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The 3rd August 2020 – 3rd August 2021 was Stephen and Yhana‘s first year on YouTube – To celebrate they are sharing one video a day across all of their favourite social media platforms – Facebook Page, Twitter and Website, as well as a daily shout out on their youtube community page. – So please check often incase you missed any of their videos during that first year.
They have also published their very first youtube almanac – Which was released 3rd august 2021.
The book will be available to buy via Amazon shortly – Although you can get a free signed copy by signing up and supporting their journey on Patreon
All Patreon‘s will get a regular mention on YouTube and on their channel publications – As your support is very much appreciated and will help to purchase filming equipment and trips to historical sites, so they can keep their films coming.
Immurement | The Story of Maud de Braose
13 Terrifying True Stories for Halloween | Story Six | Immurement | The Story of Maud de Braose
It was dark, so dark it was black inside their Immurement.
Maud and William could not see their hands in front of them, just faint sounds. A dripping sound from within their confines, the sound of their breath against the damp stale air was heavy in their hearts.
Faint voices could be heard in the distance, from beyond the walls.
They tried to call for help, scream. But no one answered them.
Days past, and they both grew weaker. They had resorted to licking the walls just for a little sustenance. The damp slimy walls had a little moisture dripping from them. But the fluid was gritty, salty and seemed to dry their throats ever more.
A week had passed, and William had grown silent, he had died.
Maud knew she would be next, for hunger and thirst was uncontrollable, her stomach was empty, her body was weak. Yet with all her strength she reached into the darkness and used her hands to find the way.
At first it was his shoulder she touched, then his wavy blonde locks, which felt dry between her fingers. She caressed her sons face, felt the contours of his nose and chin, her finger even fell across his cold lips for just a second.
She pulled him in close to her, she closed her eyes.
She wept, as her mouth came against his cheek and her teeth sunk in to the cold flesh.
With one tear she ripped from his face a piece of flesh, and ate it.
Welcome to the sixth of our 13 terrifying stories for Halloween, today we are going to take a deep dive into the life of Maud de Braose. This is a true story, and makes up just one of the dark and twisted tales that exist in my family history.
This is the story of Maud de Braose – a fiery, tempestuous woman, who was frank in stating her opinion, but unfortunately born in a time when that was not at all appreciated.
Maud offended the highest power in the land, and paid the ultimate price in a truly horrible way.
Maud (or Matilda) de Braose was a woman beyond her time. Known as a loud, outspoken kind of woman, she was not always appreciated in a world dominated by men, who believed women should be seen and not heard – and not really seen all that much, apart from in the bedroom where the men could make their sons and heirs.
Maud was born Maud de St. Valéry in France in about 1155. As was a woman’s job in life, she was married off at a young age (11 in fact) to William de Braose, 4th Lord of Bramber.
When King John (also known as Prince John in the Robin Hood tales) came to the throne, following the death of Richard the Lion Heart, William de Braose became a great favourite of his, and he and his wife moved to England to be a part of his Court. For his loyalty to the King he was awarded the title and estates of Lord of Limerick in Ireland.
William was very military ambitious, and Maud fully supported his decisions. By all accounts their marriage turned into a love match and they were happy for a while, having at least 16 children.
William trusted Maud so much that he put her in charge of Hay Castle while he was on campaign. This is a huge thing for those times, with women not generally having any power when it came to such matters. His trust was well rewarded when in 1198 Maud defended another estate of theirs, Painscastle in Wales, against a massive Welsh attack. Maud was successful in holding off the enemy forces for three weeks until English reinforcements arrived. Over a thousand Welsh soldiers were killed in this siege, and the castle was then known as “Matilda’s Castle” by the locals.
King John had quite a bad reign. He was prejudiced against to begin with, as his brother was well loved by the English people, even though he left the country in tremendous debt when he died. John was also untrusted by his barons, and was the reason for the Magna Carta’s creation, the first document forced onto a King of England by a group of his subjects, in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their privileges. He also had a bad habit of killing his hostages, including his young nephew Arthur.
It is said that Maud, being the loud, outspoken individual that she was, did not hide her displeasure at the King and his ways. It is also said that the King found out what Maud had been saying, very indiscreetly, and fell out with Maud’s husband William over it.
Corfe Castle.
By 1208 King John was in need of money. He created a plan to impose enormous taxes on his barons for their land holdings. He also wanted to confiscate all church property. In order to ensure that the baron’s complied with his edict, he ordered all of them to provide him with hostages.
Well… Maud was having none of that! She knew that being a hostage to the King meant nothing, and your life and health was not assured, so she answered the King’s messenger, saying she would not give her sons as hostage, as the King had the unsavoury habit of murdering people.
The King was angry. How dare a woman speak to him in such a way, and defy his edict! His first act was to confiscate all property belonging to the de Braose’s, and also ordered all of the family captured.
The family had been warned that this was going to happen and fled to Ireland, but King John was one step ahead of them and sent forces in pursuit, which ended with Maud and her son William being captured by the King’s forces. They returned to England in chains, and were imprisoned in Windsor Castle.
They did not remain in Windsor Castle for long. They were soon transferred to Corfe Castle in Dorset, at which time they were locked in a dungeon and (so urban legend says) the door was bricked over and they were quickly forgotten about.
Both Maud and her eleven year old son William starved to death in the cold damp dark prison, which in truth was their coffin.
Many months had passed, their shallow screams for help had faded and eventually fell silent
When their bodies were eventually recovered, it was found that Maud was the last to die.
Hunger got the better of her and she had begun to eat her dead son. A huge bite was found on her son William’s cheek and she had eaten it,
so crazed with starvation, thirst, solitude that she turned to cannibalism, those last few days of her life must have been unimaginable.
Bricked up alive in Corfe Castle by Englands most notorious King.
Immurement takes its name from the Latin im (in) murus (wall). So it means ‘in the wall’ or ‘walling in.’ An immured person could not expect to die quickly for asphyxiation was not generally a risk. Instead, they would be left to die of dehydration or starvation.
It was dark, so dark it was black inside their Immurement.
Maud and William could not see their hands in front of them, just faint sounds. A dripping sound from within their confines, the sound of their breath against the damp stale air was heavy in their hearts.
Faint voices could be heard in the distance, from beyond the walls.
They tried to call for help, scream. But no one answered them.
Days past, and they both grew weaker. They had resorted to licking the walls just for a little sustenance. The damp slimy walls had a little moisture dripping from them. But the fluid was gritty, salty and seemed to dry their throats ever more.
A week had passed, and William had grown silent, he had died.
Maud knew she would be next, for hunger and thirst was uncontrollable, her stomach was empty, her body was weak. Yet with all her strength she reached into the darkness and used her hands to find the way.
At first it was his shoulder she touched, then his wavy blonde locks, which felt dry between her fingers. She caressed her sons face, felt the contours of his nose and chin, her finger even fell across his cold lips for just a second.
She pulled him in close to her, she closed her eyes.
She wept, as her mouth came against his cheek and her teeth sunk in to the cold flesh.
With one tear she ripped from his face a piece of flesh, and ate it.
It was hard for her to chew, and hard for her to swallow. But she did and all through this ordeal she wept like she had never wept before.
Maud could not do it again, so she pulled his lifeless body in close to her, she closed her eyes and wished for death.
she longed for it, begged for God to end her suffering.
Death came.
- Published: 24 October 2020
- Location: Corfe Castle, Dorset
- Duration: 15:36
- Photography – Stephen Robert Kuta / Yhana Kuta
- Written by – Stephen Robert Kuta
Music –
- Prison Cell by Jon Bjōrk
Music Licensed by Epidemic Sound
Stephen and Yhana – History and Adventure Hunters Almanac
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On the 30th of January, 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). In the following weeks, the virus quickly spread worldwide, forcing the governments of affected countries to implement lockdown measures to decrease transmission rates and prevent the overload of hospital emergency rooms.
The United Kingdom implemented lockdown on the 16th of March, 2020 and from this date and up until the 3rd August, 2021 the UK had suffered three national lockdowns which all included Restrictive measures on border controls, closing of schools, markets, restaurants, nonessential shops, bars, entertainment and leisure facilities, as well as a ban on all public and private events and gatherings. In between these lockdowns we saw tier systems and heavy restrictions on how we all lived our lives.
We all decided on different approaches on how we spent that free time as many people were on Furlough as their businesses were shut, only key-workers carried out their working duties. Although I continued working as a key-worker, I still had a lot more free time as Yhana was not at school.
Both Yhana and I spent those first few months experimenting with tiktok and photography, we explored our home village of Great Leighs and took some incredible photographs as spring and eventually summer took hold.
Tiktok was a short-lived adventure for us, although we enjoyed it all the same — tiktok like so many Social Media platforms had exploded during the pandemic but none more so then YouTube.
In 2020 alone YouTube had more than 9 billion views globally
66% of people used YouTube to develop a new hobby in 2020, and a whopping 94% of people in India used YouTube to learn to do things themselves, Whilst Globally, 82% used YouTube to the same. What were they learning to do, exactly?
• Views of beauty tutorials increased nearly 50% in 2020.
• There was a 90% increase in bike maintenance and repair videos.
• Daily views of videos with “raising chickens” in the title increased 160%.
• Videos related to learning guitar saw 160 million views from mid-March to mid-April.
• Videos about container gardening saw 6 million views in the same period.
• There was a 215% increase in daily uploads of videos related to self-care.
• There was a 458% increase in daily views of videos about making sourdough bread and a 200% increase in daily views of recipe videos for bubble tea.
• Videos of how-to videos for home haircuts also spiked in April.
Even though these giant increases in YouTube views began as early as March 2020, it took Yhana and I up until August of that year to begin our own channel, and Yhana’s encouragement certainly helped on that matter.
So it began, 3 August 2020 – We went out and filmed our very first video. To be honest I wasn’t sure what our plan would be for our channel, I had a rough idea of what kind of content I would like Yhana and I to make and as a historian I looked at the channel as a way to record at least one year of our life, not just any year either, but our life during the Covid-19 Pandemic. So for me, it was a great way to record a piece of social history.
This book in front of you developed from that period of our lives also, and is a showcase / diary / almanac of all the videos we created, many of the photographs we took, the treasure hunts we went on and some of the incredible finds we discovered just a short walk from where we lived. In truth, those finds would never have been discovered if it wasn’t for lockdown.
So for prosperity, social history, a window into our lives during the Covid-19 pandemic and a transparent visual look at what its like to create a YouTube channel in that first year including channelytics, descriptions of videos, thumbnail artwork, viewer comments and more.
We have written this full guide, our first joint book –
Stephen and Yhana – History and Adventure Hunters Almanac.
The book is available to buy through Amazon and via all good bookshops.
LINK BELOW –
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