Hey Blog! Apologies for not posting for the last few weeks, it’s been busy this year though I really should have made more time for Home Ed in a Shed. However, earlier in December, I visited Kenilworth castle, and the week before that was the archaeology Christmas Party session, and so together those two are the inspiration for what I’ll be talking about today!
Young Archaeologists’ Club (YAC) is something I have written about a lot; archaeology is one of my big interests. Every year, there is a Christmas party, which is mostly fun and games with a few bits of learning mixed in. It has an optional dress code where some of the members come in a historical costume, which has made for a peculiar gathering which looks like a whole load of time-travellers have appeared in the same room together – everyone from the Stone Age to the Second World War – and is a brilliantly fun event. Some people don’t come from the past, but there is usually a small collection of history. Some of my past costumes have been Viking, Tudor, Anglo-Saxon, but this year I decided to get together with a friend who goes and make a joint costume. It all began with our surnames.
Mine is Bailey – probably a derogative of bailiff, one of the officials who served a lord of the manor and his knights. This friend’s surname is Wilmott – I do not know it’s etymology, but the last half – mott – provided a silly joke that we were mott and bailey (you know, like the early Norman style of castle called a motte and bailey) and perhaps we should go as a castle. She liked the idea, and so we arranged a day to meet up and create some gigantic cardboard hats!
I called on my resident senior structural engineer (AKA Dad – he is quite knowledgeable on stuff like this) and put forward my castle designs. Unlike real castles, their primary purpose was not to be strong enough to stand up to a battering ram, big enough to hold an entire community during a time of war, or almost indestructible so an attacking army couldn’t break the walls. They did, however, need to fulfil one function of castles – to look impressive! My original idea was to make them from big disks of cardboard, fill papier-mache around in places, then put a lollipop fence and houses on the top, as well as having a large keep embedded in the taller, motte hat. And that’s more or less how it was made!
We ditched the lollipops for cardboard for reasons of weight – having half a tonne of wood balanced on your head is never a particularly good example to set at a children’s group! – and used paint rather than model railway resin on the duck pond, as it was easier and cheaper to do. I marked stones on the donjon or keep with Sharpie, and we finished off the two separate hats with a reinforced cardboard bridge balanced in place once we had both put the hats on. It did look amazing and we had quite a laugh – and I’m currently thinking about what we’re going to go as next year!
A week or so after the party, I met up with family at Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire. This is a very famous castle – it is one that King John invested in and then ceded to the barons under the Magna Carta; it is where the Hundred Years War’s second phase started, which led to Henry V’s victory at Agincourt (see King Henry V, scene III); where Robert Dudley tried to persuade Elizabeth I to marry him (he failed); it was held by royalists and slighted by parliamentarians in the civil war (which is an AWFUL waste of a castle!!!); and was a home for hundreds of people from its building in the 1100s to its current existence in the present day. Now it is an English Heritage castle, which means it is in good hands and is being looked after, after centuries of looking after other people within its walls. I certainly recommend it – you can still go up inside the castle proper, and some of the rooms still exist! The gatehouse was little damaged, so it has remained a residence till the last century, and is now a museum, the gardens are beautiful (even if it was winter and so there was not much when we visited), and the views are stunning. Also, it has an excellent little café in the bailey, so be sure to try some of the cake!
Merry Christmas!!!