Behind The Scenes With Kathy Hipperson (Mrs Crocombe)

[Music] hello i'm dr. annie gray and I'm here in the kitchens at oddly end house you might well recognize them now we've been absolutely blown away by your outpourings of love for our Victorian way videos and especially for the character of mrs. croakin but you've also frequently expressed interest in the amazing actor that portrays mrs. Croton Kathy hip person we haven't wanted to introduce you to Kathy in person before because we thought it might sort of destroy the magic but so many of you have asked for a video with Kathy in person that well we couldn't really deny you could we so without much further ado here is the face of mrs. chrome the brilliant Kathy a person we asked you for the questions that you most wanted to ask Kathy and over 400 of you responded which is just brilliant now unfortunately we can't answer every single question and many of you did ask quite similar things just to say none of the food on the shoots goes to waste don't worry also some of your questions you'll find have been answered in our behind the scenes videos so if you click on the link above me now you will find that you can go and find out all sorts of tasty tidbits about mrs. chrome everything from what she wears to a little bit more about her life to a really fascinating probable photograph of mrs. chrome herself in later life however we want to give it our best shot so Kathy are you ready for your adoring public and their most burning questions I think I am Kathy do you have a natural English accent and what were the challenges of bringing to life a character such as mrs. croakin well the challenges with bringing someone like mrs. croak am a servant to life such that not much is written about her so a lot of the research that we did to bring her life has been based on the research and research done about servants generically from that time in history nothing specific about her apartments in the census which obviously is only ever ten years so it's quite challenging but um we brought together what a servant would do and to be able to get to her position how she must have behaved and what she must have been like have you ever cooked any of mrs. crow combs recipes at home what's your favorite recipe and have you incorporated any of mrs. crow combs recipes into your everyday life not into my everyday life no I definitely cook some of her recipes at home our recipes some of them are very popular with my family my favorite one is the gingerbread cake yeah I make that quite a lot yeah I said why weirdly enough it's really nice isn't it and there's also the wider world and mrs. Craig them as well so what about the because there's her book but obviously both in the videos and also when you're on site here at all en do you cook other recipes that aren't in mrs. programs book her books just a snippet what about other Victoria we love here working in the kitchens we love using eliezer Acton's anything pretty much in her book we are ready to to cook mostly cakes and sweet things because I've got a sweet tooth do you think you were late to missus broken in any way I'm not a cook so I'm not sure I do in that way and I'm not a Victorian servant I'm not alive in the Victorian age but I suppose I like think I'm quite hardworking and she must have been to to have got to her position here ugly end house she must have been fairly fair otherwise it's unlikely she would have got this position and she comes from a farming background I come from the farming background wasn't mrs. Craig him a real woman we can't ask this a lot well I think mostly a real person I assume say because quite clearly you are in fact real yes I'm real and mrs. Craven was well yes the simple answer to that again if you watch our behind-the-scenes videos you will find out all about the real mrs. crow CIM what's your favorite part about being a historical interpreter I love finding out like about people like mrs. Craig Koons so about people who aren't known and who are what I would class as ordinary so whilst kings queens Dukes famous people are interesting it's always nice to get a chance to play someone who is it so well known and also a huge part of what I do is in schools and with children so I do a lot of Education and that's really important what do you do apart from historical interpretation do you have a regular job well historical interpretation is my regular job I work every day in a costume from some time in history so as I mentioned I do do quite a lot of education I work a lot in education in museums and in schools but I also work I've got my own theatre company and we specialize in producing plays based around history little known history British history and I work for other historical interpretation companies as well as past pleasures who I work for here at all the end house I ride horses I fly birds of prey in a medieval era I run a big Bitcoin Kathy you ride horses sidesaddle dressed as a Tudor with a falcon on your arm come on I have been known to do that yes tell us a bit more about your theatre company well our thinked a company that I have with a friend of mine called Simon Kirke is time will tell theatre and as the name suggests we specialized in sort of history timing telling times gone by we'd like to make a drama out of history and we do lots of unknown stories a lot of female stories in history and their plays aren't they they're really lovely showpiece plays most of them which are quite immersive and involve an audience as opposed to what you tend to do here which is much more ad hoc and tends to be sort of talking to two or three people in small groups oh yes and we play lots of different characters sometimes in our plays we are specific historic characters other times I've I've done a play that Simon who writes them created with myself and another female actress and we didn't play a lady in them at all so was that the one which I saw the one when you all had massages yes under strange beards yes that's the one this who was mrs. Kruger married to and did she ever have children well actually the title missus in mrs. chrome is a title of honor respect really because she's a cook in such an important household but she didn't get married until she left as a woman and such an important job she couldn't work and being married so although we don't technically know the year that she left working oddly and house we do have that once she'd left she was married and that was in 1884 that was right yes and she married mr. stride and she then being quite Elfi at this point sighs she was what 40 was she 43 and 1881 so she was 45 she isn't gonna have children at 45 in the Victorian age so she didn't have any children no I just don't think that between the two of us we should not say elderly when it comes mid late approaching but he had children and it's because of those children and his relatives that we have the cookbook yes and again you can find out more about mr. stride about his relatives and about mrs. crow comes later life by going to the link to the Victorian way behind the scenes videos is there anything you hope that people will take away from these kind of videos and the other projects that you do I would like them to take everything away everything that I say really I like them to take away certainly here in the kitchens or working in the kitchens certain facts about what life was like in this kitchen facts about mrs. crow command then facts about certain thoughts in general in the later Victorian age and perhaps to get them thinking about what life was like not just for them but for the whole country the whole world at that era so I'd like to sort of give them lots of things to think about to get to think about what being a servant was like and actually some of the things they've been told aren't quite true myth-busting yes as well I mean we used to get people come in and go oh I wouldn't have liked to have been a servant it was so hard you started life at 12 years old scrubbing floors and of course here as mrs. crow Combe shows you were if you made it to a house like this really we good and certainly not some form of underpaid slavi I think the statistic is something like 25% of servants and that's it worked in houses of more than two people so to be working in a house like this with 24 25 servants you were good and you could command a decent wage as well exactly and if you think about it she as a 13 year old when she may have started the options what were going to work on the farm and in some areas the country working in a factory I think this was definitely a better job yeah I mean full board and lodging a pound of meat to eat every single day do you love your job do people recognize you on the street no I don't get recognized on the street I absolutely love my job most of the time and what's not to love generally I get to dress up I get to talk to some really lovely visitors I get to share knowledge that I have found interesting with people who's mostly want to find interesting and I don't get recognized I don't think mostly because in history women wore a lot of hats and covered their hair and their head and it does drastically changing my voice gets recognized occasionally mostly English Heritage Sites is a historical interpreter an actor or do you have acting training or a degree or are you just really interested in history and also in acting I think the historical interpreter can have all sorts of different backgrounds it helps well absolutely you have to have an interest in history and a lot of really talented historical interpreters I know have degrees and masters in history it certainly helps if you have some natural acting ability I think that helps to it's just being personable actually with the public is the most important thing I actually do have an acting background that's what I trained it but you do also have a degree in pure maths Kathy which doesn't help me in my pretty happy embrace unless they're going to do some interpreting months naked enigma be straight over I was about to say which would only involve modern history because obviously women didn't do maths in the olden days and there are lots of historical interpreters out there who have got technically neither of that training but they've got such a passion for history and such and a lot of them are teachers so because they're naturally good at speaking to people and explaining things that makes them equally as good do you wish modern life was a bit more like mrs. crow combs like living in the Victorian times complete with syphilis and polio and rickets and malnutrition and really low birthrate massive sexes and no women's rights [Music] bring on the antibiotics in the birth control pill right next question what is one recipe that mrs. crow CIM refused to make or simply couldn't get right and I think this is talking about us mrs. crow is going to be my first we don't know what about mrs. coca really so many times I won't be making sheep's brain crickets again oh you enjoyed ever you love you were there with your fingers in the brains going this is great I really love the fact that I'm making sheep's brain britches and I want to do it every week I won't be doing that again Annie once made me cook a sheep's brain and ears is the costume comfortable well historic clothing rather than costume because it is very very accurate and does it take a while to get into the kitty for mrs. Craven um it doesn't take long to get into it she's a servant so her clothes are fairly practical it's it's comfortable it's a corset it's been made specifically for myself that I wear underneath and it'd be quite a different thing I think if you were asking me and I was playing Lady Braybrook because naturally is a lady of status and a fashion corsets would be tight quite tightly laced and I can take you changing clothes five times a day I'm doing all her hair and all that stuff so no I think it's quite easy and it's I find it relatively comfortable yes Cathy where you were found as a victorian-era before you accepted this role or did you really come to it through playing the character I didn't know anything much really about the Victorian age before I started working here I've done quite a bit about the Tudors that's a very popular time and the Civil War was quite an interest you have seen the picture mmm so yes I came to the Victorian age really through working here through you working with you and through mrs. croaker how does live interpretation change when you're interpreting to a night audience versus interpreting to a camera so a media outlet and do you have any tips for people doing the latter well naturally it changes because the live audience interact with you and here in the kitchens we aren't performing as such we are generally talking and often one-to-one with the audience so I will talk about anything so an audience member might be have a particular interest or the conversation we are having might take me off into talking about all sorts of things music halls or museums or anything so you never know where you're going to end up with a live audience people ask questions and it's very much led by them into where you want to go as well as you gently steering so that you can make sure that they come out with what you want them to know as well it's quite a sort of iterative process and also we are led by what we're actually physically doing so if we are cooking we're led by someone's questions about that but also how that is going and you know for making soup or whatever and when we're doing something in a recorded way then that that changes completely you're more of an education format you're just standing and presenting there's less of an interaction with it and so my advice for someone is someone through that I prefer to have an audience personally so I'm not so keen on the recorded stuff having a an audience to respond to so my advice is just imagine there is someone there in the room with you when you're talking to your camera or whatever it is and imagine there's one person there or two and you're just as if it's imagine hundreds a little safest whenever I was presenting to camera like just little tiny faces and people sitting on it exactly you need an audience I think yet this is clearly someone who knows the nineteenth-century word for recipe normally are there any adjustments to the receipts before filming no no not really we try and keep the filming within a certain time period so we might prepare things beforehand like we might have made the pastry beforehand or we might have lined a mold beforehand but no we thought we try and follow it as close to the letter word for word there might be alterations because when you write down a recipe you might miss out bit they're obvious to you so certainly with mrs. crotons cookbook there are a few bits of instructions that are missing because she doesn't need to write them because she understood what she meant and even in it printed recipe books you can find that even in modern day you couldn't work they were also just massive bits where the recipe is wrong as well in modern and indeed yes so we might change it to make it more practical but we can get all the ingredients so we don't need to change anything for that what fashion arrow do you prefer besides Victorian of course at the moment because it changes with whatever I'm doing the most of at the moment it is Edwardian which is it so far away totally comfortable I don't find it uncomfortable at all but then I play lower-class practical ladies who do work and things like that so probably if you'd asked me four or five years ago I might have said Tudor it varies I suppose you also have the advantage that you've studied ballet and dance so you've got quite a sort of poised where's the one time I wanted Audion corset I found it forced me to stand in a horrible horrible way what like properly what is your favorite Victorian dish and have you ever tried anything from mrs. beatings cookbook Wow mrs. Beeton is something isn't she it depends on which one you want to talk about obviously she has been rewritten and we presented okay for the 1861 plagiarized original shall we determine that you can use in the kitchens in 1881 because the 1888 tradition isn't out yet um yeah we've done recipes from her book I don't know there necessarily any of my favorites I don't know what my favorite Victorian recipe would be probably the gingerbread cake and why not say that I can't think so it's a great you could wrestle ya gotta de pomme is also quite good right since Christmas pudding Frankie Toby's fruitcake with a big Ward cheese lot of sweetbreads pretty good as well I just want a lot that's good right I'm only completely stupid for thinking that this entire thing was real all of the time or are you just the most amazing and experienced actor yes if you could go back in time to any area or place where would you go also why would you definitely not go I think as long as I could only go for like half an hour I would like to go to something really emotive and with lots of people because I quite like the idea of being involved and picking up the emotions of lots of people gathering so something like the parade or the funeral of Emily Wilding Davison and to be one of those suffragettes all in white and to feel to be part of that and the emotion that was involved around that so I'd like to be that any battle ever for the other one yeah any war zone fair what's your favorite historical interpretation moment while playing mrs. croakin oh that's easy to answer so the project had been a year I think and I was here playing this is quite common I think you were Mary Ann and a gentleman walked in called Bob stride with mrs. crow combs actual notebook cookbook so receiving that and perhaps the actual moment was the most favorite was looking at her handwriting and seeing her actual writing so someone I've been playing at the time for just a year but we were on a lot of immediately it really every day felt like yeah the first year we were in a little desire yes yeah and and it was amazing yeah I mean I think I probably well I'm sure I squealed suspicion I measured a tear or two yeah thought that's very powerful wasn't yeah on one of the behind the scenes videos it's mentioned that there are other people that play missus Croton is this true and how do you feel about it um yes there's a team of about twelve of us who work here oddly and and six of us I think play mrs. crow cim so and as you mentioned earlier all of them bring a different element to what we think her character would have been and to how a woman who had managed to climb to the heady heights of working for a Lords household to where she and also where she was in life you know some of them it is I've been here forever I know what I'm doing type practical elements to it some are like okay I'm thinking about moving on and what I might do my future that kind of things they bring lots of different elements to it which is I think it's really interesting to have lots of people play the same person I'm obviously quite a practical is its growth you used to tell me off a lot yeah oh no bossy I think the time I cut my finger and you made me sit in the corner yeah or however long I just remember telling you to be quiet a lot yeah it's not gossip with his cranium it's being away apart from mrs. chrome what other roles do you really like playing I love playing characters that you don't know much about although having said that I have also loved playing and Berlin and Hampton Court particularly like you mentioned riding one of my favorite characters at the moment is to play Florence Nightingale Richards who was also a Victorian and she was the keeper of the keys at Tintagel Castle which is also another English Heritage property and what was great about her is we do have photographs more photographs of her than we have of mrs. chrome and a little not much is known about her apart from her language apparently was quite blue and she drank quite a lot good for family friendly activities then yes we have had to change some elements of her character but she's great friend because she doesn't have any of the control that mr. Craig has so it's quite it's quite nice and she's the lady who you found her grave there's an amazing lady who's done all the research on this particular monitor flock on Florence who works at Tintagel castle and she found out the location of Florence's grave and it was unmarked so we had a campaign and raised money and we've put in a little gravestone this year to mark where she lays was very moving could you cook really well before you started playing mrs. kokum no I couldn't I had no actual interest actually I had managed to orchestrate situations where I didn't have to cook for most of my adult life no I've no interest in cooking food particularly savory food so no I couldn't particularly when I first met you you went I don't kit I'm not interesting kicking I can't kick at all and I said if I remember rightly you don't have to be able to kick you just have to be able to play a quick yes goes all through the cooking yes and I still remember I think it was probably year after you started it oddly I met your brother for the first time oh yeah and he came up to me he said Ohio money anyway Annie you're the person responsible for Kathy's Christmas pudding she cooked Christmas pudding and it was the entire acting recipe yes and you kept it for your family honey yeah I had most of them don't know like Christmas pudding and so that she's the perfect and today for that it's great yeah and I spaced from that point of view mrs. crate cam has really had genuine impact on your own life I cook more strange dishes yes and cook at random times so yeah I do cook a lot more now um yeah I like the science of cooking I like the concept of cooking but I'm not interested in the taste unless it's got lots of sugar water the steps in making a video like the Victorian way videos well first of all English heritage decides that it's about time there's another mrs. croakin video and so he they contact me and Johnny at capture creative and his friend sound friends like David and we get together a date which in itself is quite challenging and then we cram as many recipes as we can into one day's filming and obviously you come along and give us advice and help write the scripts I think we'd struggle to limit ourselves to mrs. crow Coombs cookbook itself because a lot of her dishes are sweet so we know for a fact that she liked eliezer actin so we use eliezer Acton we've also got a copy of Frank's tele so we use some of his and any other recipe books that you are reading at the moment and recipes that you quite like the sound of together and I'd like to have a balance I think yeah doing things that we think that other people or the viewers would like to cook and might try want to try but also interpreting the time and the in the house and the family and the fashions and we also want to pique people's interest and encourage them to comment interact with us yeah I'm in the time period that we've always used to oddly and has been roughly from around the time mrs. crow cam was born because she would have grown up with certain recipes through to about 30 years after the house is set because there's often a time lag between recipes appearing and then appearing in print so I think the recipes that we've used on the videos and also on the ground in an interpretation have been from between about 1830 to about 1910 so it's quite a broad span but it gives scope to do everything from quite said Georgian feeling recipes like I don't know parmesan ice cream through to something that's really quite Edwardian my things in aspic and even in mrs. croakings cookbook they're not actually her original recipes are they no I think that was well for you particularly I think that was one of the pleasing things when the cookbook arrived is that you could see that many times mrs. Craig had literally copied word-for-word some of the recipes from the lives of Acton and we were already cooking from her so that was almost as if it was sort of proving that your ideas were right when it came to the recipes we cook and inside you can see just as we've been talking about how recipes are collected we all collect recipes and mrs. crow cream was the same she was either given recipes by her employer or by friends or ones perhaps that she'd read about or seen somewhere there's one where she puts the field newspaper courtesy of Lady B Brooke oddly in town see it's another battery for dingy beer there are so many recipes for ginger beer in that book does that mean that she couldn't make ginger beer or that she'd just used to forget them white ain't no I think it might what it may well mean that the bravery was really liked in debris and that they had because presumably if it's lady Braybrook to copy over the field she had suggested she had found the recipe herself and said there's a recipe for ginger beer or maybe like you mrs. Craig really liked sweet ginger e things finally I've got two things that are not questions merely comments firstly not a question just a statement my six-year-old son loves these videos and gets so excited to see them he's autistic and doesn't have much of a concentration span but these are just about the right length for him and he's so interested in history so perfect do you please keep them coming there's been more than one occasion when we've been in public and I can sense he's struggling so out comes the iPad and I thank my lucky stars for how to make a Victorian curry or gingerbread kiss-kiss that's amazing and very last thing just let her know if she starts a cult I will join me on this is croakin I think we already have the cult of Cathy hipper Sunday we own the cult of mrs. crow commits these prettier thank you very much of your patience and thank you very very much for watching Cathy there's one final thing English heritage and indeed all of your YouTube viewers absolutely love you and on behalf of English heritage we got you a present it's a copy of jewels jewel go phase Royal cookery his brother was the pastry chef to Queen Victoria for a very very long time and translated the cookery book so these are a mixture of recipes that would be suitable for a very very upmarket household but he also has a section at the front on more bourgeois cooking which is absolutely right for this it was published in the 1870s so it's entirely appropriate for you as you go forward playing this is broken and it really is quite a joy to flick through mm-hmm omelet with apricot jam followed by omelet with a rum I'm not try that well maybe we can make another video don't forget that you can visit oddly owned house throughout the year kitchens team will be here on some of the weekends do check ahead on the event page before you come if that's why you're coming Cathy unfortunately can't be here to play mrs. crow come every single time that the team is in so you may well find that somebody else is playing your beloved mrs. crow come but don't worry everybody who works here is absolutely brilliant thank you to everyone who sent us questions for Cathy we've been absolutely overjoyed to see so many of you engage with us and keep asking the questions because perhaps one day we'll do it again some of your comments were really interesting as well and we might just build on a few of them to make future videos [Music] you [Music]

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Views: 1,462,175

Rating: 4.9679475 out of 5

Keywords: mrs crocombe, avis crocombe, english heritage, history, victorian, england, audley end, victorian era, victorian britain, cooking, the victorian way, kathy hipperson, kitchen, 19th century, audley end house, traditional, vintage, tasty, recipe, cookbook, documentary, trending, viral, baking, mrs beeton, eliza acton, interview, reenactment, behind the scenes, acting, actor, living history, live history, AMA, ask me anything, victorian cooking, crocombe

Id: gtuGAKavV0k

Length: 30min 45sec (1845 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 21 2018