Today we went to Mary Arden’s farm which
is where Shakespeare’s mother lived and worked.
One of the things we did was watch the
Tudor’s eat dinner. the first thing they did was take off their hats but the
head of the household did not. It was
considered polite to take off your hat and rude not to. In Tudor times it was very important to be
polite.
But he did when they said grace because
they were talking to someone more important – God, then he would put his hat back on. When you say grace you put your hands together
with your fingers pointing up because you want your prayer to go up to God.
They flicked their napkins over their
left shoulder to get rid of the devil that might be sitting there.
Whenever they eat they use the spoon
they got when they were Christened.
Everybody got given a spoon by their Godparents when they were
Christened. They kept that spoon
forever. The poor got wooden spoons, the
people that had more money had pewter spoons and the people with much more
money had silver spoons. They could not start eating till the master had a
spoon full.
They sat at a board, not a table. This was a flat board sitting on trestles, so
you were not allowed to put your elbows on the board, otherwise the board would
tip. The master sat on a chair at the
head of the table. Other people sat on
stools or benches. This meant that the
master was the Chairman of the board.
The servants sat at the board for dinner
too. This was how the master found out
about what was happening on the farm, so it was a board meeting. The servants often didn’t have much food at
home, so they were given a hearty meal at the farm as part of their pay. If there wasn’t much food, the Mistress had
to make sure the workers still had a hearty meal so the family would get less
to eat.
The women always had to have their hair
covered and also their ears. Children
had to serve the food. They were not
given a seat at the table until they had learnt manners.
Other things at the farm were falconry
displays, donkeys,
blacksmithing and geese herding. This is where they would have herded the
geese to market. Sometimes they might
have taken 500 geese. I got to have a
try at herding and blocking. Herding was
easy because they follow each other and you walk behind them with a pole to
push them along. If you don’t want them
to go somewhere, you stand in front of them with a pole and they will go a
different way.
There was the house that Mary Arden
lived. It had very small doors. The beds
the kids slept on had logs for pillows but with a blanket over it.
We saw a man milk a cow and a man that
was making things out of leather. He
told us about swords and scabbards and he was making a water bottle.
One of the falconry displays was a barn
owl named Millie. I got to have a turn at flying Millie, because the man wanted
to show how people would have learned the skill of falconry. I got to wear the glove and he let the bird
fly to me. then the man said your fired but I did not do anything the bird just
flew off my arm. The bird was very
light, I could hardly feel her on my hand.
She was missing one of her talons.
I liked it because it is something I would like to do when I am older.
