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Historic Clothing Project moves to
next phase
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Left, Tudor clothing of 1540 made for
interpreters working in Bayleaf farmstead
, a Wealden house from Chiddingstone, Kent.
Right, Victorian clothing of 1890 worn in
Whittaker’s cottages, from Ashtead, Surrey.
The
Museum’s four-year Historic Clothing Project continues, with good quality,
historically accurate replica clothing being produced by the Museum’s busy
needlework group working in the Interpretation Department.
A
highlight was this year’s exhibition held in April, enabling those involved
to show their work so far, and an accompanying booklet, Cutting your Cloth.
Funding for the project is being provided by the Friends of the Museum
(£28,000 over four years).
The
aim is to build up a comprehensive stock of replica historic clothing
covering a range of periods to clothe those working in the Museum’s historic
buildings, thus enhancing their interpretation. The 34-strong needlework
group was set up to do the hard work. With leadership from Head of
Interpretation Hannah Tiplady, social historian Ruth Goodman and historical
costumier Barbara Painter, the group has already produced Tudor and
Victorian clothing, developing their domestic handicraft skills in sewing,
weaving, embroidery and knitting along the way.
The
project links well with other aspects of the Museum’s work, enabling repair
and maintenance of textiles on display, utilising plants suitable for dyeing
from the Museum’s period gardens, and making use of appropriate crops, such
as flax, grown and prepared for clothing at the Museum.
“Making replica garments demands rigorous attention to detail,” says Hannah
Tiplady. “Clothing that simply approximates the general look or becomes
‘fancy dress’ tells us nothing about the past. If we wish to explore how the
textile industries impacted on the countryside and the workshops and
buildings within it, then clothing must be produced as it was in the past.
For these reasons the Museum’s Historic Clothing Project is intended to be a
journey of exploration into the history of clothing in the rural Weald and
Downland regions.”
So
far the group has concentrated on working clothing for Tudor and Victorian
women, including outer and undergarments, footwear and accessories. In the
next phase they will be making working clothing for Tudor men and Stuart
women, while continuing to build on the existing stock.
Cutting your Cloth, published to accompany the exhibition, covers in
detail the types of clothing and techniques used in the manufacture of the
Museum’s clothes, along with materials used and types of stitch in Tudor and
Victorian times. How the making of clothes was approached in the different
periods is also included, together with explanations about Tudor handspun
yarn and knitting, natural dyes and methods of repair. The booklet and
postcards of the completed costumes are available through the Museum shop.
Did you know …
 | Adult women in Tudor Britain covered their
hair in public: a woman’s hair was seen as ‘her crowning glory and
her husband’s delight’
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| Pins were important to fasten and shape
women’s clothes long before zips and other fastenings were invented.
The expression ‘pin money’ was derived from this function
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| Just as we create individual modern hairstyles
today, the Tudors created headwear styles, folding and pinning
simple pieces of cloth in a range of different styles
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| A Victorian bodice was made in eight pieces.
The sleeves were gathered at the shoulder to create fullness and
height, giving breadth to narrow sloping shoulders that were a
result of poor diet
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| Rush stems or ‘bents’ were used to stiffen
corsets and bodices
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| Women in rural Victorian Britain rarely worked
to a pattern, but copied shapes and styles from their own clothing
or that of their friends
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| The earliest surviving British sock
knitting pattern is a full hundred years later than the era of Tudor
clothing. Most Tudor stockings were not knitted but cut and sewn
from cloth. |
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How they interpret history at Colonial
Williamsburg, USA
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Iwas
fortunate to spend a week at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia in June this
year to find out how they ‘do’ history at one of the world’s most important
living history museums.
The
trip was organised by Museum Director Richard Harris and paid for by the
Knowledge Transfer Partnership. Williamsburg was the capital of Virginia
between 1699 and 1780 and, together with
Jamestown and
Yorktown, forms part of the Historic Triangle, ‘the birthplace of
American Democracy’. |
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The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (CWF), comprising the
Historic Area, was created in the late 1920s to preserve
Virginia’s colonial
heritage with funds provided by John D Rockefeller Jr. The 301-acre Historic
Area has 88 original 18th century buildings plus a large number of other
houses, shops and public outbuildings reconstructed on their original
foundations.
CWF is a world
leader in heritage interpretation and employs a large number of costumed
first and third person interpreters*. This was my first experience of first
person interpretation and I found it rather frustrating since it imposed
severe constraints on what you could and could not talk about and required
you, in a sense, to step into character too.
In addition to first and
third person interaction, the Foundation has in recent years developed
theatrical interpretation, focusing on its ambitious ‘Revolutionary
City’ programme which employs a cast of 40 actors to bring to life the
events of the American Revolution. This kind of interpretation is becoming
increasingly popular in living history museums. ‘Staging’ the past in this
way is seen as an alternative to first person interpretation, allowing the
visitor to engage with the characters without having to interact with them
on a one-to-one basis in order to elicit information. |
Costumes historic and
modern mix at Colonial Williamsburg, where first
and third person interpreters are employed. |
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‘Living history’ is a curious paradox since, as Robert Ronsheim has
observed, ‘the past is dead and cannot be brought back to life’. In deciding
what to reanimate, living history exponents are constrained not only by what
is known but by a complex synthesis of practical and cultural
considerations. At Colonial Williamsburg the costumed interpreters enact the
past on roads that have been covered in tarmac so that in the event of fire
the emergency vehicles avoid sinking into the mud.
Danae Tankard
*In first person interpretation interpreters, wearing historic clothing,
take on the personality and actions, including speech, of someone at a
particular historic period, while third person interpretation involves the
interpreter wearing costume and undertaking appropriate activity but
interacting with visitors using modern language and approach.
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Artist-in-residence will create
stories based on Museum exhibits
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| The Museum has made a successful application
to host an Artistin- Residence, fully funded by a prestigious Leverhulme
Trust award. Jane Borodale will be working at the Museum for 10 months from
September.
A fiction writer with a particular interest in history of
place, she has previously written site-specific fiction for the Wordsworth
Trust in Cumbria, the Foundling Museum in London, and the Dartington Hall
Trust in Devon, where she was writer-in-residence for 18 months. Jane’s
debut novel The Book of Fires will be published by HarperCollins in May, and
is set in 18th-century Sussex and London.
It was whilst researching for her novel that she realised
that the Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence scheme – which supports
cross-cultural dialogue between artists and research institutions – could
provide a unique opportunity to write fiction specifically for the Museum,
and an application to the Leverhulme Trust was drawn up jointly with Richard
Harris. She plans to research and write a group of experimental short
stories, each taking an individual house from the Museum collection as its
core. The project, to be presented after the residency as a publication,
aims to animate a portrait of up to five Museum dwellings in the context of
their original habitat.
Jane says: “The resource of collective expertise at the
Museum is rich and diverse. Preparing to write, I’ll be looking for vital
snippets, palpable clues, objects, photographs, records. I’ll be visiting
the original sites of the buildings, keeping my ears open for pieces of
stories, reading widely in the reference library, watching activities,
seeing the year unfold in the working landscape, asking questions.
“There are so many intriguingly different kinds of truth
or fact in a museum context, and short fiction is an exciting medium for an
exploration of history or the fluidity of time. The job of the writer is to
try to breathe a fleeting kind of life into facts, and I’m thrilled to have
this very particular chance to do so here at the Open Air Museum.”
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New research will enhance
school visits
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The
Museum’s Schools Service has recently begun a new project in collaboration
with historian, Dr Danae Tankard, to enhance the resources available for
teacher-led visits.
Danae recently completed a two and a half year Knowledge Transfer
Partnership with the
University
of Reading at the Museum to research and write the social and economic
history of 10 of our exhibit houses. Articles on her research have been
appearing in the Museum Magazine. The Museum is keen to make use of this
material in the schools programme, writes Rachel Mercer, Schools Service
Manager.
Beggars in the stocks, 1566, used to illustrate a
new work scheme for
schools on the differences between the rich
and poor in Tudor England.
“We
know that our existing web resources for supporting teacher-led visits are
very popular with schools. We want to build on their success by focusing the
material more specifically on the individual histories of our houses and the
lives of their occupants to create resources that are as unique as the
Museum itself.”
The
revised programme will incorporate a range of original documents and
illustrative material and will be cross-curricular.
To
support the development of the new schools programme the Museum has enlisted
the help of two local primary schools who will review the existing materials
and trial the new ones as they are produced.
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European open air museums get
together for Lifelong Learning Conference
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 In
September 19 delegates from 13 open air museums in 12 European countries
came to the Museum to celebrate the joys and challenges of lifelong
learning. Learning
through the Landscape was the theme, with lectures on the development and
management of the Downland landscape, and the formation of the Museum and
West Dean Park.
Delegates toured the Museum to observe the formal learning opportunities
offered to schools
and adults, and to view the exhibit buildings, their contents and the way
they are interpreted for informal learners. The first day concluded with an
evening walk on the Trundle led by David Bone to describe the geological
history of the landscape.
Eight papers were delivered and discussed, and Henryk Zipsane, Director of
Jamtli in Sweden, acquainted the group with EU initiatives aimed at
encouraging museums to take part in programmes to raise standards in
learning across
Europe. This was followed by a visit to
Amberley Working Museum,
which owes its very existence to the surrounding chalk landscape, and the
day ended with a typically English supper in its Limeburners Restaurant.
On
the Saturday Chichester Harbour Conservancy’s education team, led by John
Tierney, shared with delegates the extra challenges involved in delivering
learning programmes while working with the tides. Conservation Officer Ed
Rowsell introduced the solar boat on which we were taken out to the mouth of
the harbour surrounded by sailing boats racing around us. The afternoon in
Chichester
offered a guided tour of its most significant buildings before the final
open-top bus journey back to the Museum for a spit-roast local lamb supper,
where delegates were joined by colleagues and volunteers who had hosted them
in their homes for the conference.
Diana Rowsell
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News in brief
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The Museum constantly seeks new ways of communicating with visitors and
this season we have introduced Ten Minute Talks, designed to give a brief
introduction to our main exhibit buildings. The times of the talks are
advertised to visitors as they arrive, so that they can take advantage of
them, or not, as they wish. ‘Crib sheets’ were prepared, so that each
volunteer delivering the talks would cover similar ground. About a dozen
volunteers offered to help and were given the necessary training. Public
response varied widely. Some talks were given to quite large groups, while
on a few occasions nobody turned up at all! Occasionally people used the
talks as the backbone of their visit, and came to them all on a particular
day. Overall we felt that they are a useful addition to our service to
visitors during the height of the season, and will certainly be repeating
and developing the idea next year. |
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A
debut performance of a piece of music inspired by the Downland Gridshell
took place in the Jerwood Gridshell space as part of Architecture08 in
June. In January Peter Copley visited the Museum and was so taken by the
building that he composed a symphony for a string quartet and four
trombones. The event was called the Incredible Architectural Musical
Picnic. |
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The Museum has been
awarded a £15,000 grant to carry out audience development work. The sum
comes from the Designation Challenge Fund (DCF), which has benefited the
Museum greatly over the past 10 years, although it is currently being
re-examined as part of the wider review of the Government’s Renaissance in
the Regions programme. The work will be carried out by Stuart Davies,
recently elected as President of the Museums’ Association and widely known
for his work in museum policy and management. He will analyse the needs of
our current visitors and non-visitors through surveys, interviews and
focus groups. Much of the project will be aimed at improving the visitor
experience on-site and linking it with heritage off-site through
interpretation and education. |
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The Museum continues to be in the forefront of developments in building
conservation training, working closely with the National Heritage Training
Group (NHTG), the South East Region Constructions Skills Action Group and
English Heritage. November will see another round of the Train the
Trainers initiative, where building skills tutors from further education
colleges come together for training in building conservation techniques to
enable them to offer heritage courses to their NVQ students. Lectures take
place at West Dean College and practical work in timber conservation,
historic brickwork and the use of lime takes place at the Museum. To
foster awareness of our built heritage among the younger generation the
Museum has worked for a second year with English Heritage to deliver the
‘Springline’ project. Groups of youngsters from two villages, one in
Sussex and one in Hampshire, come together at the Sustainability Centre at
East Meon and at the Museum for a range of activities designed to
enhance their understanding of the local distinctiveness of where they
live, and make them aware of career opportunities in countryside and
building crafts. The Museum also responds to requests to attend
construction skills careers days to encourage young people to consider
career options in heritage building crafts.
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Blacksmiths’
summer extravaganza The British Artists Blacksmiths Association
(BABA) AGM was held at the Museum on 1–3 August 2008. Over 120 Blacksmiths
attended, with several from overseas, including the USA, Canada, Australia
and Europe.
BABA had agreed to support the Museum by making seven tree-themed way
markers for woodland trails, and this inspired a hive of creative activity
from teams of smiths working about 20 forges.
Robin Williams, Museum volunteer blacksmith,
holding one of the tree
themed waymarkers for the Museum’s
woodland trail, made by blacksmiths.
It
was also an excellent opportunity for our own smiths at the Museum not
only to watch the ‘big boys’ in action with their power hammers, welding
equipment and ability to work under all conditions with skill and
determination, but also to join in.
All BABA’s activity was located in Greenways field near the Southwater
Smithy. The hands-on children’s activity, Get hooked on blacksmithing, was
set up next to the Smithy and was run mainly by the Museum volunteer
smiths. Over the three days 120 children made hooks, with each blacksmith
spending five hours each day with them, and the Museum took over £90 in
donations.
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Albert Peacock
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Albert
Peacock, making spars at the Museum with his Scottie, Bruce, by his side.
Albert Peacock, a skilled worker in farms and woods, who made a major
contribution to the Museum’s work, died in June at the age of 86.
Albert joined the Museum staff at the age of 62 when he was made redundant
from the farm business south of Chichester where he had worked for many
years: the late Algie Lillywhite and his brother introduced him to the new
project in the Downs. When Museum Director Chris Zeuner discovered Albert’s skill with wood
and thatch – he could turn his deft hand to making hurdles, thatching spars
and laths, as well as thatching itself – he was keen to involve him in the
restoration and presentation of the historic building exhibits. Albert’s
spars (used to fix thatch to roofs) were also sold on to thatchers who were
pleased to obtain regular local supplies.
‘Alb’ as he was known also fulfilled an order the Museum took from
Chatham Historic Dockyard for 15,000 3ft long laths, required for restoring
the roof of the 200ft long mast house and mould loft, which housed the
award-winning Wooden Walls gallery. All the wood came from the Goodwood
Estate, selected by Albert: the job took him three months.
Albert and his Scottie dogs, Bruce and Angus, became a well-known
feature at the Museum, where he regularly demonstrated his spar-making
skills and told stories of countryside life to staff and visitors. Albert’s
tales were legion and ideal for re-telling by those who had not experienced
country life in the mid-20th century. Most importantly, he was a vital
source of information on so many aspects of the rural world, and his
knowledge was put to good use in countless Museum projects.
He was featured in many media articles and several books, as well as TV
and radio programmes. He was last filmed for All the Fun of the Fair with
his son, Garry, in 2005. He was introduced to Princess Alexandra in 1988 and
HRH The Prince of Wales in 1996 during their visits to the Museum.
Albert Peacock was born at New Barn Cottage, Bepton, near Midhurst, one
of a family of 10. He lived at Buriton Farm, Treyford on the West Dean
Estate for a while and had a three-mile walk to school at Elsted each day.
Before leaving the Peacock children would help split the spars, for which
they were paid one penny a day. Albert’s early working life was spent with
horses, breaking in young animals for the hunting stable and working Shires
on the land. As a farm horseman he was in a reserved occupation during
wartime, and joined the Westbourne Home Guard. A perk of farm work was
shooting: any farm hand was welcome to go rabbiting or pigeon shooting to
keep vermin down and protect crops. Such free food was welcome, especially
in the war.
Albert married Julia, his wife of 54 years in 1948. In 1953 he moved to
Fishbourne to work for the Bailey family on their farms in Fishbourne and
Chidham growing potatoes, vegetables and corn. When they bought their own
combine harvester in the late 1960s Albert was chosen to drive it as he had
been the first person in the country to drive a Massey Ferguson imported
from America in
1947. Albert enjoyed a happy retirement, continuing to grow all his own
vegetables (his motto was that if you could not eat it, it wasn’t worth
growing) until two years ago when he admitted he could not continue
cultivating the garden he loved any more. Albert is survived by his son,
Garry, daughter-in-law Janet and his grandsons and great grandchildren.
Diana Zeuner
(with thanks to Garry & Janet Peacock)
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Obituaries
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| The Museum is sorry to report the deaths of
four stalwart volunteers, who have given much time and energy to the project
over many years.
They are Ted Waller, Alan Lockyer, Heather Vincent and
Christopher Leach.
Ted, a former chartered surveyor, began volunteering at
the museum in 1995, initially working at Bayleaf, but he moved to the mill
and became part of the team which delivered flour to retail outlets. He met
his future wife, Anne Gordon, at the Museum, where she worked as a volunteer
with the Education Department.
Alan was one of the regular Bayleaf farmhouse stewards.
Before retirement he was a cartographer with the RAF and Ordnance Survey.
Heather, with her late husband Peter, who died in 2004,
ran the mill for 20 years. Together they managed this most popular of the
Museum’s working exhibits, operating the machinery, selling the wholemeal
flour and giving advice to visitors on breadmaking, as well as representing
the Museum at the Traditional Cornmillers Guild.
Christopher Leach, along with his wife, Judy, joined the
Museum in 2001. He stewarded many of the buildings before deciding to join
the milling team, where he carried out his duties with enthusiasm and
dedication. Christopher was also a Gridshell guide, one of a small team
conducting visitors around the Museum’s building conservation workshop and
artefact store at lunchtimes.
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'Hatches and Matches'
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Three members of the Museum staff
were married this year. The Jerwood
Gridshell Space was the venue for Marketing
Officer Cathy
Clark’s marriage to Andy in June. One week later
on 28 June, Henry Warner,
Head of Operations, married his partner Julie in
Warblington Church. And on a sunny autumn day in
September, Schools Services Manager Rachel Neville
married her partner, Dave Mercer, at Birdham
Church. The Museum is also
delighted to announce the birth of two babies
during the year. Guy Viney (Collections Assistant)
and his wife Katy are the proud parents of baby
daughter Aiofe, and Head of Interpretation,
Hannah Tiplady, gave birth to her son,
Rudy, on 24 July. Both babies are already keen
Museum visitors!
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New trustees appointed
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Steve Corbett led the team from the
Green Oak Carpentry Company who built the Gridshell as subcontractors to E A
Chiverton. Steve read Modern History at Oxford and through the 1980s and
’90s ran his own companies engaged in joinery and boat building. In the late
1990s he worked as a technical author and consultant in the design and
manufacture of specialised carpentry, before joining the Green Oak Carpentry
Company in 1998 where he became Project Director. Steve and his wife Carol
live in West Dean.
Debbie Chiverton also had a close
connection with the Downland Gridshell as she is a director of E A Chiverton
and married to Mike Wigmore who ran the Downland Gridshell project. Debbie
is responsible for finance and administration at Chivertons. After a first
degree at Oxford she joined Chivertons in 1983. In 1999–2001 she took the
diploma course in Building Conservation at the Architectural Association in
London,
so has a deep specialist interest in historic buildings. She has been a
member of the Museum’s Friends committee, a trustee of the Sussex Heritage
Trust and a director of the West Sussex Economic Forum. She and Mike live at
Birdham.
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