E2. Sleep like a Tudor

Join Victoria Jenner on a journey to the past in our latest episode, as she uncovers the secrets of a rare church built during Queen Mary I's reign. With local charm and historical intrigue, we also delve into the fascinating world of sleep care practices in 16th-century Lancashire with special guest Dr Maddy Pelling. Tune in now for a captivating exploration of Queen Mary I and her era.

This is a one-of-a-kind sleepover adventure in Nights in the Nave: A Champing Podcast! If you would like to make some memories, why not give champing a try? For everything you need to know about Champing™ visit: https://champing.co.uk/

The champing season happens in those warmer months, between March and October, so book now.  

Nights in the Nave has been written and produced by me: Victoria Jenner. My guest has been Dr Maddy Pelling, and special thanks goes to: Fiona Silk, Professor Sasha Handley from the University of Manchester. Sound recording was managed by Leigh-Anne Beattie. Editing by Jamie Reed Sounds, music by Nick Varey and design by George Allen. 

This is a Churches Conservation Trust podcast. 

Follow the host for more historic adventurers on instagram: @victoriajenner_history

Chapters

• 0:00 Reality or dream?
• 2:48 How people slept in the 16th century
• 7:50 Travelling to Whalley Abbey
• 12:45 Next stop: Old Langho!
• 13:08 We meet our guest: Dr Maddy Pelling
• 13:59 A dark church
• 23:09 The ghost at the Black Bull Inn
• 26:05 The Pendle Witch Trials
• 27:30 Sleep like a Tudor
• 33:54 Vivid dreams
• 35:30 Credits

Transcript

There was a real, almost a struggle in the early modern period where people really struggling to identify reality from a dreamlike state. I mean, we've all kind of experienced maybe that jolt just as we're falling asleep or just as we're waking up or, you know, many people experience or report experiencing, seeing visions in the room or people standing in the middle room or at the end of that bed or whatever it is.

And often this is simply sleep apnea, or you know, some kind of experience that's to do with the brain waking up or falling asleep. So I had a few weird experiences last night when I was lying down here in my little camp bed, staring, looking up at the ceiling. There were a few moments when I thought I saw something moving.

Welcome to the Champing podcast. You may be thinking, Huh? And what sort of word is that? To which I answer it is the combination of the word church and champing. And it amuses me no end. Champing is a unique concept of champing overnight in historic churches brought to the world by the Churches Conservation Trust, the national charity protecting redundant churches.

Over 10,000 of happy champers have stayed in their churches and they are dotted all over England. So in this podcast series, we embark upon our own very sleepover, but with a twist. Each week I invite a new sleepover guest to join me. Victoria Jenna to spend a night within ancient walls. Together, we explore the secrets of a new church and the mysteries it inspires.

In this episode, I travel to a rare church built in the reign of Queen Mary the First. Saint Leonard's Church at Old Langho, near Blackburn in Lancashire. Completed in 1557, it's a very robust and sturdy building where much of the stonework is of a high quality and almost certainly came from the recently dissolved Whalley Abbey nearby. And besides exploring the local character of the area, which is steeped in its own bloodshed, I also question what does it mean to sleep well?

This is not just a modern concern, but something that has preoccupied people throughout history. This evening, my sleepover guest is Dr Maddy Pelling, a writer and a historian. And together we not only discuss Queen Mary, the first of England, but sleep care practices in the 1550s. So what are you waiting for? Let's travel back to the 16th century.

Professor Sasha Handley is the first person to question what it would have been like to sleep in the 16th century, and especially how it can help us sleep today. In a world full of digital distraction. As I'll be visiting a very rare church built during the time of the female monarchs reign. Mary the First, I wanted to understand a bit more about the community in Lancashire around this time.

Hello, Sasha. Hi. Hello. Lovely to see you. Thank you so much for doing this for me. I know I've been badgering you for a while. Yes, sir, I am. I'm sorry I'm so difficult to pin down these days. So, Sasha, you specialise in early modern social and cultural history in the British Isles with a particular interest in histories of everyday healthcare, especially sleep practices, material culture, supernatural belief, especially relating to women's histories and history of emotions.

And this is really prevalent for our episodes today. Could you tell us a bit more about your research? Yeah, so I started out doing my PhD on the history of ghost stories and I got interested in the number of women who seemed to be the main narrators of these things, and sought to unpack some of the reasons why, and found that very often these reports were framed as narratives of protest against various kinds of abuse that was going on inside the household.

So I became very interested in them from that perspective. But I guess in my journey through all of these ghost stories, the prevalence of beds and sleep just kind of leapt off the page. That's so interesting. And the fact that nightmares or supernatural phenomena or any, any sort of unsettling activity could be generated by something you've beaten or by a belief system whereby you have something underneath your pillow that's really, really fascinating.

Do you give oh, do you have any tips for Maddy and myself? We are going to sleep this evening. Leonard Church in Old Langho, near Blackburn, and it's a Catholic church that was, erected during the time of Bloody Marys reign. And I think it's steeped in this very bloody history. And I'm a bit concerned because apparently there's a ghost next door, too.

So I think everything's against us. Do you have any tips? Well, assuming you don't have access to a unicorn horn, which I have read useful to under the pillow at bedtime, one of the more common pieces of advice that we've come across in the research project so far is placing an apple under the pillow. So the quality of apples was thought to be that they were cooling and moist, and actually, that is that those two qualities are the two most important things that any sleep inducing ingredient can have in the kind of medical philosophies of the period.

So you might find a lettuce leaf. It serves a similar purpose. And the idea is that if you put those things in close proximity to your body, it would help to reduce its temperature to the optimal point at which, rest would come easily. And actually, this is a piece of advice that is still very much with us.

And contemporary, sleep advice. The idea is that your body actually needs to drop by a couple of degrees from its daytime activities before he become kind of ready to fall into a nice, comfortable sleep. So a lot of the sleep hygiene advice then and now is around the temperature of your body, but also the bed itself and your kind of immediate surroundings.

So I'm guessing that if you're in church it'd be nice and cool. So that should help. Absolutely. Although I will be sleeping on a camp bed, so I don't know how many apples I can put underneath my pillow. But you could. You could also have, a scented aroma of some kind. rose petals, supposedly very good for inducing sleep.

Things like lavender, camomile. If you steep it in some water and bathe your legs with it. And I don't know how much of this is possible tonight. but these are all practices that we've come across that seem to be pretty widespread in our period of history. So say, you know, it's perhaps a space that might have smelled rather different than, what we're used to now.

Absolutely. And it sounds lovely. It sounds a bit like a spa, actually. Bringing rose petals, camomile and lavender. I love going to sleep with some lavender spray on my pillow. So that's really interesting that that idea has traveled through the centuries. And you might also want to make sure that you're not sleeping in the direct line of the moon's rays as well, because that's that's thought to flood the brain and bring on nightmares.

So make sure you're your spot in the church carefully. That is duly noted. Thank you so much, Sasha. I will see you soon. And good luck.

Hello. There's my wonderful producer. My producer Leigh-Anne kindly picks me up on route, explaining that we have a slight detour underway. So why did you want me to get off her, Wally? Well, I just thought that there's somewhere we can go and see. That's quite important to the story. So let's go and explore. Let's give it a go.

Okay. Should we jump in your car? Yeah. As I'm staring out at a scene that could appear in a Bronte story, I am drawn to the industrial and social history of the area. The landscape holds drama and atmosphere, even on a bright, hot summer day like today. As I'm staring out the window, I start to ponder upon the question, what would Blackburn and Old Langho my destination for the evening?

What would they have been like in the 1550s when the church was built? To give you an idea of what was happening in England at this time, we know the church of Old Langho was built when Mary I had already ascended the throne in 1553. She was the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, so Henry VIII, first wife from Spain.

Mary had a careful strategy to become England's first queen, which starts to take place once her half brother Edward the Sixth, died after a six year reign that seems to rear its ugly head once again after Jane Gray is executed following her nine days as queen, a political strategy driven by Northumberland, for which he also pays the ultimate price, Mary succeeds the throne and throws herself into revoking her father's anti-Catholic sentiments.

She is actively persecuting Protestants, and in 1555 she revives England's heresy laws and begins burning offenders at the stake, starting with her father's long time advisor Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Almost 300 convicted heretics, mostly common citizens, were burned and dozens more died in prison and around 800 fled to safe refuge in Germany and Geneva to reside within Protestant communities.

So we've just walked through the arched entrance on the north west gate house of Wooley Abbey. Gosh, and it stands as such a formidable barrier. It's broad lintel and solid stone walls communicating silent authority. I love it. And once the gateway to a sprawling monastery of 200 acres, and it's such an imposing structure that now frames a very narrow lane, with lots of cars sort of squeezing through to to get here.

And I just followed this lovely little stone pathway to get to these ruins. And they are incredible. And they are surrounded by what looks like so very fragmented historic grounds, lovely flowers. It's really, well, caps. It is so peaceful here. As I walk through this beautiful archway into this very open structure, you can see sort of moss and flowers growing up the inside of the walls.

And it's incredible that on this very spot, around 700 years ago, this is where the monks had moved here, drawn by its considerable resources stone, coal, iron, sheep, cattle, pastures, fisheries, wooden mills, arable land. And you spot that as actually you travel down on the train. I can hear the pigeons of the wildlife around us. It's very humid today.

It's very warm. We have a slight breeze through here, which has been so delightful. And so I'm marveling at the old stone ruins around me, and many of which would have been transported from abbey ruins and reinstalled three miles away in Old Langho, where we're going to go next. And in 1536, Whalley was caught up in the pilgrimage of Grace, a northern rebellion against Henry the Eighth, and he refused to take the compulsory oath and was executed at Lancaster, and the abbey was seized by the Crown, and later its stonework was converted and recycled into neighbouring properties, one being a private house and now conference centre, and the other being Saint Leonard's, which is our

beautiful church, and there are lots of people wandering around or taking a moment of calm, sitting, reading, sketching. It's obviously a place of tranquility.

I'm just running up to platform one so I can catch the next train to Langho. Excuse me. Hi. Is this going to Old Lango? Hi. I kind of think it goes that it goes in that direction. Thank you. Oh, yeah. It's amazing.

Wow. So I've just reached the very small, sleepy village of Old Langho, which is nestled at the foot of the large, more ridge hills. And the train platform is so quaint and beautiful. I can almost imagine the bell workers of the 19th century using this railway line in 1850 from Blackburn to Clitheroe, which in turn gave Old Langho its own station.

I makes travel much easier and there is now a small residential development on the site of the station which I pass, which was made redundant with the closure of the line to regular passenger services in 1964. I'm just going to go down these steps and see if I can find Maddy, our guest, for the evening.

Hello. It is so good to see you.

So lovely to meet you. I'm going to give you a very sweaty cuddle. Yeah, it's a fun day. It's really, really warm. And I'm delighted to spend the evening with you in the church. And we're going to be sleeping like Tudors. I'm so excited for this. Honestly, when you invited me to do this, there was no way I was going to say no.

It's happening. I'm delighted my producer Leigh-Anne comes to the rescue and picks us up from the station, as I have slightly mis apprehended how many muddy fields we would need to cross in our finery to reach the church as we complete our last leg of the journey. Finally arriving at our destination, Saint Leonard Church in Old Langho, we take in our accommodation for the night.

What's such an incredible building? It feels so old even on a sunny day like this night, we're walking through the graveyard. It's absolutely beautiful. Dappled sunlight on the graves. It's feels very friendly and very calm. But this building has a kind of, I don't know, a sort of roughness to it. It's quite squat. It's relatively small. It's got this kind of really gorgeous, weathered sandstone exterior, and it's, I dunno, it kind of it fits into this slightly wild and harsh environment, I think.

Absolutely. That's such a beautiful description. Shall we walk round and let's see what else we can we can find. I think one thing that I'm noticing straight away about this building is these stones that are appearing sort of every few meters in the walls that are stones not from this original building, but originally from Whalley Abbey, which is part of the monastery.

And I think that kind of speaks to the sort of composite nature of this building that it's been composed of something else before it's come into existence. It has this sort of, I don't know, it's wearing its history on the outside almost, which is quite tantalizing. It's also quite interesting, the fact that we look out towards this graveyard and it's all very neatly caps you almost want it to be wild and sort of thriving within this wilderness of wildflowers, but instead it's very neatly trimmed.

Everything is obviously very well looks after. this year we're sort of on a little bit of an edge island here, like we are. We're close to Hampton Bridge, we're close to Halifax, and there's kind of a really big, booming 19th century industrial towns. And yet this church and this sort of sort of surrounding hamlet that we're in really hasn't changed that much in many centuries.

And even though I think the church has probably undergone some Victorian renovations, it's really kept its character and it feels it feels pre, pre Victorian age. It feels it's on the edge of that history. And it absolutely bears the marks of those centuries in that industrial revolution. But there is something older here. And the fact that this is still standing in this very sort of idyllic bucolic landscape on the edge of the industry, still is amazing, really.

It's really well preserved.

It's a remarkably sort of sparse space, isn't it? Even though it has these incredible details and there's a lot of ornate stonework going on, but it feels it's quite kind of like pared back and empty almost. Yeah. This is such a bizarre experience. Wow. Do you want me to show you guys where the tea and coffee and toilets.

Yes. Yes. As the summer light starts to disappear the shadows invade the interior. We quickly realize we need to set ourselves up for the night ahead and whilst doing so, we find some hidden treasures and a Christmas tree. Yeah, we have a Christmas in here. And there is the wonderful, wonderful. It's the same toilet as last time. It's the toilet.

Yeah, but actually this feels a bit more classy. The next conversation, yes, involves three women trying to determine how and why an iron grate is operating in a stone toilet. One of the funny mysteries about Lancashire church. We, of course, then get into more important matters, discussing Maddy's love for churches and women's history. So just in terms of the things that were in my mind about this church, from what I was reading about it, thinking about it on the train was that it has thinking specifically about the history of women in the church and the fact that this is built in those that short window five years.

But Mary I becomes the first crowned Queen of England. Obviously we have Lady Jane Grey announced as queen before that. But it's it's Mary who triumphs and who is actually crowned. even though obviously she would never have come to this church, you may not have ever known of its existence. And yet it's so crucial. It's such a crucial and incredible piece of information and pieces of evidence that survive from that period, because it was built as a Catholic chapel and obviously we know that she reinstated Catholicism as the religion of England and of the monarch, and that it was so controversial at the time.

And then when she becomes Queen and she marries Philip, who is the Spanish Catholic king, and she sets about, you know, hoping for, hoping to produce a Catholic heir to the throne that's incredibly unpopular. there is this rebellion, Wyatt's rebellion that really, you know, starts in these these echelons of England, away from the central sort of nucleus of power in London.

And that Lancashire was this sort of hot pot in some ways, or sort of a Lancashire, Lancashire hot pot. That's why, let's say that Sam Lancashire was this real sort of hot spot for Catholicism. And the fact that it's it didn't go away when wooly monastery down the road was ripped apart and, and disillusioned and all of that that that that undercurrent of Catholicism stayed.

And at the first opportunity here, the people, when Catholicism is legitimized again by the Crown, they build the chapel almost straight away. As soon as Mary has come to the throne, and with these stones that inherently so, but carry out Catholicism as well. Exactly. So the fact that they're using these incredibly ornate cut stones, these huge windows here, which are kind of inappropriate for such a small squat building, you know, they're clearly from a monastery, from a much grander structure.

And the fact that they are incorporated here, it's really an act of resistance. You know, it's it's a way of composing a building that represents the community, a hope for the community, the future. It's building is using the literal building blocks of the past and the building and a way of life and a religious experience, a religious standpoint that has been completely dismantled previously.

And they're putting it back together. And so this building it even though it has all these layers, when we come inside, you can see, for example, the Victorian renovations and later additions, these initial building blocks and sort of the composite form of that, the fact that it's so kind of collaging is a sort of testament to this one moment in time, this really short period of this queen who doesn't reign for very long.

And yet the legacy of her decision to bring Catholicism back to England is absolutely visible here. It's legible in this landscape to active Catholic use as well. That would be nice to know, you know. Exactly. And the sensory experience as you walked in there would be strange, the smells and yes, it would have been, it would have been wonderful and very probably in quite small space as well. I imagine that being quite oppressive, having, you know, of the incense and white candles burning. I think that would have been a feeling of real sanctuary in here as well. You know, that Catholics had been persecuted under Henry the Eighth. The practice of the religion had been outlawed, and they've been pushed the margins.

And, you know, you would go to mass in secret. And it was all pushed quite literally underground and in private chapels. And it was all, you know, to be conducted behind a veil, if at all. And this building is the first time that that is lent any kind of legitimacy. But I think that's it's a very kind of strong and bold building in some ways, but it's very tight and cozy, and I think there must have been a feeling of sort of taking these tentative steps towards this parish, declaring itself Catholic again.

And it must have been a nerve wracking and exciting moment to come in here for maybe that first mass when the church was consecrated and to know there was a Catholic queen on the throne. What was that felt like for these people? And I think the building, the space, I don't think it would have been impressive. I think it would have been comforting and exciting, and there would have been a closeness of bodies in here as well.

You know, all these pews would have been completely filled and the whole local community would have packed in here. And I think that's what's kind of missing today. But I think if we turn on Main Street, you can really feel that still.

After a full day of traveling and exploring, we are ravenous and pop right next door to the local pub, The Black Bull Inn, yes, coincidentally sharing the name with the famous Bronte pub in Haworth, it is nestled in a very cozy fashion in the picturesque village of Old Langho. Like the church, it looks very sturdy and consists of a squat stone building that has been here since the 1500s.

And after ordering a much needed glass of wine, we find out more about the history of the building and its relationship with Saint Leonard's Church next door. So we managed to grab ten minutes with the inn's owner. She has long brunet hair tied up in a ponytail and wearing a black shirt. She's very friendly and supportive. We are a marquee holder, so a few people come in and they want to have a look around, but then they pop in for dinner and things I have to say before agreeing just for a chat.

That was a pub next door. I mean, you get to sleep in a church, you got to have a glass of water. I think so, yeah. Yeah it is. Yeah. I do actually think that it was 1555. I think this, I think this building was first registered as an approaching house in 1555. So in the barn down there, there's some rings on the walls.

So I think they used to sell. I mean, I might be completely wrong. So people need to knock quite a bit to listen to this. I think they sell cats, pigs and things out of the window. We've had some older members of the community come in and have lost loved ones, and they've got somewhere to come, and I can just sit and be around people.

You know, that is really important to us. We want to welcome everybody. And I think it's always been there. This is this pub. We have people come in and they turn around and say, oh, you know, my grandma or my whatever used to call them, you know, it's nice, it's not nice to pass on the memories, isn't it?

And throughout our conversation, I am bursting to ask about a rumor that I have read about in the local newspaper articles when I was doing some research. You can't have a building such as this steeped in history since the 1550s and not expect at least one ghost story. I want to that last bit go ghost is true. So apparently, sir, we've actually been contacted by, paranormal companies that want to come and actually set up and through the night, check out, you know, all the activity and, but I have to say, if something you do feel something members of staff have said, they feel things on their shoulder.

We have an ex-manager who lived upstairs, and he said he felt something called at the side of the bed, stock pressing down. it seems a bit eerie here at night, and that's the reason I've not followed through with that is because I have to lock up and think if I've seen what I've been here and it was all actually real, I'll never be here.

I'll be able to look up again and that's it. Well, that.

And the pub ghoul isn't the only story bordering on the supernatural that grabs our attention. In the pub, I notice a poster mapping the witch trials that plagued the Lancashire area when the world was gripped with religious persecution and superstition. Right. So in the barn, we just found this remarkable snack which has the Lancashire, which country and boldness upon it as a title.

And it says beneath it, illustrating the places associated with the notorious happenings of early 10th, 15th, 16th, 17th century. Having to read my Roman numeral. so if we look over at Lancaster, that's interesting. Lancaster Castle. So supposedly these are one of the big haunts, I suppose. yeah. So would you say that? Yeah, I think so. So there's all these kind of illustrated sketches of different places associated with, if you will, actually.

What's the most famous among them? Obviously, the Pendle witch trial, in 1612. Lancaster Castle is the place where, the women who are accused of witchcraft are held and well executed assaults. We ponder upon the bloody history of the area. Over dinner. We have discussed the persecution of Protestants, the executions surrounding Mary, the first reign from Northumberland to Lady Jane Grry, to the local bloodshed in Old Langho.

And with all this darkness on our minds, our discussion naturally turns to how we are going to sleep in a church whose very stones have been snatched away from the monastery, not three miles away, and relocated here to celebrate the reign of Bloody Mary. Not to mention we have a rather well known ghost living next door. But funnily enough, we all seem rather content and tired enough to walk home feeling safe.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Oh well, that was such a lovely meal. That was absolutely fantastic. I think I'm going to sleep very well. No, I think we will. It's interesting though, isn't it, how we've just had a really hearty pub enough and actually we are going against Tudor principles because for them it was all about connecting with the rhythms of the season and with potentially at the height of summer, like we are now having quite cooling food so they can go to bed feeling quite cool and, perhaps weightless, whereas I feel quite heavy right now, I don't think, I don't think they approve of the chocolate mousse.

I maybe not the cherries were a bit too much. You know, this really isn't that different an experience from the one that our Tudor ancestors would have had this quieting down in the evening and the light is dying, and it does make you feel sleepy. It's part of the sort of natural cycle of the day. And it's remarkable, even though what one glass of wine in a pub and a nice stroll in the dark countryside will do for you.

I can hear people still laugh. People are laughing from the pub. Yeah. Yes. It's not as spooky as I thought it was going to be and that's a good thing. I think even with bats flying above us. Yeah, it feels quite cozy. Well, you know, we're we're standing outside and we're looking inside and there's big heavy oak doors open and this lovely warm light inviting us into the church, which is very lovely.

I can't stop thinking about how perfect the patron Saint Leonard is to this church. He is a sixth century saint of women in childbirth, of prisoners, and of those in danger from brigands, robbers and thieves. And we are in a very remote church in the middle of the Lancashire hills, cut off from civilization. It feels but feeling strangely secure and safe in a place of sanctuary.

Despite the spooky stories we've just had, we throw on our PJs, brush our teeth, commit ourselves to our personal pre-bid ritual, and whilst doing so, we reflect on Sasha Handler's research, who I spoke to at the beginning of the podcast episode. How was people during the 1550s actually experience nighttime? Maddy and I sit on our camp beds with the fairy lights glinting, providing the only source of light in a thick darkness.

Well, of course, to the Tudors, the bed was not just a place of sleep. It was the site of all kinds of activity. It was a place where people would have sex, where people would give birth, where people would die. You know, it was a site of all kinds of rituals and moments in people's lives. But something that I think is happening here tonight that we can really, sort of draw a parallel with, with our children's guest is, these little cot beds that we're sleeping on.

And for a huge portion of the past, but particularly in the Tudor period, people who were serving masters or mistresses would sleep on little cot beds, either at the foot of the bed or to the side of their master or mistress, in case they were needed in the night. And I think those kinds of beds that were slightly close to the floor, perhaps a little bit chillier than the big grand bed, is something that we're going to experience tonight.

So we're all we're all here, set up to sleep as servants, obviously just hovering above this stone cold floor. Absolutely. And I want to go back to what you were just saying, how people were sort of sleeping in these multi-functional chambers. And what I find really interesting, especially when reading Sasha Handler's work, is that they get a degree of enclosure by having these heavy curtains that can be drawn around the bed to separate them from cooking equipment or whatever else that may be surrounding them in these everyday rituals that you just described.

And Tudors were used to proximity to other people, as we are experiencing right now. and I don't think they had that sense of that craving for privacy and that isolation that we have. Would you agree? I don't know whether it was necessarily that people didn't crave isolation or privacy, but essentially that's not how a domestic space functioned.

You know, there weren't those same levels of privacy. The house, the domestic space wasn't organized in the same way that it is today. and communal living, communal sleeping was absolutely a part of life. You know, people would take their meals together, do say their prayers together, and they would sleep in close proximity to each other. Absolutely. And I bet there's also sort of a lack of privacy.

We did also have its dangers as well, because there are tales of lodging houses where you are forced to bed with strangers you don't even know or you've never met before. And some people got robbed. Some people were murdered by the bed bedfellows. You hear all of these awful stories. Luckily, or hopefully nothing like that will happen this evening.

Let's hope not. I think something that's so important to remember is, you know, where it was sat here in this church now, and we have two electric lights on. We have some lovely twinkling fairy lights and some electric, sort of lamps and torches everywhere. but of course, for the for the Tudor sleepers, once they've blown the final candle out and at the embers of the fire, died, that would have been real darkness.

And there would have been a sort of fear, I guess, that accompanied that, that the space that they were sleeping in beyond the drawn curtains of their bed was pretty much pitch black. And what was going on out there, and indeed what was going on in the bed next to them, would have been very hard to make out really.

So there was an element aspects of the of the unknown and the unknowable at night time as well. So after that rather unsettling discussion, we turn off the lights and welcome the darkness of Saint Leonards. Good night everybody. Good night. I sleep, I continue to.

So how did you sleep? Both of you. Really? Well, it was so peaceful, actually, apart from in the middle of the night. I don't know if anyone else heard it. There was a barn owl screeching in the graveyard, which was pretty atmospheric. I convinced I could sleep through anything. There's a bit of a rainstorm as well. At one point.

Was that. I wondered what that was. I kept sort of waking up intermittently with different noises. So yeah, the barn owl, I thought I also heard something in the roof. Oh, yeah. Well, we did see bats earlier in the day, in the evening. So it could happen. That could be could be indeed. Yeah, but ultimately, waking up in it looks quite nice outside.

It's hard to say because the glass is quite dark, old, but it was very nice and very Tudor to wake up with the sunlight this morning. did you have any, vivid dreams? Like a cheetah? Nothing too bad. No, I've slept pretty peacefully. Oh. That's good. That's good. I had a few little scary dreams, but I think that was after following our conversation and a really big dinner.

Oh, great. It locks. Right? There's no going back in. Well, if you would like to try and make some memories, why don't give champing a try. For everything you need to know about champing, please do visit: https://champing.co.uk/

The champing season happens in those warmer months between March and October, so you can book now. Nights in the name has been written and produced by me, Victoria Jenner, my guest has been Dr Maddy Pelling and special thanks goes to Fiona Silk, Professor Sasha Handley from the University of Manchester. Sound recording was managed by Leigh-Anne Beattie, editing by Jamie Reed, sound music by Nick Varey and designed by George Allen. 

This is a Churches Conservation Trust. 

Follow the host on instagram: @victoriajenner_history