Have we overlooked England’s local histories?
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What is the main question this episode explores about English history?
What happens to English history when you look at it through a local rather than a national lens? In this episode of the History Extra Podcast, Ian Mortimer offers us a fresh perspective on the past as he takes Charlotte of Ospa on a whistle stop tour of the past 1500 years of English history, viewed through the windows of his own medieval house in Devon.
Now I want to start off the interview by first of all talking about where we are currently sat recording this episode. Right now, we are sat inside your home in Devon, which was built in the thirteenth century. And we're here because this building has a very key role in your new book, Through the Windows of an Ordinary House. But before we dive into the book, can you tell us a little bit about the house we are currently sat in?
Absolutely. It's it's an inspiration, this house. So the the plot on which it's built in Morton Hampstead in the middle of Devon was laid out actually right at the start of the Saxon period. So this site has been lived on since probably the late seventh century, certainly from the eighth century. And in those days it would have been turf-walled or wooden-walled and rebuilt and rebuilt and rebuilt. And then by the thirteenth century they started building in stone. So the front of the house, running along uh what is now a street, was built in the thirteenth century, was knocked down and rebuilt in the fourteenth century, leaving just one wall, and then it got added to and changed and changed and changed, and then the room we're sitting in was built by a collector in nineteen oh nine to house his collections.
So it's a hotchpotch this house, but I can be certain that people have lived on this site now for thirty years. thirteen hundred years. So this house is my lens through which I look at a lot of the past.
And that is what we're going to be talking about today. It is an incredible building. And as you've mentioned, it has a very important role in your new book. But the book is not a history of your house. Instead, the book is a history of England viewed through the lens of this building.
Exactly.
So what historical perspective do we gain from doing that?
There are lots of little bits of inspiration that all came together in this book, but one of them is this impression that our history of England, our traditional histories of England, are all as if we're in the clouds, looking down like some sort of Victorian judges on this green triangle that is England, and and we tell the story of the Industrial Revolution by looking at the north, and we tell the Battle of Britain by looking at the Southeast and late 17th century Restoration is Peeps' London and Edward I's Time is Wars in Scotland and it's a history of nowhere. It's a patchwork quilt. And when you look at the history of England, where does Devon actually feature in that? It's not often there. You get Drake, the seafarers, you get a bit of the wool trade, but other than that
Because the royal family almost never came to Devon and Cornwall, it gets a left out of our national history. Now, another bit of the inspiration is that If you were gonna reminisce over the course of a long life, you wouldn't just restrict yourself to political history or social history or economic history or or whatever. You would put it all together. You'd reminisce about lots of different things. And so my thinking was that if I use this house as a lens, I can look at all these things integrated, politics, social life, domestic life, local history, um cultural history, expanding horizons. I can put all these things together in one vision of how history would have appeared to people living here. And I can have a sense of perspective on the whole of England developing.
So hence through the windows of an ordinary house.
And you talk about this as, as you've mentioned, an ordinary house. I want to probe the idea of ordinary a little bit more, because some of our listeners might not think of a house which survives from the thirteenth century in rural Devon as a typical home.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main question this episode explores about English history?
0:05–5:15
2
How does viewing English history through a single medieval house reshape our perspective?
5:15–10:31
3
What defines an “ordinary” house in medieval England and why is it important?
10:31–14:58
4
How did the Romans’ departure affect local life in Devon and its early settlements?
14:58–19:10
5
Did the Norman Conquest of 1066 change everyday life for people in Devon?
19:10–23:28
6
How severely did the Black Death impact Morton and the wider Devon region?
23:28–28:13
7
What role did the wool trade play in Devon’s prosperity during the 15th century?
28:13–32:54
8
Who was the unsung genius from Morton that helped shape engineering and the railways?
32:54–36:58