Nowadays we think of the Tudor home as an icon of Britishness, timber-framed and possibly thatched, a cottage even, it sounds wonderful but these quaint pretty relics of the past belie the revolution in technology that changed them and us.

It is considered to be the great age of change and it is one of the reasons we love the Tudor period so much, because it is the age of discovery and there’s a sense that anything is possible. One place this change was most evident was in the home, domestic life was transformed but as with anything new there were risks.

From the new technology that warmed the rooms to the exotic foods that filled the table and the radical treatments introduced to the medicine cabinets, new life threatening changes made their way into the heart of the Tudor home.

With the help of modern science and historic records we see Dr Suzannah Lipscomb investigate what really went on in the Tudor household.