Tattershall Castle, near Sleaford in Lincolnshire is a 130 foot high, six-storied Tudor keep owned by the National Trust. It was built in the 1430s by Ralph, 3rd Lord Cromwell on the site of an even earlier castle. After centuries of declining fortunes, in 1911, it was rescued from being sold off to an American syndicate that intended to asset strip it and sell the antiques and features in the States. Lord Curzon, former Viceroy of India, intervened and restored the castle to its current condition.
We popped up there one Sunday and spent a few hours climbing the many stairs and being buzzed by a Spitfire and a Dakota from the nearby Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
In one room, they had volunteers demostrating things like a selection of children's toys and a collection of Tudor haute couture. Olivia chose a Jester's hat, which either means she's into early Marillion (entirely possible) or is one of those people call Mungo at a micro-festival who think they're being weally alternative...
As pictured below, there was a woman demonstrating how to spin wool. K___ and I naturally assumed that Olivia was too young to have a go, but the Tudor maiden insisted she would be fine. The first task was to pull loose clumps of wool through a fine-toothed comb to untangle them and to align them in the same direction. It was harder than you might think and when you're informed that girls not much older than Olivia would have been expected to sort several bags of wool a day, you get a reminder of how pampered we are today. You can see the teased wool in the wicker basket.
The next stage is to take your teased fibre and pull it into a longer thread. It's still loose at this stage and would soon fall apart without spinning. Spinning it literally twists the fibres onto themselves so they hold together, with new individual pieces of wool continually wound into the whole along its length. Olivia wound her string onto a small piece of card and brought it home with her.
Olivia was extremely well behaved on the narrow staircases and we were able to investigate the whole castle, right to the top from where you can see Lincoln some ten miles away.
We popped up there one Sunday and spent a few hours climbing the many stairs and being buzzed by a Spitfire and a Dakota from the nearby Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
In one room, they had volunteers demostrating things like a selection of children's toys and a collection of Tudor haute couture. Olivia chose a Jester's hat, which either means she's into early Marillion (entirely possible) or is one of those people call Mungo at a micro-festival who think they're being weally alternative...
As pictured below, there was a woman demonstrating how to spin wool. K___ and I naturally assumed that Olivia was too young to have a go, but the Tudor maiden insisted she would be fine. The first task was to pull loose clumps of wool through a fine-toothed comb to untangle them and to align them in the same direction. It was harder than you might think and when you're informed that girls not much older than Olivia would have been expected to sort several bags of wool a day, you get a reminder of how pampered we are today. You can see the teased wool in the wicker basket.
The next stage is to take your teased fibre and pull it into a longer thread. It's still loose at this stage and would soon fall apart without spinning. Spinning it literally twists the fibres onto themselves so they hold together, with new individual pieces of wool continually wound into the whole along its length. Olivia wound her string onto a small piece of card and brought it home with her.
Olivia was extremely well behaved on the narrow staircases and we were able to investigate the whole castle, right to the top from where you can see Lincoln some ten miles away.
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