Hello and thanks for joining me for this Oak Academy history lesson.

My name is Mrs. Knox, and today I'll be guiding you through all of the resources and materials associated with this lesson.

So let's get started now.

Our lesson today is part of a unit of work on the Norman Conquest.

By the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to draw on a range of sources in order to explain our key inquiry question, which is how do historians know about the impact of the Norman Conquest on England? In our lesson today, we'll use a couple of key words, so let's take a moment to look at those now.

The first word that we'll use in the lesson is source, which is something that remains from the past of which historians ask questions.

We'll also use the word evidence, which is information gathered by historians when asking questions of sources that they then use to support their arguments.

Now, our lesson's going to be in two parts today.

So let's get started now with part one, which will look at the sources.

Historians studying the Norman Conquest and its impact can use a variety of sources to support their work.

Each of the sources they use is valuable.

However, every source only provides a partial glimpse into the impact of the events Of 1066.

Historians have worked with a range of sources carefully to understand what happened.

One of the most useful written sources used by historians when studying the Norman Conquest is the "Gesta Guillelmi" or the "Deeds of William," written by William of Poitier who was himself very close to William the Conqueror.

Poitier wrote his collection of stories about William's deeds in order to record the conqueror's life and to justify his heroic claim to the English throne.

Historians therefore have to be very careful when they're reading William of Poitier because he deliberately distorts or exaggerates events.

Many of the passages of his work are based on other works, and they're following a template rather than claiming to be an absolute reflection of conversations or events which happened.

And they're seen through the lens of somebody who wants to aggrandize William the Conqueror to make him seem better than he actually was.

Nevertheless, the "Gesta Guillelmi" is an invaluable source because it comes from somebody in close proximity to William the Conqueror and his team, and therefore he knew a lot about the conquest, how it had unfolded, or he had at least his own perspective on the events.

It tells us a lot of useful information, particularly about the claims to the throne and how the Normans justified their seizure of power in England.

So long as historians use "Gesta Guillelmi" alongside other sources, it can be an incredibly rich and useful account of Williams' claim to the throne and the events leading up to and during 1066.

Another really useful written source is "Domesday Book".

"Domesday Book" was commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1085 in order to survey the Kingdom's wealth, to find out how much money there was in England and to find out about patterns of land holding, so who had land and where.

"Domesday Book" is an incredibly complicated document.

In fact, it's not just one book, it's made up of more than one document, and it runs to pages and pages of information about who owns land in each area, how much of it they own and what it's worth, not just in 1086 when it was collected, but in 1066 and in the time of Edward the Confessor too.

"Domesday Book" is an invaluable source for learning about landholding and land tenure in England.

It gives us a way to measure how patterns of land holding changed and the impact of feudalism on English society.

However, we also have to remember that "Domesday Book" was produced for a particular purpose.

It was produced by William's government to furnish William with the information he wanted, so it can't tell us about how Anglo-Saxons engaged with the process or whether they were happy or frightened it was happening.

It can't also tell us about how willingly those Anglo-Saxon people gave up the information they had about landholding in England.

However, if we read "Domesday Book" alongside some of the other sources, we do get a glimpse into how people were thinking and feeling.

It is enriching and it gives us an even broader view of how life changed as a result of the Norman Conquest.

So, two written sources, the "Gesta Guillelmi" and the "Domesday Book" are both invaluable for historians researching the impact of the Norman Conquest on England.

Finally, a few things need to be considered when using written sources generally.

Historians studying written sources relating to the Norman Conquest need to be mindful of who the author is, what the author's motive was when writing the source, and also when the source was produced.

Written sources can be useful to historians when studying the Norman Conquest if they are read carefully and checked against other sources.

All right, here's a check now of your understanding so far.

Which one of the following is correct? A, written sources are unhelpful because their authors deliberately lie.

B, written sources are the most reliable.

Or C, written sources can be useful when read carefully and checked against other sources.

Press pause now and then press play for the correct answer.

Well done if you said the correct answer is C.

Written sources can be useful when read carefully and checked against other sources.

The Bayeux Tapestry is the most important visual source of the period, full of rich detail which can't be found anywhere else.

Historians have been able to find out important information from the tapestry such as the kinds of armour which people wore, the sorts of horses which they rode on, the weapons that they used, the forms of transport they used to move their weapons around, and the kind of ships that they sailed in.

On the left hand side of the screen, you can see a very famous section of the tapestry where Harold Godwinson has been shot in the eye or is potentially being hacked down by a man with a sword.

On the one hand, this is useful to historians because it may show us things that no other source would show us and gives us a level of detail that no other source can give us.

However, on the other hand, it may mean that we need to take some aspects of the tapestry's depiction of events with a pinch of salt.

For example, we can't ever know which of the two figures is meant to represent Harold Godwinson.

Nevertheless, it is an important detail which tells us something about what the producers of the tapestry wanted us to believe.

We know that the tapestry was commissioned by Odo of Bayeaux, William the Conqueror's half-brother, and that it was embroidered near Canterbury in Kent, probably by English embroiderers.

Those two things might have changed the message that the tapestry is trying to convey.

Okay, here's another question for you now.

True or false, the Bayeux Tapestry is only useful for understanding what happened at the Battle of Hastings.

Press pause and then press play for the answer.

You should have said that the answer is false.

I'd like you to press pause again now to write an explanation about why the answer is false.

You could have said in your answer that the Bayeux Tapestry provides details on the Battle of Hastings and also a range of other events in 1065 and 1066.

Let's move on now and consider material sources.

In some ways, these are the most straightforward as they're very visual.

We can see them still in the landscape around us.

However, they don't tell us things in the way that a written text tells us things.

We have to read them in a slightly different way.

For example, when looking at this photograph of Winchester Cathedral, we'd need to know the context of the cathedral's construction and that it was made by a leading Norman Bishop to embody the Norman values of godliness and also to project Norman power and dominance over England in order to remind the Anglo-Saxons of their place in society.

We'd also have to know about the architecture itself and how the structure of the building embodied Norman ideals.

But by looking at it, we can still get inside the heads of people who looked at it at the time, almost 1,000 years ago in the 11th century.

And we can think about how the peasants, that's the Anglo-Saxon peasants who looked at this might have felt.

Perhaps they would've been intimidated.

Perhaps they would've been frightened by this new form of structure that they'd never seen before.

However, it can't tell us exactly how people felt when they walked inside it.

We can only make an educated guess about that.

It doesn't describe their feelings, and it doesn't let us get inside somebody's head in the same way that perhaps a written text like an autobiography might.

There are definitely certain questions which material remains like buildings can't answer.

Castles are another example of material sources which historians can use to inform their arguments about the Norman Conquest and its impact.

For instance, Totnes Castle on the left of the screen is a well-preserved motte-and-bailey castle, and it tells historians a lot about the Norman military tactics.

Okay, here's another quick check of your understanding now.

True or false, historians can use material sources alongside written sources to understand the impact of the Norman Conquest.

Press pause and then press play for the answer.

Well done if you said the answer was true.

I'd like you to press pause again now and write an explanation about why the answer is true.

In your explanation, you could have said, historian's understanding of the past is enriched by reference to different types of sources, like visual and material, not just written sources.

Finally, in this section, I'd like you to complete this task.

I'd like you to match the name of the source to its description.

The first has been completed for you.

Press pause and then press play, and I'll go through the answers.

Let's see how you got on.

For "Gesta Guillelmi," you should have said, this is a text written by a close associate of William.

For the Bayeux Tapestry, you should have said that this is a visual depiction of the events of 1065 to 66.

For Winchester Cathedral, you should have said, this is a major religious building constructed by a Norman Bishop in Romanesque style.

For Totnes Castle, you should have said, it's a well preserved example of one of the 700 defensive structures built by the early Normans.

And finally, for "Domesday Book," you should have said it's a summary of all land and landholders in the kingdom.

Well done if you've got all of them correct.

We're ready now to move on to the final section of the lesson today.

In this section, we'll be covering the impact of the conquest.

In this section, we are going to take a look at the broader impact of the Norman Conquest, and we're going to answer the initial inquiry question about how do we know what the impact was? Together, we're going to write a paragraph explaining how historians have used written sources to learn about the Norman Conquest.

Now, writing is a critical part of how historians share their ideas and their claims. Historians use sources to gather evidence to support their theories about a particular historical period.

Therefore, they have to be able to explain how the sources they use inform the claims they intend to make about a particular historical period.

On the next slide, we're going to read a really good example of how historians have done this.

I'm going to read you the paragraph now, but you might want to stop and pause the video and read it yourself.

Afterwards, I'll explain what makes this such a good paragraph.

"Historians have made use of written sources to learn about the impact of the Norman Conquest.

For example William of Poitier's "Gesta Guillelmi" contains important evidence about William's claim to the throne.

It asserts that William had been promised the throne by both Edward the Confessor and Harold Godwinson.

Therefore, by asking questions such as, 'which claims are mentioned in the Gesta?' historians can use the source to understand how the Normans justified their conquest of England.

However, historians need to keep in mind that this source was written with a political purpose as Poitiers was a close associate of William, and so historians need to be cautious about accepting the source's assertions at face value.

They have to ask questions like, 'Are these details found in any other sources?' to corroborate its usefulness." Okay, so let's think about what makes this such a good example.

Let's have a look at how it introduces its explanation.

"Historians have made use of written sources to learn about the impact of the Norman Conquest." This opening sentence introduces the overall theme of what will be discussed, where it talks about written sources.

It makes very clear that the focus of this paragraph will be on the written sources, the "Gesta Gullelmi" and "Domesday Book".

Now, let's think about how this explanation brings in some details of the actual sources.

Remember, this kind of really specific detail is going to elevate your writing to show that you've got good command of the topic.

Read the sentence on the screen again by pausing the video and have a look for where it draws on precise detail from the source.

Well done if you picked out one of these two areas.

Firstly, it describes what the "Gesta" is and what it's all about, and then importantly in that second sentence, it details a claim which the "Gesta" makes, namely that William had been promised the throne by both Edward and Harold.

The explanation then goes on to discuss how historians have used the "Gesta" and in particular what questions they've asked about it.

Have a look at the section of the model explanation.

Where does this sentence discuss how historians have used the "Gesta"? Again, if you need some time, pause the video now to think.

well done if you picked out these two points, a possible question that historians have asked about sources is "which claims are mentioned." Similarly, they can then use this information to understand how the Norman's justified their conquest.

They can learn enough about William's claim to understand the Norman justification for the conquest.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the paragraph also discusses the ways in which historians have to be very careful when using the source not to take its claims at face value.

Read through those two sentences, pause the video and have a think about where this section discusses the things historians have paid close attention to when using the "Gesta." I picked out a couple of things here.

Firstly, I picked out the author of the piece, William of Poitiers, who was very close to William the Conqueror, and the authorship of the work has an influence on the kinds of ideas which it contains.

Secondly, I picked out a question that the paragraph includes, which historians might ask if they're being cautious when they approach the source.

The question is, "Are those details found in any other sources?" Therefore, historians are hoping to corroborate with another source the claims of William of Poitier to see if they were really the case.

Here's a check now if you're understanding before we move further.

True or false, when discussing how historians have found out about the conquest, we should focus on the problems the sources present.

Press pause now and then press play for the answer.

You should have said the answer is false.

Press pause again to write an explanation of why.

We should explain how historians have overcome these problems when constructing their accounts.

Here's another question now.

Identify two features of a great historical explanation.

A, fully focusing on the limitations of the source, B, including details of the source used, C, mentioning other sources that could have been used, or D, questioning the potential problems with the source.

Press pause and then press play for the answers.

You should have said the correct answers are B, including details of the source used, and D, questioning the potential problems with the source.

Finally today, I'd like you to complete this written task.

You need to write your own explanation of how historians have used material sources to find out the impact of the Norman Conquest.

You might like to refer to Totnes Castle or to Winchester Cathedral.

On the slide now you can see the success criteria for the task.

The theme of your explanation needs to be clear.

You need to discuss a specific source and details from it.

You need to explain the sorts of questions historians have asked about the source and what this has led them to argue.

And finally, you need to explain the things historians have paid careful attention to when asking questions of the source and how this has affected their arguments.

Press pause now to complete the task and then press play to see a model answer.

Welcome back.

I hope you got on well with your response.

Let's have a look at what you could have written.

"Historians have used material sources to understand the impact of the Norman Conquest.

For example, motte-and-bailey castles such as Totnes Castle, help historians understand how castle building impacted the local landscape.

By asking questions such as, 'why was the motte at Totnes Castle so steep?' Historians can argue that motte-and-bailey castles were built across England for defence.

However, material sources cannot convey the feelings which people at the time may have had about structures like castles.

Therefore, although historians ask questions like, 'how did the Anglo-Saxons feel about the castles that Norman's built?' when using material sources, they can only speculate as to how the Anglo-Saxons felt and must use evidence from other sources to gain a better understanding." We've now reached the end of today's lesson, so it's time for a quick recap.

Historians draw on a range of sources to understand the impact of the Norman Conquest on England, including written, visual and material sources.

When writing about how historians have used these sources, we should discuss the questions they have asked of them to produce evidence and consider the things they have paid careful attention to.

When we discuss the sources historians have used, it is a good idea to use precise and specific detail.

Well done for all of your hard work in our lesson today.

I hope that you feel confident that you met your learning objectives for the lesson, and I really hope that you'll join me for a future Oak Academy history lesson.