Graham ('The Flying G') speaks to Jess, a medieval re-enactor. (August 2024)
Graham: Hello everyone, it's Graham, the flying G. I recently had the pleasure of meeting Jess. Jess is a re-enactor, a living historian and the founder of Living Medieval magazine and the associated website, Living medieval.com.
We'll find out what it was really like to live in medieval times. Was it really that bad? And also, let's get Jess to bust a few of those myths, because if anyone can bust myths about medieval living, it's Jess. Good morning. Jess, how are you?
Jess: Good morning. I'm very good.
Graham: Now, Jess is a well, you're a you call yourself a living historian as opposed to a passed on living, not living historian. What can you just describe to our listeners what actually, that is what it involves and what you do.
Jess: So Living Historian is someone who they basically live the history. So they live in the kit, they go to the camp. They recreate medieval life for people to come and look and learn about and watch, so it's living the history essentially, right?
Graham: Okay. So, so basically living the life of the medieval people.
Jess: Yes, essentially. Brilliant. A bit of fighting thrown in there with a bit of re-enacting.
Graham: I was going to ask you that. So you you have a history of, you know, getting involved? Not a history. Sorry. You have a love of getting involved in sort of, you know, arts and theatrical things. And you've got a link to us here, haven't you, at Swanage Pier?
Jess: I do, yes, I was, I was an extra in Howards End on the pier.
Graham: So that's that's a link there with Swanage. But also you're you're actually from the area quite nearby, aren't you?
Jess: Yes. I'm from Wimborne, born and raised. My parents have lived there my whole life, and then I also worked in Purbeck, just down the road for a couple of years as well.
Graham: Brilliant. So do you mind me telling the listeners where that was? Is that okay? Purbeck school? Yes. You were a there doing history, is that right?
Jess: Yes, sort of in the same department. And then I worked briefly teaching history as well before I went back to where we now are.
Graham: Okay, so there's a lot of connections there. And obviously, you know, you must have a love of history if you studied that.
Jess: So I did a degree in it many moons ago now. I did a degree in history at Cardiff. And then I met my boyfriend who introduced me to sort the living history and reenactment side of stuff as well. So I've kind of had a long relationship with history that's kind of been ignited again by being with re-enactors.
Graham: So your partner, what do you mind if we say hello to him? We can.
Jess: Say Mitch.
Graham: Hi, Mitch. Hi, Mitch. He shares your love of reenactment.
Jess: Absolutely. He's the medieval. I do the hobby, he's done it since he was about 14. So really doing it his whole life. He's more knowledgeable about it than I am. I'd say he's very passionate.
Graham: Brilliant. So that that that's. Well, that's a relationship made in heaven, then, isn't it? But I must have. Your wardrobe must be horrendous at home.
Jess: Because I have an entire room dedicated to reenactment clothes. I never thought I'd have one. So we don't have a spare bedroom with a bed. We have just racks and racks of clothes, and a whole garage is taken up with it, honestly. It's. He's got more clothes than I do, so.
Graham: No one, no one, no one can come and stay at your place. Not unless they turn into some sort of serf.
Jess: They can live on the floor. It's fine.
Graham: Brilliant. Well, it's lovely to sort of get a bit of background and find out, you know, what your, you know, your motivation is for all of this because it's, it's something that when, when I, you know, go past Corfe sometimes those reenactments, I always, always find the people involved in that really interesting, you know, thinking, wow, what is that like? And they've even got all the tents and things like that. Are you are you sort of literally one of those.
Jess: Basically one of those people. I mean, I've not done an event at Corfe Castle, but I used to be that person that would go past and think, how do they even get into this? And what do they do with their everyday lives? So I'm one of those people that's running around a field with a bow or eating strange looking food or something.
Graham: Well we'll have to find out all about that in a bit. And, and also just, just before we go to a piece of music your passion is spilled onto now the living medieval magazine which is a new venture for you.
Jess: So we founded a magazine called Living Medieval, which was just a way, like a platform for living historians, re-enactors, archaeologists, historians, people to just share their knowledge and experience. Because I've learned so much by being a reenactor and living historian, more than I think I would have ever learned from a book. And I just kind of wanted to be able to share that with people, because it's such an incredible way to learn the history and how they really lived. And it was just kind of an outlet for that as a passion project, essentially. It all stems from living history and reenactment and, and living medieval as an extension of that and a way to kind of bridge that gap.
Graham: And I would say also, we in the modern world could learn a lot from living medieval, wouldn't you?
Jess: Absolutely.
Graham: You work on aircraft, you fly around the world. When you're doing that, do you ever actually indulge yourself in their history? You know, the countries that you're in.
Jess: All the time. I think knowing a little bit about history is just completely inspired all of my travels around the world. So I go and see places that people wouldn't necessarily think to go and see. So Akko in Israel is one place which is an ancient port city, which I've been to, where the Templars last stood before the fall of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, which is an incredible place, but also more sort of quirky places like New York, where you wouldn't really think that you'd have sort of old history. And in the public library there, they've got all these sort of medieval manuscripts and all these really cool medieval artefacts that you would never think to find in in a New York public library.
Graham: So, you know, I feel I feel terrible now because how many times have, you know, we do we go there and you're saying that the new is that the the the library, the main library in New York?
Jess: Of film fame. The one that's in the Day After Tomorrow. It's just hidden away in there. It's a free exhibition as well. It's completely free to get into.
Graham: And they've got ancient medieval manuscripts.
Jess: They've got medieval manuscripts, they've got the oldest Bible in the world. They've got the original Winnie the Pooh teddy bear in there, and they've got so many historical artefacts that you would if you didn't know or think to look for it, you would never find it. And there's all these little nuggets of history around the world, which we're obviously privileged to have the opportunity to go and and see.
Graham: That brings us on nicely to, you know, talking about learning and things like that. History sort of moved down the curriculum a little bit, I think, don't you? Do you think it's sort of a choice now as opposed to.
Jess: It is a choice for people to, to choose between normally between geography, I think. I mean, it always tends to lose out, but it's it's a shame really, because there's so much we can learn and, and I think it's sometimes hard for students and, and, and children to appreciate history from a textbook sometimes. And they don't tend to learn or be as interested in it. And it's such a shame, because I feel like there's so much that we can learn and appreciate by, you know, understanding where we came from and who we were and how we lived and can make us better going forward. There's so many examples.
Graham: So so what you're saying, like basically we could like we've said this several times, learn from our ancestors. Does it also sort of help busting some, like, you know, when you go to these places or you read the manuscripts, does it bust myths about, like, living in medieval times?
Jess: I mean, there's so many things that people misunderstand about the medieval period. I think the most prevailing one is that they were all sort of dirty and unclean, and they all wore brown drab of clothes and black and all a bit.
Graham: Like, no. What's that? It's not Baldrick, is it? Who's the. I'm trying to think of somebody.
Jess: Oh from…...
Graham: So going around in sacking and just picking up bones from the, you know, the floor to eat that had been discarded from the meal table, there may.
Jess: Well have been people who did do that. The very poor. But I think in terms of cleanliness in general, people seem to think that they were just this stinky society that didn't know what a bath was. And it's just it's just not true. And, and they wore really boring browns. And, you know, when you see on TV and all these things that, you know, that's not necessarily true, that people believe to be the case with the medieval period by learning it and doing the living history, you can kind of bust those myths and see what life was actually like.
Graham: Wow. So a lot more colourful and a lot more refined.
Jess: Definitely a lot more colourful, more refined in certain places, depending on what level of society you're from.
Graham: But, well, we'll come back and chat about that bit in a minute then. So we, you know, we'll we'll have a little drill down into what it was like to actually live in those times.
You're depending on, you know, where you were in society. And interestingly, the point we made there as well, which is really good. Is it really we don't know. You know, without history, you don't really know why you're here or where you're you know, how it's all evolved in the world that you live in without knowing where you've come from? Would you agree with that?
Jess: Absolutely. I think how the old adage, isn't it, you know, how do you know where you're going if you don't know where you've come from? And, and there's so much we can learn from the way that they lived, but also just learn to appreciate about what we have today. I think there's so much that we have that we take for granted. And then I think we mentioned previously before this, you know, about fake news and things like that, you know how do you identify, you know, what's real and what's not without having like an understanding of of what came before or, you know, where something is from or who wrote it and why they wrote it. So, so yeah, I think it's, it's a whole world that people need to be more enthusiastic about.
Graham: What was it? What was the what was the structure? The, you know, the the actual demographic, if you like, of the population. You know, if you lived in a village.
Jess: The vast majority of the population was was they were peasants. So we would all be peasants. About 80% of the population throughout the medieval period were peasants. So they were the farmers. Essentially. It's another word for farmer. So the farmers working the land for their their lord or their overlord, who would then in turn be sort of answerable to the person above them, normally a noble and then at the top of the ladder would always be the king and the monarchy, whoever's in charge of the whole lot. But the vast majority of us would have been peasants and just tilling our land, working our field, working our oxen.
Graham: So did they, you know, these peasants, did they own the land or were they tenant farmers or.
Jess: So they're tenant farmers. There's different types of of peasants. You've got serfs who are essentially unfree. So if a landlord wanted to sell his land, they would be sold, their labour would be sold with the land. But you do have sort of the free man, the free peasant as well, so they could eventually own land and work their way up to being a landholder in their own way. And so you do get richer peasants and poorer peasants so they could work their way up the social ladder. But but generally, they're not that well-to-do.
Graham: Right. So what you're saying that was interesting. So the the noble person or the landowner the peasants came with the land, and if they sold the land, the peasants would go to the new owner, essentially.
Jess: Not the physical person themselves, but their labour, their labour sold to whoever it was that would be taking over the land. So. Wow. Amazing. It's a couple of parallels there to slavery, I suppose. But yeah, they would sell their labour.
Graham: Yeah it is slavery isn't it. In a sense.
Jess: Essentially. But they could make, you know, if you were a free peasant, a free man, you could move from manor to manor. You could sell your own produce at market on specific days or specific days, and work your way up that way.
Graham: Right. Okay. So the peasants, did they live in a did they build their own house on the land.
Jess: Or again, it kind of depends on sort of how much they've got to their name. But at the lowest level they'd be living in a hovel with their own animals, you know.
Graham: So live with their animals?
Jess: In one room with an animal, you know, you've got to look after your animal because they are your livelihood. They create the cheese and all the food that you eat. So so people would live in one room buildings with their animals and the peasant class. And if you're slightly better off, you might have two rooms where the animals live in one and you live in another. Wow. And generally no windows either. So sort of small windows.
Graham: So I suppose that in the winter that would be nice because it maybe keep you a bit warmer. Well, that was.
Jess: The purpose I think was to keep both you and the animals warm. So having them all be a bit stinky.
Graham: You imagine living with a great big cow in your bedroom.
Jess: Intimate? No.
Graham: Oh, my goodness me. And I can't imagine that. When did they sort of. Did they ever eat those animals? I mean, very rarely they'd be using the by-products as opposed to slaughtering them.
Jess: People seem to have this misconception that people in the medieval period would eat meat all the time, and it just wasn't really the case. They would be mostly vegetarian or pescatarian, and they would eat meat normally on special occasions, or they'd sort of stockpile it to get themselves through the winter. So a lot of families would have sort of a pig and that pig they would get in the spring, raise it, and then slaughter it in the November to get them through the winter, because times were hard. But animals were so important for things like, you know, food, other food, so by-products, so eggs, cheese, butter, all the things that were the staples of a medieval diet in general. So to slaughter an animal just for, you know, the fur. Wouldn't necessarily be the done thing. Well, not it's not like a constant thing that they were doing. The higher up the social hierarchy you are, the more opulent you are. The more food that you get, the more that you eat.
Graham: Okay. So they're essentially vegetarian and would only have meat like in very rare, very odd occasions.
Jess: Not as often as people seem to think. You know, you see these films where people are feasting on all these chicken bones and things and again, higher up the social ladder, that would be more the case. But but average Joe. No, no, no.
Graham: So another quick question for you then. So how long, how long would you live for if you were a peasant?
Jess: If you got to 25, you could maybe live till 50. But getting to 25 would be a challenge. Manual, hard labour. Their lives were short, very difficult. And for women, obviously childbirth was a massive danger, so that would affect life expectancy. But we do have records of people living to their 80s. 70s 80s.
Graham: Would they be the noble people.
Jess: You've got sort of Eleanor of Aquitaine as one. She's this the Queen of England and France. She's an incredible woman. She lives for a very long time. She outlives her husband and lots of her children. But you do get, you know, the anchorites people that are sort of separate themselves from the world and live a very austere kind of religious life. Sometimes they live a long time as well, it just depends. But the general expectancy of life, I'd say probably 25 to 35 for your average Joe person.
Graham: So you mentioned long living nobles and kings and queens. What would kill them in the end, then?
Jess: Gluttony.
Graham: Gluttony.
Jess: Too many. Too many eels. No.
Graham: Too many.
Jess: Eels. Many eels, there's records of Kings dying from eating too many lampreys, I think.
Graham: So gluttony.
Jess: But also war and disease - disease was a big one. They weren't immune to the plague.
Graham: Interestingly, it all came to a grinding halt in medieval times with the plague.
Jess: It did. Which entered England through Weymouth. So it came through Weymouth. Dorset is responsible for that.
Graham: Dorset is responsible for the. I mean, there's been several plagues, but which one are we talking about?
Jess: We're talking about the Black Death from 1348. So sort of the main one that people think about when they think of the plague. It's the one from 1348.
Graham: So it is the the plague.
Jess: They called it the great pestilence, though. So all the names that were given to it since are from sort of later historians.
Graham: So how did that make its way into Weymouth then.
Jess: So it via the Silk Roads, via trade routes from Asia. They believe it started in Asia and has worked its way some parallels. Worked its way through merchant ships and trading routes and then arrived at the port in Weymouth via a merchant ship, probably from Calais. And through. Well, there's lots of assumptions about what it was that carried the disease, whether it was flea rats or flea rats or rats, rat.
Graham: Fleas or rat, please. Like the same thing?
Jess: So there's lots of theories about what caused it, possibly via the trade routes. There's a huge trade network throughout the whole of the European world and medieval world in general.
Graham: So what was the effect of, of this plague on the, on the country?
Jess: It killed about 30 to 50% of the population.
Graham: So, so half of England or Britain, Europe died and Europe.
Jess: Some places, villages were left totally empty. Nobody survived. And in other places they were totally untouched. So it really varied. But, but but it's estimated 30 to 50% of the population died. But the plague is still around today. It's just they didn't have the medicine in order to to treat it. And they didn't really understand what it was. But but it was a it had a huge impact on the social structure of life. It actually gave away to rights for, for tenants. They could, you know, the peasant class, they could demand more rights as a result because Labour was in such short supply. So horrible disease.
Graham: Saying that the tenant basically went into tenant farming as opposed to being sort of almost slaves to the landowner.
Jess: Essentially they could demand more rights because there weren't as many of them to go around. So and it's where a theory that we get the word villain from villain because they're cast as villains, because they left the tenant where they should have been working. They should have been doing the lamb for the Lord. And they thought, no, I'm going. I'm going to go find work elsewhere. And they broke the law in that way. So they became villains or villains.
Graham: What's life like for you at weekends with you and Mitch? That was a bit personal. Know what I mean? Is, like, reenactment and stuff like that.
Jess: Really exciting. So sort of an average event, you know, you go you you have. We like to live authentically throughout the whole weekend. Some people don't, but we like to, you know, we spend a lot of money on the equipment and the clothes that we wear. So we live authentically for the whole weekend. We set up a camp so we have an authentic tent. We set up a bed inside there. Yes, they did have beds.
Graham: I think we've got a photo of it on our on our social media, I think there's a photo of the tent. I think we've put it on today.
Jess: I think so. We like to make it nice and cosy and snuggly inside. So we set up a tent and an encampment, and there'll be a lot of us, a lot of re-enactors all doing the same thing. And then you basically have a display, or you just portray medieval life, and members of the public can come and ask questions and be educated about what it is that you're doing, whether it's a craft or whether you're eating the food or whether you're fighting a battle. And and yet you just live the day as a medieval person. And then in the evening when the public go, you can sit around the fire with your friends and you're having a bit of mead.
Graham: I was going to say, do you drink mead? Yes. So where do you get that from? Like Do you know what?
Jess: It's becoming more popular recently, but normally just very sort of niche kind of companies that make it. A lot of people make their own actually very strong stuff, but I never I've never heard or tried it before really until I started re-enacting. And now I'm a little bit obsessed with it. It's really nice.
Graham: So. All right. So what about the food then? What are you eating if you're immersing yourself.
Jess: So we. There's not eels. Not not eels. No. Although, I mean, you could if you wanted to, but there's there's lots of medieval cookbooks out there, actually. So a lot of re-enactors based their cooking off of those. But the Tewkesbury event I went to last year, the Battle of Tewkesbury we were eating sort of elderflower cakes and elderflower pies and pottage. They loved a bit of pottage in the medieval period.
Graham: What is that?
Jess: A stew essentially. Without potatoes, potatoes didn't exist, but with lots of peas and herbs and all just kind of put in a pot. It's called pottage. They survived a lot on that, but they would mix savoury and sweet together. There was no such thing as sort of a starter and dessert in the medieval period. They would just eat everything at once.
Graham: Yeah, they're like Americans at breakfast - they do, don't they, have eggs and maple syrup with their pancakes? So seriously, they mix it all up.
Jess: They just eat everything. Kind of, you know, they're not fussy about, you know, having a dessert station. It's all on the table all at once, so you have a bit of everything.
Graham: So going into the battle now that you'll be fighting over these weekends because there must be a battle involved. Right.
Jess: There is normally.
Graham: How do you how do you cast it?
Jess: It depends on the group that you're a part of. So there's there's so many different reenactment groups across the UK. But normally, if it's run by a big organiser like English Heritage, they normally kind of pre-plan who's going to play key figures if there is a key figure. So the Battle of Hastings event that we do in October, there's normally someone's cast as Harold and someone's cast as William and someone's cast as Edith in advance. I was asked to do Edith last year, actually. I got scared. What an accolade.
Graham: Does Mitch get any of those as well?
Jess: No, we don't get offered to do them. So it's it's normally you have to be in the know with the O. But we do impressions of sort of characters from history, like Harold and Edith.
Graham: And do you speak the language as well?
Jess: We tried our best to learn bits of Old English. Can you can.
Graham: You give me an.
Jess: Example? Oh, gosh. Dice or Frodo? This is Meg.
Graham: Oh my goodness. You're speaking parseltongue. Oh, Harry Potter. That was amazing. Do that again.
Jess: I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly. I apologise for people who actually speak old English. Right. This swimerg that means that was overcome. So this may be. Oh, wow. That's amazing poem called Dior in Old English poem. It's beautiful. But we do try to learn sort of snippets of the language where we can. And that's another thing about living history. Now, I never thought to learn the language until I did Living History. And you have such an appreciation of of who these people were. And I think something that's lost in the classroom, you don't really care about, you know, the individuals because it's just on a piece of paper. But by going to these events and learning the language and eating the food, you know, you really understand and appreciate.
Graham: Do you get do you get trained to use your swords and your there.
Jess: It depends on the group that you're a part of. I'm part of a group called Regia Anglorum. But they do have training outside of these big events. So you can learn, you know, not there's certain places you can hit people with your sword. They're all bronze swords as well. And I have blunt arrows. So you're not actually so.
Graham: So basically you're saying that it's being judged essentially.
Jess: Yes.
Graham: So you get your sword and you hit the person in the right place. In the right place. Then they have to stand down do they?
Jess: You normally have sort of hip marks. So you, you have a certain number of hits that you can have. But yes, you get judged. And if you do it wrong, you are, you are told Jesse.
Graham: The magazine that we’re going to talk about it - Living Medieval. So living medieval.com is where you find it. It is? So what can you expect when you open the pages of that magazine?
Jess: A wonderful, colourful world. Lots of different things. We have basically get lots of writers, archaeologists, historians to write in and tell us about something about the medieval world that you might not necessarily have known before. So we've got things in there about dyeing clothes we've got playing.
Graham: So how they how they used to dye clothes.
Jess: Dye clothes? Sort of, you know what colours they used, how they got those colours. We've got someone who plays an ancient sort of instrument called a lyre. That was found at a Sutton Hoo burial. We've got someone talking about medieval table manners.
Graham: Just focusing on that earlier. Well, that must've made me laugh because there was a there was a bit in there. It was. It was about cleaning your teeth at the table. Not to clean with your fingers, your teeth, and not to lick your fingers either.
Jess: And don't suck noisily from a spoon.
Graham: Don't suck noisily from a spoon!
Jess: These are all sort of table etiquette rules that have come directly from a sort of text from the medieval period that one of our writers is sort of written in about.
Graham: So there's there's some serious stuff as well. I read a I think it was Sarah Vida's did a
re-enactor. So she's written an article for you and she women were known as well. They're not in the there's no time, but they were incubators on legs.
Jess: I mean, again, a massive misconception, she's a wonderful living historian, and she does a lot to kind of bust myths around what women's life was actually like in the medieval period. So, yeah, that's one of the things.
Graham: Another thing she said were the women were raised to be controlled. Whoa. You see this is where we can learn from our past isn't it. Yes. Like we do in so many other ways - amazing. And even the clothes they wore were used to control the women, weren't they?
Jess: Yes I mean, the different shapes, different styles, obviously veils and things. But I think one of the, one of the articles that we have in there, written by Katie, is all about the colours that they wore. And there were rules around sort of what things you could and couldn't wear. They were called sumptuary laws. And it's more to do with sort of your status and societal status. But obviously there were gender differences too. But sumptuary laws dictated what colours you could wear, what clothes you could wear. And, and it's just a mad world of, you know. The, the rich and powerful were telling us what we can and can't. It wouldn't stand. It's not right.
Graham: Is it not right? Where are you going with this, then?
Jess: The. Well, I've got lots of grand plans for it. So the first edition has just come out. It's free to read online for everybody, and we're working on the second edition. We've had some great entries already, but we would like to.
Graham: Is it is it every month or. No.
Jess: It's so it's published online four times a year, just out of necessity with full time work and whatnot. But we'd like to eventually kind of expand the team a little bit, I think, and go into the realm of podcasts, sort of video content, educational content, but also get it printed. So I think that's I.
Graham: I have to say, the whole presentation is super, super professional. It's such a lovely read. Thank you. And you know, I love the way the pages swish across and it's just beautiful. I mean, I could like implore you out there listeners to go and have a look at it. Living medieval.com because it is so thank you. So informative.
Jess: A lot of hard work going into it.
Graham: A really, really good job. What what can people do if they want? You know, they've been inspired by you this morning. How can they contact you. How can they become re-enactors?
Jess: So I mean, for reenactment, depending on the period you want, you can contact any local groups. Just pop on Google and search for local reenactment groups. I'm a part of regular Anglorum for Viking and Saxon, but I'm also part of other groups for 15th century.
Graham: So you've got these names. It's so cool, isn't it?
Jess: They're really cool. So you can go on Google and find groups to do reenactment that way, or contact us on social media. We're on social media as well. And with the magazine if you want to get involved with that, we're on Instagram, Living Medieval Official, we're on Facebook Living Medieval and the website Living medieval.com. You can contact us if you feel like there's something you know, that you want to tell the world about, or if there's, you know, a myth that you keep on hearing events that you want to bust and like get in contact. We want to hear and share, you know, people's knowledge. That was the whole point of the project, was to be able to share, you know, the people's experience and knowledge, particularly living historians who share an incredible array of people with so many talents and skills. And they've all learned these skills Themselves. So they have so much to offer, and we want to be able to share that with with everybody.
Graham: So cherry on the top is, you know, as well as getting involved and, you know, exploring the subject, you get to socially expand, don't you?
Jess: Yeah, absolutely - and meet people. I've met so many people, I never thought I'd find people as geeky as me. And now I've found people. I've found my people. So you know, they've got the same interest, and you learn so much from them, and it just opens up so many doors socially. But also, you know, the people that are there, archaeologists that are re-enactors, and it's just a whole new world that I never knew existed until the last couple of years because of Mitch. And and it's I implore everybody to to try and give it a go.
Graham: Okay, Jess. I'd never call you geeky. Yeah, would you not?
Jess: No.
Graham: You called yourself geeky. It's a compliment. So geeky. Jess, it's been great having you on the breakfast show. Thank you so much for coming this morning. You've come a long way, and we really appreciate it. Thank you. All the best going forward with your magazine. Thank you very much.
We'll find out what it was really like to live in medieval times. Was it really that bad? And also, let's get Jess to bust a few of those myths, because if anyone can bust myths about medieval living, it's Jess. Good morning. Jess, how are you?
Jess: Good morning. I'm very good.
Graham: Now, Jess is a well, you're a you call yourself a living historian as opposed to a passed on living, not living historian. What can you just describe to our listeners what actually, that is what it involves and what you do.
Jess: So Living Historian is someone who they basically live the history. So they live in the kit, they go to the camp. They recreate medieval life for people to come and look and learn about and watch, so it's living the history essentially, right?
Graham: Okay. So, so basically living the life of the medieval people.
Jess: Yes, essentially. Brilliant. A bit of fighting thrown in there with a bit of re-enacting.
Graham: I was going to ask you that. So you you have a history of, you know, getting involved? Not a history. Sorry. You have a love of getting involved in sort of, you know, arts and theatrical things. And you've got a link to us here, haven't you, at Swanage Pier?
Jess: I do, yes, I was, I was an extra in Howards End on the pier.
Graham: So that's that's a link there with Swanage. But also you're you're actually from the area quite nearby, aren't you?
Jess: Yes. I'm from Wimborne, born and raised. My parents have lived there my whole life, and then I also worked in Purbeck, just down the road for a couple of years as well.
Graham: Brilliant. So do you mind me telling the listeners where that was? Is that okay? Purbeck school? Yes. You were a there doing history, is that right?
Jess: Yes, sort of in the same department. And then I worked briefly teaching history as well before I went back to where we now are.
Graham: Okay, so there's a lot of connections there. And obviously, you know, you must have a love of history if you studied that.
Jess: So I did a degree in it many moons ago now. I did a degree in history at Cardiff. And then I met my boyfriend who introduced me to sort the living history and reenactment side of stuff as well. So I've kind of had a long relationship with history that's kind of been ignited again by being with re-enactors.
Graham: So your partner, what do you mind if we say hello to him? We can.
Jess: Say Mitch.
Graham: Hi, Mitch. Hi, Mitch. He shares your love of reenactment.
Jess: Absolutely. He's the medieval. I do the hobby, he's done it since he was about 14. So really doing it his whole life. He's more knowledgeable about it than I am. I'd say he's very passionate.
Graham: Brilliant. So that that that's. Well, that's a relationship made in heaven, then, isn't it? But I must have. Your wardrobe must be horrendous at home.
Jess: Because I have an entire room dedicated to reenactment clothes. I never thought I'd have one. So we don't have a spare bedroom with a bed. We have just racks and racks of clothes, and a whole garage is taken up with it, honestly. It's. He's got more clothes than I do, so.
Graham: No one, no one, no one can come and stay at your place. Not unless they turn into some sort of serf.
Jess: They can live on the floor. It's fine.
Graham: Brilliant. Well, it's lovely to sort of get a bit of background and find out, you know, what your, you know, your motivation is for all of this because it's, it's something that when, when I, you know, go past Corfe sometimes those reenactments, I always, always find the people involved in that really interesting, you know, thinking, wow, what is that like? And they've even got all the tents and things like that. Are you are you sort of literally one of those.
Jess: Basically one of those people. I mean, I've not done an event at Corfe Castle, but I used to be that person that would go past and think, how do they even get into this? And what do they do with their everyday lives? So I'm one of those people that's running around a field with a bow or eating strange looking food or something.
Graham: Well we'll have to find out all about that in a bit. And, and also just, just before we go to a piece of music your passion is spilled onto now the living medieval magazine which is a new venture for you.
Jess: So we founded a magazine called Living Medieval, which was just a way, like a platform for living historians, re-enactors, archaeologists, historians, people to just share their knowledge and experience. Because I've learned so much by being a reenactor and living historian, more than I think I would have ever learned from a book. And I just kind of wanted to be able to share that with people, because it's such an incredible way to learn the history and how they really lived. And it was just kind of an outlet for that as a passion project, essentially. It all stems from living history and reenactment and, and living medieval as an extension of that and a way to kind of bridge that gap.
Graham: And I would say also, we in the modern world could learn a lot from living medieval, wouldn't you?
Jess: Absolutely.
Graham: You work on aircraft, you fly around the world. When you're doing that, do you ever actually indulge yourself in their history? You know, the countries that you're in.
Jess: All the time. I think knowing a little bit about history is just completely inspired all of my travels around the world. So I go and see places that people wouldn't necessarily think to go and see. So Akko in Israel is one place which is an ancient port city, which I've been to, where the Templars last stood before the fall of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, which is an incredible place, but also more sort of quirky places like New York, where you wouldn't really think that you'd have sort of old history. And in the public library there, they've got all these sort of medieval manuscripts and all these really cool medieval artefacts that you would never think to find in in a New York public library.
Graham: So, you know, I feel I feel terrible now because how many times have, you know, we do we go there and you're saying that the new is that the the the library, the main library in New York?
Jess: Of film fame. The one that's in the Day After Tomorrow. It's just hidden away in there. It's a free exhibition as well. It's completely free to get into.
Graham: And they've got ancient medieval manuscripts.
Jess: They've got medieval manuscripts, they've got the oldest Bible in the world. They've got the original Winnie the Pooh teddy bear in there, and they've got so many historical artefacts that you would if you didn't know or think to look for it, you would never find it. And there's all these little nuggets of history around the world, which we're obviously privileged to have the opportunity to go and and see.
Graham: That brings us on nicely to, you know, talking about learning and things like that. History sort of moved down the curriculum a little bit, I think, don't you? Do you think it's sort of a choice now as opposed to.
Jess: It is a choice for people to, to choose between normally between geography, I think. I mean, it always tends to lose out, but it's it's a shame really, because there's so much we can learn and, and I think it's sometimes hard for students and, and, and children to appreciate history from a textbook sometimes. And they don't tend to learn or be as interested in it. And it's such a shame, because I feel like there's so much that we can learn and appreciate by, you know, understanding where we came from and who we were and how we lived and can make us better going forward. There's so many examples.
Graham: So so what you're saying, like basically we could like we've said this several times, learn from our ancestors. Does it also sort of help busting some, like, you know, when you go to these places or you read the manuscripts, does it bust myths about, like, living in medieval times?
Jess: I mean, there's so many things that people misunderstand about the medieval period. I think the most prevailing one is that they were all sort of dirty and unclean, and they all wore brown drab of clothes and black and all a bit.
Graham: Like, no. What's that? It's not Baldrick, is it? Who's the. I'm trying to think of somebody.
Jess: Oh from…...
Graham: So going around in sacking and just picking up bones from the, you know, the floor to eat that had been discarded from the meal table, there may.
Jess: Well have been people who did do that. The very poor. But I think in terms of cleanliness in general, people seem to think that they were just this stinky society that didn't know what a bath was. And it's just it's just not true. And, and they wore really boring browns. And, you know, when you see on TV and all these things that, you know, that's not necessarily true, that people believe to be the case with the medieval period by learning it and doing the living history, you can kind of bust those myths and see what life was actually like.
Graham: Wow. So a lot more colourful and a lot more refined.
Jess: Definitely a lot more colourful, more refined in certain places, depending on what level of society you're from.
Graham: But, well, we'll come back and chat about that bit in a minute then. So we, you know, we'll we'll have a little drill down into what it was like to actually live in those times.
You're depending on, you know, where you were in society. And interestingly, the point we made there as well, which is really good. Is it really we don't know. You know, without history, you don't really know why you're here or where you're you know, how it's all evolved in the world that you live in without knowing where you've come from? Would you agree with that?
Jess: Absolutely. I think how the old adage, isn't it, you know, how do you know where you're going if you don't know where you've come from? And, and there's so much we can learn from the way that they lived, but also just learn to appreciate about what we have today. I think there's so much that we have that we take for granted. And then I think we mentioned previously before this, you know, about fake news and things like that, you know how do you identify, you know, what's real and what's not without having like an understanding of of what came before or, you know, where something is from or who wrote it and why they wrote it. So, so yeah, I think it's, it's a whole world that people need to be more enthusiastic about.
Graham: What was it? What was the what was the structure? The, you know, the the actual demographic, if you like, of the population. You know, if you lived in a village.
Jess: The vast majority of the population was was they were peasants. So we would all be peasants. About 80% of the population throughout the medieval period were peasants. So they were the farmers. Essentially. It's another word for farmer. So the farmers working the land for their their lord or their overlord, who would then in turn be sort of answerable to the person above them, normally a noble and then at the top of the ladder would always be the king and the monarchy, whoever's in charge of the whole lot. But the vast majority of us would have been peasants and just tilling our land, working our field, working our oxen.
Graham: So did they, you know, these peasants, did they own the land or were they tenant farmers or.
Jess: So they're tenant farmers. There's different types of of peasants. You've got serfs who are essentially unfree. So if a landlord wanted to sell his land, they would be sold, their labour would be sold with the land. But you do have sort of the free man, the free peasant as well, so they could eventually own land and work their way up to being a landholder in their own way. And so you do get richer peasants and poorer peasants so they could work their way up the social ladder. But but generally, they're not that well-to-do.
Graham: Right. So what you're saying that was interesting. So the the noble person or the landowner the peasants came with the land, and if they sold the land, the peasants would go to the new owner, essentially.
Jess: Not the physical person themselves, but their labour, their labour sold to whoever it was that would be taking over the land. So. Wow. Amazing. It's a couple of parallels there to slavery, I suppose. But yeah, they would sell their labour.
Graham: Yeah it is slavery isn't it. In a sense.
Jess: Essentially. But they could make, you know, if you were a free peasant, a free man, you could move from manor to manor. You could sell your own produce at market on specific days or specific days, and work your way up that way.
Graham: Right. Okay. So the peasants, did they live in a did they build their own house on the land.
Jess: Or again, it kind of depends on sort of how much they've got to their name. But at the lowest level they'd be living in a hovel with their own animals, you know.
Graham: So live with their animals?
Jess: In one room with an animal, you know, you've got to look after your animal because they are your livelihood. They create the cheese and all the food that you eat. So so people would live in one room buildings with their animals and the peasant class. And if you're slightly better off, you might have two rooms where the animals live in one and you live in another. Wow. And generally no windows either. So sort of small windows.
Graham: So I suppose that in the winter that would be nice because it maybe keep you a bit warmer. Well, that was.
Jess: The purpose I think was to keep both you and the animals warm. So having them all be a bit stinky.
Graham: You imagine living with a great big cow in your bedroom.
Jess: Intimate? No.
Graham: Oh, my goodness me. And I can't imagine that. When did they sort of. Did they ever eat those animals? I mean, very rarely they'd be using the by-products as opposed to slaughtering them.
Jess: People seem to have this misconception that people in the medieval period would eat meat all the time, and it just wasn't really the case. They would be mostly vegetarian or pescatarian, and they would eat meat normally on special occasions, or they'd sort of stockpile it to get themselves through the winter. So a lot of families would have sort of a pig and that pig they would get in the spring, raise it, and then slaughter it in the November to get them through the winter, because times were hard. But animals were so important for things like, you know, food, other food, so by-products, so eggs, cheese, butter, all the things that were the staples of a medieval diet in general. So to slaughter an animal just for, you know, the fur. Wouldn't necessarily be the done thing. Well, not it's not like a constant thing that they were doing. The higher up the social hierarchy you are, the more opulent you are. The more food that you get, the more that you eat.
Graham: Okay. So they're essentially vegetarian and would only have meat like in very rare, very odd occasions.
Jess: Not as often as people seem to think. You know, you see these films where people are feasting on all these chicken bones and things and again, higher up the social ladder, that would be more the case. But but average Joe. No, no, no.
Graham: So another quick question for you then. So how long, how long would you live for if you were a peasant?
Jess: If you got to 25, you could maybe live till 50. But getting to 25 would be a challenge. Manual, hard labour. Their lives were short, very difficult. And for women, obviously childbirth was a massive danger, so that would affect life expectancy. But we do have records of people living to their 80s. 70s 80s.
Graham: Would they be the noble people.
Jess: You've got sort of Eleanor of Aquitaine as one. She's this the Queen of England and France. She's an incredible woman. She lives for a very long time. She outlives her husband and lots of her children. But you do get, you know, the anchorites people that are sort of separate themselves from the world and live a very austere kind of religious life. Sometimes they live a long time as well, it just depends. But the general expectancy of life, I'd say probably 25 to 35 for your average Joe person.
Graham: So you mentioned long living nobles and kings and queens. What would kill them in the end, then?
Jess: Gluttony.
Graham: Gluttony.
Jess: Too many. Too many eels. No.
Graham: Too many.
Jess: Eels. Many eels, there's records of Kings dying from eating too many lampreys, I think.
Graham: So gluttony.
Jess: But also war and disease - disease was a big one. They weren't immune to the plague.
Graham: Interestingly, it all came to a grinding halt in medieval times with the plague.
Jess: It did. Which entered England through Weymouth. So it came through Weymouth. Dorset is responsible for that.
Graham: Dorset is responsible for the. I mean, there's been several plagues, but which one are we talking about?
Jess: We're talking about the Black Death from 1348. So sort of the main one that people think about when they think of the plague. It's the one from 1348.
Graham: So it is the the plague.
Jess: They called it the great pestilence, though. So all the names that were given to it since are from sort of later historians.
Graham: So how did that make its way into Weymouth then.
Jess: So it via the Silk Roads, via trade routes from Asia. They believe it started in Asia and has worked its way some parallels. Worked its way through merchant ships and trading routes and then arrived at the port in Weymouth via a merchant ship, probably from Calais. And through. Well, there's lots of assumptions about what it was that carried the disease, whether it was flea rats or flea rats or rats, rat.
Graham: Fleas or rat, please. Like the same thing?
Jess: So there's lots of theories about what caused it, possibly via the trade routes. There's a huge trade network throughout the whole of the European world and medieval world in general.
Graham: So what was the effect of, of this plague on the, on the country?
Jess: It killed about 30 to 50% of the population.
Graham: So, so half of England or Britain, Europe died and Europe.
Jess: Some places, villages were left totally empty. Nobody survived. And in other places they were totally untouched. So it really varied. But, but but it's estimated 30 to 50% of the population died. But the plague is still around today. It's just they didn't have the medicine in order to to treat it. And they didn't really understand what it was. But but it was a it had a huge impact on the social structure of life. It actually gave away to rights for, for tenants. They could, you know, the peasant class, they could demand more rights as a result because Labour was in such short supply. So horrible disease.
Graham: Saying that the tenant basically went into tenant farming as opposed to being sort of almost slaves to the landowner.
Jess: Essentially they could demand more rights because there weren't as many of them to go around. So and it's where a theory that we get the word villain from villain because they're cast as villains, because they left the tenant where they should have been working. They should have been doing the lamb for the Lord. And they thought, no, I'm going. I'm going to go find work elsewhere. And they broke the law in that way. So they became villains or villains.
Graham: What's life like for you at weekends with you and Mitch? That was a bit personal. Know what I mean? Is, like, reenactment and stuff like that.
Jess: Really exciting. So sort of an average event, you know, you go you you have. We like to live authentically throughout the whole weekend. Some people don't, but we like to, you know, we spend a lot of money on the equipment and the clothes that we wear. So we live authentically for the whole weekend. We set up a camp so we have an authentic tent. We set up a bed inside there. Yes, they did have beds.
Graham: I think we've got a photo of it on our on our social media, I think there's a photo of the tent. I think we've put it on today.
Jess: I think so. We like to make it nice and cosy and snuggly inside. So we set up a tent and an encampment, and there'll be a lot of us, a lot of re-enactors all doing the same thing. And then you basically have a display, or you just portray medieval life, and members of the public can come and ask questions and be educated about what it is that you're doing, whether it's a craft or whether you're eating the food or whether you're fighting a battle. And and yet you just live the day as a medieval person. And then in the evening when the public go, you can sit around the fire with your friends and you're having a bit of mead.
Graham: I was going to say, do you drink mead? Yes. So where do you get that from? Like Do you know what?
Jess: It's becoming more popular recently, but normally just very sort of niche kind of companies that make it. A lot of people make their own actually very strong stuff, but I never I've never heard or tried it before really until I started re-enacting. And now I'm a little bit obsessed with it. It's really nice.
Graham: So. All right. So what about the food then? What are you eating if you're immersing yourself.
Jess: So we. There's not eels. Not not eels. No. Although, I mean, you could if you wanted to, but there's there's lots of medieval cookbooks out there, actually. So a lot of re-enactors based their cooking off of those. But the Tewkesbury event I went to last year, the Battle of Tewkesbury we were eating sort of elderflower cakes and elderflower pies and pottage. They loved a bit of pottage in the medieval period.
Graham: What is that?
Jess: A stew essentially. Without potatoes, potatoes didn't exist, but with lots of peas and herbs and all just kind of put in a pot. It's called pottage. They survived a lot on that, but they would mix savoury and sweet together. There was no such thing as sort of a starter and dessert in the medieval period. They would just eat everything at once.
Graham: Yeah, they're like Americans at breakfast - they do, don't they, have eggs and maple syrup with their pancakes? So seriously, they mix it all up.
Jess: They just eat everything. Kind of, you know, they're not fussy about, you know, having a dessert station. It's all on the table all at once, so you have a bit of everything.
Graham: So going into the battle now that you'll be fighting over these weekends because there must be a battle involved. Right.
Jess: There is normally.
Graham: How do you how do you cast it?
Jess: It depends on the group that you're a part of. So there's there's so many different reenactment groups across the UK. But normally, if it's run by a big organiser like English Heritage, they normally kind of pre-plan who's going to play key figures if there is a key figure. So the Battle of Hastings event that we do in October, there's normally someone's cast as Harold and someone's cast as William and someone's cast as Edith in advance. I was asked to do Edith last year, actually. I got scared. What an accolade.
Graham: Does Mitch get any of those as well?
Jess: No, we don't get offered to do them. So it's it's normally you have to be in the know with the O. But we do impressions of sort of characters from history, like Harold and Edith.
Graham: And do you speak the language as well?
Jess: We tried our best to learn bits of Old English. Can you can.
Graham: You give me an.
Jess: Example? Oh, gosh. Dice or Frodo? This is Meg.
Graham: Oh my goodness. You're speaking parseltongue. Oh, Harry Potter. That was amazing. Do that again.
Jess: I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly. I apologise for people who actually speak old English. Right. This swimerg that means that was overcome. So this may be. Oh, wow. That's amazing poem called Dior in Old English poem. It's beautiful. But we do try to learn sort of snippets of the language where we can. And that's another thing about living history. Now, I never thought to learn the language until I did Living History. And you have such an appreciation of of who these people were. And I think something that's lost in the classroom, you don't really care about, you know, the individuals because it's just on a piece of paper. But by going to these events and learning the language and eating the food, you know, you really understand and appreciate.
Graham: Do you get do you get trained to use your swords and your there.
Jess: It depends on the group that you're a part of. I'm part of a group called Regia Anglorum. But they do have training outside of these big events. So you can learn, you know, not there's certain places you can hit people with your sword. They're all bronze swords as well. And I have blunt arrows. So you're not actually so.
Graham: So basically you're saying that it's being judged essentially.
Jess: Yes.
Graham: So you get your sword and you hit the person in the right place. In the right place. Then they have to stand down do they?
Jess: You normally have sort of hip marks. So you, you have a certain number of hits that you can have. But yes, you get judged. And if you do it wrong, you are, you are told Jesse.
Graham: The magazine that we’re going to talk about it - Living Medieval. So living medieval.com is where you find it. It is? So what can you expect when you open the pages of that magazine?
Jess: A wonderful, colourful world. Lots of different things. We have basically get lots of writers, archaeologists, historians to write in and tell us about something about the medieval world that you might not necessarily have known before. So we've got things in there about dyeing clothes we've got playing.
Graham: So how they how they used to dye clothes.
Jess: Dye clothes? Sort of, you know what colours they used, how they got those colours. We've got someone who plays an ancient sort of instrument called a lyre. That was found at a Sutton Hoo burial. We've got someone talking about medieval table manners.
Graham: Just focusing on that earlier. Well, that must've made me laugh because there was a there was a bit in there. It was. It was about cleaning your teeth at the table. Not to clean with your fingers, your teeth, and not to lick your fingers either.
Jess: And don't suck noisily from a spoon.
Graham: Don't suck noisily from a spoon!
Jess: These are all sort of table etiquette rules that have come directly from a sort of text from the medieval period that one of our writers is sort of written in about.
Graham: So there's there's some serious stuff as well. I read a I think it was Sarah Vida's did a
re-enactor. So she's written an article for you and she women were known as well. They're not in the there's no time, but they were incubators on legs.
Jess: I mean, again, a massive misconception, she's a wonderful living historian, and she does a lot to kind of bust myths around what women's life was actually like in the medieval period. So, yeah, that's one of the things.
Graham: Another thing she said were the women were raised to be controlled. Whoa. You see this is where we can learn from our past isn't it. Yes. Like we do in so many other ways - amazing. And even the clothes they wore were used to control the women, weren't they?
Jess: Yes I mean, the different shapes, different styles, obviously veils and things. But I think one of the, one of the articles that we have in there, written by Katie, is all about the colours that they wore. And there were rules around sort of what things you could and couldn't wear. They were called sumptuary laws. And it's more to do with sort of your status and societal status. But obviously there were gender differences too. But sumptuary laws dictated what colours you could wear, what clothes you could wear. And, and it's just a mad world of, you know. The, the rich and powerful were telling us what we can and can't. It wouldn't stand. It's not right.
Graham: Is it not right? Where are you going with this, then?
Jess: The. Well, I've got lots of grand plans for it. So the first edition has just come out. It's free to read online for everybody, and we're working on the second edition. We've had some great entries already, but we would like to.
Graham: Is it is it every month or. No.
Jess: It's so it's published online four times a year, just out of necessity with full time work and whatnot. But we'd like to eventually kind of expand the team a little bit, I think, and go into the realm of podcasts, sort of video content, educational content, but also get it printed. So I think that's I.
Graham: I have to say, the whole presentation is super, super professional. It's such a lovely read. Thank you. And you know, I love the way the pages swish across and it's just beautiful. I mean, I could like implore you out there listeners to go and have a look at it. Living medieval.com because it is so thank you. So informative.
Jess: A lot of hard work going into it.
Graham: A really, really good job. What what can people do if they want? You know, they've been inspired by you this morning. How can they contact you. How can they become re-enactors?
Jess: So I mean, for reenactment, depending on the period you want, you can contact any local groups. Just pop on Google and search for local reenactment groups. I'm a part of regular Anglorum for Viking and Saxon, but I'm also part of other groups for 15th century.
Graham: So you've got these names. It's so cool, isn't it?
Jess: They're really cool. So you can go on Google and find groups to do reenactment that way, or contact us on social media. We're on social media as well. And with the magazine if you want to get involved with that, we're on Instagram, Living Medieval Official, we're on Facebook Living Medieval and the website Living medieval.com. You can contact us if you feel like there's something you know, that you want to tell the world about, or if there's, you know, a myth that you keep on hearing events that you want to bust and like get in contact. We want to hear and share, you know, people's knowledge. That was the whole point of the project, was to be able to share, you know, the people's experience and knowledge, particularly living historians who share an incredible array of people with so many talents and skills. And they've all learned these skills Themselves. So they have so much to offer, and we want to be able to share that with with everybody.
Graham: So cherry on the top is, you know, as well as getting involved and, you know, exploring the subject, you get to socially expand, don't you?
Jess: Yeah, absolutely - and meet people. I've met so many people, I never thought I'd find people as geeky as me. And now I've found people. I've found my people. So you know, they've got the same interest, and you learn so much from them, and it just opens up so many doors socially. But also, you know, the people that are there, archaeologists that are re-enactors, and it's just a whole new world that I never knew existed until the last couple of years because of Mitch. And and it's I implore everybody to to try and give it a go.
Graham: Okay, Jess. I'd never call you geeky. Yeah, would you not?
Jess: No.
Graham: You called yourself geeky. It's a compliment. So geeky. Jess, it's been great having you on the breakfast show. Thank you so much for coming this morning. You've come a long way, and we really appreciate it. Thank you. All the best going forward with your magazine. Thank you very much.
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Copyright Purbeck Sounds Ltd. No unauthorised copying or usage permitted