm looking at, then, yeah, I feel like I can really start the work.
06:55Over time, paintings age. Layers of varnish and dirt and overpaint, they sort of disguise the original artwork.
07:02Everything we do is in quite a lot of detail. So when I, well, when I speak to my artist friends, they all think it's just a bit nuts, actually.
07:14But I love it.
07:16I see it as a huge responsibility.
07:19A painting would have been hanging somewhere for hundreds of years and then I come along to try and bring it back to life.
07:26And, but obviously I need to do that in a way where it then can last for the next hundreds of years.
07:35I must say I'm getting really quite excited because I can already see a great change.
07:41There's so much detail popping out and so many lovely colours.
07:44But after centuries of wear and tear, Sophie is also revealing a multitude of sins.
07:53You can see this sort of brown layer on top of these fillings.
07:58Maybe the painting was water damaged. So I still have a lot of work to do before I do the impainting of the damaged areas.
08:05It's a lot to do.
08:14Life for Elizabeth hadn't always been as rosy as it looks in the painting.
08:19Coming from a Royalist family, her world was turned upside down in 1642 with the outbreak of Civil War.
08:26A bitter struggle between Charles the First and Parliament over politics and religion.
08:33It was to last nine years and claim a quarter of a million lives.
08:39The Civil War starts and suddenly her family are not in the same favoured position.
08:44This must have been really terrifying for her as a 16 year old girl with her family going through all of this turmoil.
08:49Elizabeth survived the Civil War and managed to keep hold of Ham House in the turbulent years that followed.
08:57With Royalist families facing fines and persecution, she became adept at political and diplomatic manoeuvring.
09:06Elizabeth certainly understood the importance of playing both sides.
09:12The people in charge aren't necessarily always going to be the people in charge.
09:15And so you need to protect yourself and your family and your home.
09:22When the monarchy was restored, Elizabeth's loyalty was richly rewarded by the new king, Charles II.
09:30He gave her a lavish annual pension of £800, around £160,000 today.
09:38And she started splashing the cash.
09:40The expansion and decoration of Ham House into a stunning riverside villa is partly to make sure that if and when the royals visit, they feel very welcome and feel like they're almost at home.
09:55And Elizabeth and John fill it with beautiful things from around the globe to show off their taste and their wealth.
10:00So let's put it first vertical on the blocks in the middle.
10:08As part of Ham's conservation programme, some of Elizabeth's most precious purchases have been earmarked for attention.
10:17Today, one of them has been delivered to the Royal Oak Foundation Conservation Studio in Kent.
10:24Oh, I love it. I love it so much.
10:31This elaborate folding screen is so delicate that it's been in storage ever since the National Trust took on the property in 1948.
10:41So these are pieces of lacquer that have fallen off. It's not strong enough to be displayed and it's a spectacular object. I mean, look at it, look at the colours, look at the potential it has.
10:51This is a Chinese folding screen. It's six leaves. So they've created a shiny lacquer finish and then they've cut into the lacquer to create this design and added coloured paints or coloured lacquer.
11:15In the mid 17th century, these spectacular screens imported from Asia were a must have for high society households.
11:28The river is decorated with flowers in blossom and lots of birds, as you can see.
11:34Elizabeth's huge statement piece with panels three metres tall would have taken pride of place in one of Ham House's grand bedchambers.
11:46This screen is humongous and it is quality. This is not the sort of object that every household would have been able to afford or to justify or even to house.
11:55A piece of this scale at Ham really speaks to those royal links that Elizabeth had.
12:01And it is her continuing being that person who managed to keep hold of Ham House during the Civil War.
12:06It is her forging alliances. She's not just a passive actor.
12:11She is a badass woman who is making her mark in the 17th century.
12:14But after almost a century in storage, reviving Elizabeth's screen will put decorative surfaces conservator Maria to the test.
12:26The main problem of this is there's a lot of loose flakes already. The most fragile areas are protected with the paper to avoid more losses like that.
12:34So these are like little bandages?
12:36Yes, sort of, yeah. So these pieces of paper are hiding the most at risk areas of damage.
12:45It can be a challenge in this case, mostly because you have that flaking on both sides of the panels. It's going to take me many months.
12:55So where are you going to start?
12:57So first I will need to secure the loose lacquer and then afterwards I will do the cleaning, trying to put back all the lacquer.
13:04All the lacquer is going to be mind-blowing.
13:15Although it may have been rare for a woman to be so richly rewarded by the king, during the Civil War Elizabeth's situation was far from unique.
13:25The Civil War impacted people across all levels of society and women were often key players in what was happening.
13:33Women had to keep things going whilst the men were away. They had to run the households.
13:37They had to hold the line and hold the fort, essentially.
13:41It was an overwhelming sense of fear and anxiety of not knowing how the story was going to end.
13:53Keeping a silent watch over Dorset's Purbeck Hills lies a ruin that one of the English Civil War's most heroic women once called home.
14:03Corfe Castle.
14:04The day where you drive into work and don't see the castle or just appreciate the castle is the day where you know where you shouldn't be doing this job anymore.
14:13The keeper of the keys to this particular castle is operations manager James.
14:20A lot of my friends ask me, you know, what do you do for a living?
14:23And sometimes the easiest thing is to say, I look after a thousand year old bits of stone.
14:37It's not your typical National Trust property. It's a ruin.
14:44What you see now is nothing in comparison to what it would have been.
14:48It would have been a whitewashed castle back in the heyday.
14:51Corfe's defining moment came in the Civil War when the castle was captured by the parliamentarians and blown up to prevent the Royalists from using it again.
15:06These walls were two, three times the height of what they are now.
15:13The battle now is to maintain what's left.
15:17The biggest challenge that we're facing at the moment is the conservation of the castle.
15:21It's a grade one scheduled ancient monument.
15:23So that in itself comes with lots of issues.
15:30Sitting on top of a 55 metre hill, the fragile ruins are exposed to the elements all year round.
15:38Morning, morning.
15:39So James and his team have embarked on Corfe's biggest ever conservation project.
15:45There's lots of parts of the castle that are very structurally sound.
15:48But again, there's sections that aren't because of the way that it was destroyed.
15:52So if the project doesn't happen, we're at risk of this amazing part of history literally crumbling, which we don't want.
16:00Bit of glass there. You reckon that's original?
16:02Over the next three years, specialist masons will stabilise the walls stone by stone.
16:11To access the highest parts of the castle, they're using an old school method with a modern twist.
16:18Three, two, one.
16:19A 21st century catapult.
16:22Look at that.
16:23Told you first time, didn't I?
16:26James is on the hunt for the biggest modern day threat to these thousand year old walls.
16:36This kind of soft vegetation that's growing out of the joints, feeding off the moisture of the wall.
16:40We don't mind some of it, but what we don't want is woody growth.
16:44Leave it too long, the roots get bigger, the stones will expand, the stones will fall off.
16:49So it's essential that we maintain it, remove it as needed.
16:53Set!
16:55At ground level, stonemasons Jerome and Ed are taking on another section of the ruins.
17:02Some bits of this come off easy, don't they?
17:05Yeah. They're so overgrown.
17:07These blocks of castle wall, known as the tumbles, were blown up by the parliamentarians in 1646.
17:17This is where we see sections of the castle that are at quite precarious angles, because that's basically after the explosion.
17:23That's where they fell and have basically been ever since.
17:27We've got to be sympathetic to the fact that this is a ruin. It's got its own story, it's got its own narrative.
17:34So it's knowing what to repair and restore and what is fine to leave as it is.
17:42We're not here to turn back time.
17:44Thanks a lot, guys. See you later.
17:46So, one tumble down. There are still over 70 more to tackle.
17:51It's a job that will never stop. We're always going to have to look after it.
17:57And it's our job to ensure that it's maintained for the, you know, future generations.
18:04Hi, Gary.
18:06At the time the castle was blown up in the Civil War, it was owned by the Banks family, landed gentry from Dorset and staunch royalists.
18:19Sir John Banks was a trusted member of Charles I Privy Council.
18:25He married a lady called Mary Banks and they made their home in Corfe Castle.
18:31I get a sense that they must have really loved each other because they had 14 children.
18:36What we do know is that she was a very dutiful wife and a very dutiful mother.
18:40When Civil War broke out, John was called away to support the king.
18:45And in 1643, parliamentarian troops lay siege to the castle, Dorset's last remaining royalist stronghold.
18:56Just imagining Mary Banks just stood here looking out across the village.
19:02You know, you can imagine sort of like the parliamentarians out there with their tents and their fires going, you know, hearing that roar of possibly what's going to come upon her.
19:11I think we often see Mary as this really strong, formidable woman and that's something that we inherit from understanding her role during the Civil War and especially in defending the castle during the first siege.
19:25Some sources say that Mary started with just a handful of soldiers facing hundreds of parliamentarian troops at the gates and that her daughters and servants joined the defence.
19:39Being up against such a formidable force outside would have been quite scary times.
19:46You know, you've got an enemy on your doorstep that are trying to take your home away from you.
19:50Mary fought off the besieging forces.
19:55But three years later, the parliamentarians returned.
19:58This time, the castle fell when a traitor on the inside let them in through an undefended doorway.
20:07We have documentary history to tell us that when the castle was captured, that the soldiers didn't come through the main gate.
20:17The parliamentarian soldiers came through a sally port.
20:21Like many castles, Corfe had a number of sally ports, small gateways that allowed troops to come and go discreetly.
20:30But no one's ever been able to track down the one that played such an important role in Corfe's history.
20:37Until now.
20:39I know Corfe Castle very well. I've been coming here for at least 38 years now.
20:49Archaeologist Martin is hoping to fulfil a long-held ambition. To find the elusive sally port.
20:58It's very exciting in the last couple of days. Really exciting.
21:02His first ever job for the National Trust was here back in 1986.
21:08It's certainly me in my bones, I think. It's quite a special place to me.
21:14And it looks like it's going to be my last place. I'll be doing archaeology there too, because I'll be retiring soon.
21:21He was originally employed, I think it was a four-week contract. That was about 35 years ago.
21:29Then, in 1992, Martin found a clue he thinks may point to the lost sally port, here in the north-east corner of the castle.
21:41You're thinking it's roughly down that area, just down there.
21:44Yeah, that's right. That's where they saw the very top of the arch.
21:47At least this sort of fencing went in here. These railings went in.
21:51Yeah. They look a bit rusty now. They weren't bright new in 1992.
21:54We found the top of an archway and we thought, oh, that's interesting.
22:00So I photographed it and you could put a trowel under it. It was definitely an archway of some sort.
22:04But it wasn't our job to do anything about it at that time, so it was just a mystery.
22:10Now, Martin's bringing in his own platoon of volunteers
22:15to try and solve the mystery of the missing sally port once and for all.
22:25We're just taking the turf off, so that then we'll go in with our mattocks
22:30and drag the soil back because it's quite loose underneath the turf.
22:36So this is his last opportunity and sort of last hurrah
22:39to be able to do this in an official archaeologist's role with the National Trust.
22:45For Martin, I think it's going to be a big one.
22:49It would be wonderful if we can discover the sally port
22:52because it was such a critical moment, obviously a moment of huge drama
22:56and to be able to pinpoint that with accuracy would be really exciting.
23:03And hopefully we will find the gateway into the castle.
23:08But there's no guarantees of that at all, unfortunately.
23:10Archaeology is like that.
23:12But I just feel, at this stage, optimistic.
23:14Top solicited.
23:18Whilst the Civil War was Corfe's undoing,
23:22Ham House didn't just survive.
23:25It thrived.
23:27Nowhere more so than in the majestic 100-acre estate.
23:35Goodness gracious.
23:37Just the most pastoral, beautiful scene.
23:40The gardens were areas where Elizabeth, her family and her household
23:45could relax and chill out.
23:47This was somewhere they could be happy.
23:49This was home.
23:51In the last few years,
23:54the National Trust have revived a centuries-old tradition
23:58in the wild meadows that lead down to the Thames.
24:01Come on in.
24:03Using horses to help cut the hay.
24:07Come here.
24:08Ready.
24:10The fact that this meadow is still here,
24:12it's never been cultivated,
24:13it's always looked like this.
24:15We're so lucky to have it as part of the wider,
24:18the wider Ham estate.
24:20The hope is that reintroducing traditional methods
24:24will allow plants and wildlife to flourish,
24:27as they would have done in Elizabeth's day.
24:29We cut a little bit higher than a lot of tractor mowers
24:32because these are sites of scientific interest.
24:35The horses are low impact, they don't cause any damage or compaction to the soil.
24:39No noise, no oil leaks, no fumes.
24:42Tom and his stable of Clydesdale horses
24:46now come to Ham House twice a year to work these meadows.
24:50It's quite a brave move to step away from machinery that's been used for decades,
24:54to be able to say, no, I'm going to go back to work on horses.
24:56I love what I do, and people love to see horses working.
24:57They put a smile on everybody's face, even the darkest, wetest, coldest days.
24:58At her studio, Sophie's deep clean of the painting of Ham House has revealed even more damage than she was expecting.
25:01Wow.
25:02I love this, I love this man.
25:04I love what I do, and people love to see horses working.
25:06They put a smile on everybody's face, even the darkest, wetest, coldest days.
25:10as cold as days at her studio sophie's deep clean of the painting of ham house
25:24has revealed even more damage than she was expecting
25:30i suspect that this painting must have been restored in the very early stages of the 19th
25:36century there's all these really fine little splash marks which indicate that a very harsh
25:43solvent must have been used because these little splash marks have literally eaten into the
25:50surface layers of the paint to cover up and blend in the previous repairs sophie has to find the
25:57perfect match for the original paintwork i really am i'm using my sort of intuition how to mix the
26:06colors i suppose it's uh it's also years of experience knowing what pigments to use in
26:12order to achieve these colors but it seems to go okay yeah sophie must also make sure her changes
26:23are reversible for future conservators when i retouch i need to make sure that i'm following
26:30the pattern and i'm not sort of um retouching over it i literally hold my breath just to sort of
26:38because i'm concentrating so much
26:42there's an ongoing debate how we should preserve art i wanted to bring it back to life with minimal
26:49intervention you know i want this to be a henrik dunkerts and not a sophie reddington
26:54it's a very interesting painting when you look up close at all the little details
27:02they are more like hints of something it's it's not as if he's painted a whole face but when you
27:09step back all of a sudden it unifies to become a proper visual
27:18it's a really satisfying moment when you really kind of bring the composition back together again i think
27:23i feel like everything looks much more vibrant and much sharper in detail like the artist intended
27:29it it's really pulling together quite nicely but there's still a lot to do and so um yeah i need to crack on
27:40at the royal oak foundation conservation studio they're pulling out all the stops to try and salvage
27:57elizabeth's folding screen to reattach the hundreds of loose pieces of lacquer maria assisted by student
28:06conservator thomas is preparing a traditional japanese technique known as shimbari shimbari is a
28:15technique that basically uses sticks to add pressure in localized area this is a very painstaking
28:22procedure with a very fragile surface first maria replies adhesive to the patches of screen where the
28:32lacquer has flaked off we need to be quick because this glue cools down very quickly and then reattaches
28:39the loose pieces before laying protective pads over the top to hold them in place and here we go we put
28:49the pressure on finally wedging them against the frame with fiberglass rods which traditionally would have
28:56been bamboo you will have more accurate pressure with this in the specific area you want
29:07i will use those sticks to make sure that every single flake or bit of surface has the right amount of pressure
29:15with a forest of up to 50 sticks on each small section of panel it's a delicate balancing act
29:22the more sticks you put the more pressure you add and if just one stick slips it can create a domino
29:30effect bringing them all down with this technique we need to be cautious to place the the sticks correctly
29:39so they don't sleep if you put too much pressure you are breaking even more the the surface they're cracking
29:46it even more once the last stick is in place it's a waiting game
29:58maria will only find out tomorrow if the shimbari has worked its magic so we'll have to repeat this
30:06and do this process on both sides a screen which means that we still have a lot to do
30:25so at ham hannah is delving into the archives to try and pin down the history of the screen
30:36it would be lovely to be able to work out when it came to ham how it made that amazing journey
30:42from where it was made all the way here to the west side of london this inventory lists the contents
30:49of ham in 1683 and should give a good idea of how elizabeth was spending her generous royal pension
30:57she's really showing off her wealth enjoying her royal links so we know that elizabeth was
31:02buying from traders that were based in london that were getting these goods from around the world
31:07she's got cabinets she's got silk she's got fabric she's got all sorts going on
31:11oh this might be it uh in the queen's bedchamber in 1683 it's recorded one fine japan screen with
31:25birds and plants that ham even had a queen's bedchamber is a measure of elizabeth's social success
31:33charles ii and his wife catherine were guests here
31:36you're really making the queen herself feel welcome in your home um but it's also a bit of
31:43showing off and elizabeth had plenty to shout about throughout her life as power changed hands from king
31:53to cromwell to king again she maneuvered her way so successfully that she found favor from both sides
32:01she manages to cultivate a friendship with oliver cromwell while at the same time we know that she was
32:08carrying secret letters to the continent for charles ii so she was being very very canny and that
32:16canniness allowed her to keep hold of ham for the future and elizabeth is uh almost a queen in her own domain
32:22corfe castle's heroine mary banks ended up losing her home but 380 years later she's still flavor of the
32:38month in the tea room you know she didn't pull any punches she was determined she you know she stood up
32:45for herself and her family and for her land and i think that's a great um legacy isn't it really
32:54today the only invaders are the hungry hordes welcomed by the tea room team of tracy and louie
33:02so believe it or not as small as this place is
33:05we serve yearly every year about 22 000 scones we serve 30 000 teas we serve as well about 10 000
33:19pieces of cake and about 2 000 shortbreads but for the quintessential corfe experience the connoisseur's
33:28choice is the classic cream tea they want that englishness and our scones here i have to say i've
33:37tried a fair few cream teas in my time i'd say ours were the best without a shadow of a doubt
33:45even when it gets really busy in here there's something really magical about going outside
33:50seeing the garden full of people against the backdrop of that beautiful building
33:58so
34:02although mary banks recovered corfe castle in the years after the civil war
34:07the damage was far too great for it to be restored to its former glory so the family set up home at a
34:14new house 12 miles down the road kingston lacy and here she is the lady herself lady mary banks
34:23curator kate is looking into mary's formidable reputation and how it may have been embellished
34:30by her great great great grandson so william john banks was many things he was an art connoisseur an
34:38art collector and explorer but he also had a deep and profound interest in his family history
34:43to immortalize the first siege in 1643 william john commissioned this bronze relief based on sketches
34:53he drew and which have long lain in the banks archive oh wow look at this this is extraordinary
35:00oh my goodness there's a wonderful grouping of women here hurling burning rocks and boulders down on
35:07the advancing parliamentary troops gosh look here is lady mary uh standing above the outer gate house
35:14holding a sword which shows her role in defending the castle
35:18that is the iconic image of mary that we've inherited this sense of her being a strong matriarch
35:27a strong guardian and a really loyal and dutiful woman so every every fine detail william john has
35:34considered and it's it's completely intentional and this really plays into how he is positioning his
35:41family how he's positioning mary in this very particular important moment of british history legend has it
35:47that mary was also present for the second siege and that the parliamentarians gave her back the keys to
35:54the castle in tribute to her bravery i think it's a really nice story whether it's true or not it's an
36:00important part of the way in which we see her today we're just taking the turf off and as we go in here
36:14now back around here we will start to see the edge of the arch at the castle martin is soldiering on with
36:23his mission to find the long lost sally port that led to its downfall but more than three decades have
36:30passed since his original dig leaving 30 years of debris to sift through in just two days beneath the
36:39topsoil and the grass you'll find plastic cones and rulers from school children and crisp packets as
36:45well golden wonder smoky bacon and then you hit huge blocks of rubble and if you roll those back
36:53there's a pristine sealed deposit from the english civil war the pennies they dropped little lead balls
36:59all those kinds of things but at this stage we're at sort of a plastic ruler level
37:04i've never ever lost that sense of excitement in archaeology it's never changed
37:15which is quite a wonderful thing oh that's a nice green color what it does do is expose all the
37:21different layers of time all the different structures of it you got a piece of a nail
37:28that's nice square section of civil war nail so perhaps we're tickling the top of the civil war
37:36disturbed layers up here
37:40as the first day of the dig draws to a close the team might have made a breakthrough
37:47i'm not sure but this does look more like a definite shape there until we clean it a bit
37:52get these roots out of the way yeah we are
38:04nobody's seen it for more than 300 years this bit so we've come down into this bit and we found
38:10these sorts of stones which are set at angles and they look like the curve of the vault of the arch
38:16and now we've actually sort of underneath this one we've got a hole we've got a hole so we're
38:19going to slip a trowel underneath it the archway has certainly been made quite nicely and it's
38:26been lined with rendered mortar that kind of thing so it has a good feeling that it is actually
38:32a gateway it took longer than i thought actually to get to it i think there was more piled up against
38:37it than i remembered i think we've found something quite exciting it's just a dream
38:43a glass of champagne yes at ham house it's refreshment time of a different kind a welcome
38:59break from cutting the meadows for two thirsty clydesdales frank is very chilled out horse he's
39:06very relaxed he'll he'll go anywhere at any time and nothing phases him percy and he's a bit more
39:12quirky but he settles right in and we couldn't ask for a better pair of horses to go and do a day's work
39:23inside the house more of elizabeth's prized possessions are on the move
39:28heading to the royal oak foundation conservation studio for the attention of senior furniture
39:40conservator nicola i think they're rather fabulous
39:48they're a bit over the top perhaps for a normal normal house but no they're they're really wonderful
39:53these ornate chairs are believed to have been fashioned by one of charles ii's favorite french
40:04upholsterers they were snapped up by elizabeth to grace the north drawing room at ham by buying these
40:1312 beautiful chairs elizabeth was representing her taste for french design and the fact that the
40:20upholstery is still largely intact you just don't see very often certainly from this period
40:30they are like ham a remarkable survival but the chairs are now so fragile that they need
40:36major surgery to survive for another 350 years the embroidered upholstery and wooden frames will be
40:45worked on across the trust's two studios nicola is starting by regilding the bare patches on the
40:52dolphins that form the arms on six of the chairs they just look so lifeless the surfaces are very fragile
41:01so if we don't intervene now then we run the risk of further losses so where this where the gilding layer
41:07is delaminating it's at risk of even the most gentle kind of dusting or or cleaning so much of the original
41:15gold leaf is flaking off the dolphins that bringing them back to life will require the midas touch this
41:22is gilders liquor so it's a deionized water with a very small amount of alcohol in it just to break down
41:28the surface tension and that will allow the gold to stick so i just paint that on
41:40you need to be out of any kind of breezes or air movement of air so you do have to be very careful
41:46if other people might be walking around your goal couldn't be flying around with a price tag of around
41:5450 pounds for a book of gold leaf and a suite of chairs to guild nicola needs laser precision
42:02the price of books of gold goes up and down with the gold market i tend to be quite careful with the
42:07amount of gold i'm using whoever figured out how to make gold really really thin must have been pleased
42:14with themselves it's about the thickness of the membrane between two layers of an onion and if you
42:20touch it it will disintegrate so i'm just going to use this abrasive cloth just to try and lose the
42:29edges of the new gold that i've put on just to blend them into the old gold
42:38there is quite a lot of work to do each chair is is taking between sort of 80 and 100 hours for the
42:46frames conservation and then the textile conservation is far more extensive it's an extremely difficult job
43:07this looks quite daunting i have to say at the national trust's textile conservation studio in norfolk
43:15so many bits falling off amy is sizing up her side of the bargain the dolphin chair's elaborate seat covers
43:25my mind is racing as to what i can actually do to help these poor things
43:29i mean they're beautiful but they've they've seen some life
43:34i mean even by first glance you can see that they're incredibly fragile and damaged and we've got
43:39these great long kind of ribbons of of silk that are now very fragile and at risk
43:47the fringing where it's seen so much wear from the back of people's legs i mean it's almost completely
43:53lost in places you're concerned i feel concerned but before amy can make repairs to the fringes
44:03she needs to clean them with the most delicate of detergents there's always that odd feeling of
44:09that you're handling you've decided to make wet something that is three to four hundred years old
44:16we find that wet cleaning doesn't just remove some of the dust and dirt and brighten
44:21but also an amount of the moisture will go into the fibers and so they become
44:26more hydrated as a conservator when we can't turn back time we can't stop what's happened but we can
44:35try our hardest to slow it down now and preserve as much as we can although the fabric is showing
44:42encouraging signs of life the fragile fringes will require a more notable intervention the entire set
44:51has significant losses in places they look a bit like gappy teeth at the moment and i've been on a
44:58search to find a suitable warm material to visually improve the losses that we're seeing in the original
45:05silk amy is sending a sample off to a specialist manufacturer to see if they can provide a modern match
45:13to the 17th century frills though introducing a new fabric to a rare and precious object isn't a decision
45:22that amy ever takes lightly if we put the wrong thing behind it's going to become screamingly obvious
45:28and we want it to do its job but stand back in you know in the background we don't want it to shout
45:34i'm a new bit of fringe here every intervention that we think that we're going to do on a project you
45:41have to weigh up the ethics of of doing that that is part of our job is to think through all those
45:47risks have those conversations with the property and the curators about what we think is viable and
45:52what isn't this is certainly the longest and biggest conservation project that i have managed i haven't lost
46:02yet we'll see how it goes we're just checking for anything that might fall in the next couple of years
46:22at corfe james is leaving no stone unturned in his quest to conserve the castle's crumbling walls there's a
46:30whopping great nest here this is the raven's nest we don't disturb them we leave them well alone
46:36they've been here for years and years and years the ravens under the watchful gaze of the castle's
46:41current occupants looking for a secret door martin is hoping to expose the sally port we're about
46:49half a meter into the arch that led to the downfall of its former residence
46:59that's gone past the the width of the wall hasn't it so the width of the wall
47:04is two meters wide and we've got the pole in now at 180 185
47:09so i'd say it's a doorway although martin's hopeful that this is the inner gateway the jury's
47:18out until he finds the exit point on the outer wall as you can see john it's sort of
47:25very ivy covered and it's obscured but is there some kind of a lot arch underneath this area here
47:31contractor john has some serious strimming to do to uncover this particular buried treasure if it's
47:40a gateway it has to come out hasn't it it could just do that couldn't it and then we've got arches
47:44on both sides we would have done it
47:48after several weeks in the care of conservator sophie the painting of the duke and duchess is returning
48:02to its rightful home i'm really excited for it to return to ham it will be great to make sure it goes
48:10back safely into its place ready one two three three okay oh wow wow that looks so bright
48:24wow oh my god it looks the house is a different color this poor man with his head he looks so
48:32having a moment um and we wondered whether that might be the sort of black sheep of the family
48:37william who was a rebel by all accounts but now obviously these have also reappeared yeah
48:43they really have yes i'm not sure i ever saw those all that dog it makes me so happy look at the light
48:51on the bushes yeah i know just on the corners it was ended up being a much bigger challenge than i
48:56thought but i persevered and i think it's and come together really nicely i'm so relieved
49:08it's the sort of thing you put on social media now isn't it you'd be like oh look at our new
49:11house we've just finished the extension and this is the equivalent this is the 350 year old equivalent
49:17of uh of that moment it's absolutely incredible the work that sophie has done it's really brought the
49:24scene to life really emphasizes that ham was not just a place of power but also a family home for
49:30elizabeth she loved her house she loved her family and this was her place setting
49:41so aim aim for the middle of the chair and then we'll flap the corners around each other
49:45at the textile conservation studio amy is piecing back together the first of the 17th century dolphin
49:53chairs including its 21st century edition the new pieces of fringe
50:03so all the fringes are now showing a combination of both the replacement which we've still got here
50:09with its holding stitch on it and on top if i move that away you can see the remains of the original silk
50:15i love the fact that we were brave enough to introduce the fringes to supplement the original
50:22fringe that we've got the silks are just such a massive improvement on what they were right so
50:28if we can start with this corner first freshly cleaned and conserved
50:37amy just has to get the covers to fit
50:39you can't get the hooks to come together as they once did oh god as you do one up the other one
50:47comes undone oh and we've come undone again you can't expect to have something to come all the
50:52way apart to all of its components and then back together and not have a few teething issues
50:56i've lost the top one a bit tight yeah
51:04yay great really pleased what a relief great now with a fully fitting cover spin around the first of
51:18elizabeth's star attractions can return to ham come on in and it's drawn quite a crowd
51:26it's a big difference transformative like way more than i thought to be honest unless you look
51:43completely up close and know what you're looking for you really cannot tell um what is you know older
51:50we had significant areas of loss where actually the gilding had just kind of fallen away it's just
51:56lifted just amazing what a difference like good for another 350 years let's hope it's wonderful
52:03to have the first dolphin chair home it really brings to life the opulence of this design it is
52:09so exuberant with all the dolphins flowing around the object and the detail and colors that you can see
52:15coming out in the textiles so we can't wait to have the whole setback
52:19at corfe castle it's the moment of truth for martin the vegetation has been stripped away from the outer
52:31wall and he may have found a trace of the sally port's exit
52:35my colleague and i are going to open this area here and just take the mound down and hopefully then
52:44we will see that this overhang is actually the arch
52:47the more we looked the more frustrated we became so that's solid but bad isn't
53:05each bit of rubble we thought we we just cleaned under it that would be the start of the arch and
53:09we didn't find that at all what can you see lots of stones mortared together as the dig draws to a close
53:19the location of the external entrance remains elusive
53:26is it hidden somewhere i can't see the exit point but sunnyport so our conclusion must be that there
53:32is an arch here it was blocked up but we can't see it at the moment
53:38for now martin has only half a solution to the sally port puzzle
53:44but although he's about to hang up his shovel for good he's confident that the missing piece
53:49will be found one day in my heart at the moment i do believe i get it in my bones i think it is the one
53:56one day in my heart and there must be another reason why the external entrance hasn't been found
54:01and the only reason i can think of is we just haven't gone deep enough yet the story's not over
54:11we have found something that we haven't seen for a long long time it's definitely an avenue that we
54:15would like to continue going down discovering more about the castle all the time is just it's paramount
54:22corfe's heroine mary banks died in 1661 15 years after being evicted from her castle
54:32but the battle to preserve her home as she left it will go on forever there will always be work
54:40that needs to be done on the castle there's going to be sections that will need small bits of work
54:44there will be sections that will need large bits of work and that's just the element of a thousand
54:48year old ruin it will keep us busy for generations to come today at the knoll studio it's crunch time
55:03for one of ham house's most cherished pieces why not after 24 hours under tension maria is stealing
55:12herself to remove the last 50 shimbari sticks that are clamping down the flaking lacquer remove the second
55:19on elizabeth's folding screen it's perfectly fine it actually looks amazing yeah the locker is back in
55:28place and in the right place it's a very simple technique it's not rocket science but also it's working so
55:42with the lacquer holding firm the screen just needs a thorough clean to bring back its luster
55:53very excited
56:00oh my goodness wow and so much glossier got gold on there as well and all of these are so much clearer
56:06oh my god i feel a bit emotional it all kind of blurred into a dull background before didn't
56:12it and oh i feel a bit i feel a bit genuinely tearful i'm so excited thank you very much you clever thing
56:22now for the final test standing the screen upright for the first time in almost 100 years wow look at the
56:30signs of it it's tall it's humongous as the duchess would have seen it it's almost like an illustrated
56:36book you open it and the colors just sort of leap out off the pages it looks like the birds are alive
56:41the flowers are blooming that would have been the most impressive imposing bit of furniture i'm already
56:48thinking how is it gonna look with the other four panels absolutely it's gonna be an amazing piece
56:53honestly maria i am blown away at what you've achieved it looks phenomenal i knew it was going
56:59to be amazing but this has just surpassed all of my expectations
57:05it's so incredible to see these screens in their finished state they're looking strong they're looking
57:10impressive the colors are really popping and the idea that we're that one step closer to having them
57:15back visible and able to be seen and enjoyed in their splendor is incredible
57:20elizabeth lived at ham among the beautiful treasures she had lovingly collected until her death in 1698
57:32i think i would have been terrified of elizabeth but i would have loved to have met her to really pick
57:37her brains around what life was like here at ham during that period elizabeth was clearly an exceptional
57:45woman and she did exceptional things and these items are so important for bringing the vanishing
57:50world of the late 17th century back to life next time the architect who devised a blueprint for modern
58:03living changing the architectural landscape of cities was bold the victorian literary celebrity
58:11who rewrote the way history is told he invited the reader to imagine themselves witnessing the sights
58:19the sounds the smells and the wealthy collector who wanted to bring art to the masses my favorites change
58:26almost daily
58:38so
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