Wednesday 28 January 2009

Museum Tudor event

Had a lovely day at the museum with some of the older children from our group, taking part in a Tudor event.

During the morning we met Maria de Salinas (Lady Willoughby), lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon. Lady Willoughby led the children through a brief history of her life serving the Queen before returning to the year 1511 to prepare for the celebration of the christening of the Queen and King Henry VIII's baby son (who sadly lived for just a couple of months). The children, through drama, learnt about the ten different items of clothing they had to put on for the special occasion, how to bow and reverence and then how to dance gracefully in court. There was a discussion and more drama about life below the stairs of the great palace. Preparing the feast, catching the fish, fetching the wood, scrubbing the floor, etc., etc., and then a procession around the room as they displayed the feast before the audience.

Before lunch, the children (and the adults) put their hand to five different pastimes of the day.
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Preparing and writing with ink by grinding oak galls and adding iron sulphate and water. After mixing well the black ink could be used with the quills for writing.

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Making the most wonderful smelling herb and spice bags from the apothecaries' table.

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Leather tooling,

Painting miniature portrait keepsakes and black work embroidery were also activities we were encouraged to try.

After a swift picnic lunch, we all met Thomas Noke, Yeoman of the Guard to the King. He taught us about Tudor armour, weapons and life on the battlefield. The children enjoyed trying on all the heavy armour and helmets, and feeling the strengh of the bow and the sharpness of the arrows.

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Protection for the less wealthy during battle. This was extremely heavy and must have been very uncomfortable to wear.

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Variety of arrows with goose feathers and different heads - some made us gringe at the damage they could cause.

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Tudor "money".

Finally, a monk from the Tudor Peterborough Abbey took us on a fascinating tour around the town centre and Cathedral area to find Tudor properties that I never knew existed! We also studied the stone work above one of the gates in the Cathedral grounds which gave us evidence that it had been built during Henry VIII's reign. He described how the market would have looked like and operated, even down to the gorey bits about where the sheeps blood and offal would have washed away to after slaughter!

A memorable day for us all.

sheep

4 comments:

stefndawniy said...

wow what a great time :0) wonderful.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a good Tudor event. Always nice to explore the past-and especially to learn more about the area you live in.

Elaine, Ellies Treasures said...

It was really well thought out day and probably the best museum educational event we'd been to so far.

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