Mythbusting Medieval Buildings
Gone Medieval
History Hit
4.5 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2021
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What is a leper squint? Are the marks scratched into the exterior walls of churches from damned souls trying to claw their way in?
Join Matt Lewis as he welcomes back James Wright, a stonemason and historian with a passion for debunking myths about medieval buildings. Together, they explore the real stories behind architectural features like pentagrams, mason's marks, arrow stones and devil's doors. James's unique blend of practical stonemasonry experience and historical research offers fascinating insights into how these myths evolved and what they reveal about the societies that created them. Discover the hidden truths and vibrant histories once obscured by folklore in this insightful episode.
Hear James Wright unravel more medieval building myths in our previous episode here
Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis and edited by Amy Haddow. The producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.
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Transcript
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| 0:04.7 | Echoes of History, the podcast from Ubisoft, the people behind the famous video game series |
| 0:10.7 | Assassin's Creed. Through storytellers and historians, this podcast unravels epic mythologies |
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| 0:29.5 | of the new game, 9th century Baghdad. In season 2, figures of Baghdad, you'll discover |
| 0:36.2 | the stories of the extraordinary people who held influence over the Abbasid Caliphate. |
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| 1:03.3 | This is history is back for our third season, to tell you the story of England's most |
| 1:09.0 | diabolical ruler, Bad King John. Join me, Dan Jones, to find out what happens when |
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| 1:38.7 | Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis and we're |
| 1:43.1 | fortunate in the UK that we tend to be surrounded by medieval buildings almost wherever we go. |
| 1:48.9 | Some obvious ones like castles and cathedrals and some less so, but their fabrics been |
| 1:53.4 | absorbed into growing towns and cities, but they're still all around us. Today, with the |
| 1:59.0 | expert help of James Wright, we're going to take a look at some of the myths that James |
| 2:03.5 | has encountered about medieval buildings that he's here to bust apart for us. Spiral |
| 2:08.2 | staircases and castles, now everybody knows that these tend to go clockwise to favour the |
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