Saturday Holley and I set off in a tiny Peugeot (about 10 ft. long) to visit as many Elizabethan sites as we can in ten days.
Our first stop was Kentwell Hall, built around 1540, near Long Melford. This was a particularly appropriate place to start, as about 50 re-enactors had gathered there to stage a Michaelmas celebration. I have found re-enactors to be keen researchers, very knowledgeable about whatever role they assume. I took the opportunity to speak to the guards at the gate about swords, daggers, muskets, and calivers. They also described their own clothing and the fashions of landsknechts. The guards were of the opinion that shaking hands had not arrived as a custom in England by 1588. Am I to believe them or a historical fiction author? Neither could quote me a published source. Can anyone reading this?
We discussed cheesemaking with dairymaids, bread making with the baker, and the cost of spices with the cook. Kentwell Hall recreates Tudor life full time in late June and July most years and offers visitors an excellent opportunity to become lost in the past.
Our first stop was Kentwell Hall, built around 1540, near Long Melford. This was a particularly appropriate place to start, as about 50 re-enactors had gathered there to stage a Michaelmas celebration. I have found re-enactors to be keen researchers, very knowledgeable about whatever role they assume. I took the opportunity to speak to the guards at the gate about swords, daggers, muskets, and calivers. They also described their own clothing and the fashions of landsknechts. The guards were of the opinion that shaking hands had not arrived as a custom in England by 1588. Am I to believe them or a historical fiction author? Neither could quote me a published source. Can anyone reading this?
Holley discussed fashion, child raising, and inheritance with the lady of the manor. We saw the lord and lady served dinner, eating with their serviettes over left shoulders, at the same table as their servants and pages.
We discussed cheesemaking with dairymaids, bread making with the baker, and the cost of spices with the cook. Kentwell Hall recreates Tudor life full time in late June and July most years and offers visitors an excellent opportunity to become lost in the past.
Sunday we moved on to Cambridge, where we visited Saint John's College where Edward Hunter, my protagonist studied for a few years in the 1560s before abandoning a career in the church (much to his mother's disappointment). Its Great Gate and the east and west ranges of the First Court remain much as he would have seen them. He would have also been impressed with the fan vaulting in the ceiling of Kings College Chapel. Leaping ahead 500 years, we drank some pints at the RAF bar in the Eagle, filled with its own history of British and American pilots who singed their squadron numbers onto its ceiling.
Monday, typically English weather returned as we visited Peterborough Cathedral. I had forgotten Katherine of Aragon was buried there, and its apse has the fan vaulting as well. On to Burghley House, its exterior much as Lord Burghley designed it in the 16th century, but the interior all "modernized" in the 1680's, then again in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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