Tudor & 17th Century Experience Guide to Old Hall

[Music] do [Music] greetings and salutations from our humble abode now a little bit later my wife brigitta will come and join us but in the meantime let me indulge myself for a few minutes and talk about the architecture of our home now the house itself certainly this wing here was built in 1514 and to put that in context that's five years after henry viii came to the throne it's a very modest manor house but nevertheless it's striving to keep in vogue with the fashions of the day so for example if you look at the wall here you'll notice the criss-cross pattern of black stones or black bricks in the brickwork this is called diaper work and was considered the height of flashing at the beginning of the century a little bit later in 1546 henry viii in the meantime is on to his next wife which is anne of cleves and this tower was built in the same year it's still in the height of fashion fashion in those days was everything italian the renaissance and you'll notice the white surrounds to the doorway and the windows now in italy that would have been plaster but here in norfolk that would have been too expensive and so we have just white rendered stonework we'll also see the three crosses on the roof very much in keeping with the trinity the house was originally of catholic orientation shall we say and the other thing to note on the front is things like the steps going up and down the gable these were added far later probably in the 1570s in elizabeth the first reign by the dutch influence the dutch immigrants that came into the country at that time the features known as crow's steps and you'll see it in quite a few late elizabethan buildings the other half of the house over here was added in 1614 and this was the height of the influence of the family who lived here the chamberlains and houses a few interesting features but overall what you'll notice is the the house has i think about 150 different types of window because every generation seemed to add a new window from the oldest and for me the my favorite window which is the minstrels window mincel's gallery window and we'll do a zoom in on that in a minute through to this magnificent window into what was the great hall and is now our dining room and again we'll feature that a little bit later and then various other additions as we go through looking at the house what we can also see is these three stories and the top story was actually used as a priest's bedroom and was last used by a priest called richard chamberlain in 1570 and again when we go upstairs we'll be able to see some of the features in there but that's enough for me now what we'll do is we'll now head towards the house and see if we can find brigitte anywhere and explore the rooms or at least some of them so follow me [Music] one moment before we go inside let's just spend a moment and admire this amazing door now this door was constructed at the time the house was built so it's over 500 years old it's made of solid oak of particular note see all the the linen fold design here again very fashionable and one of the things i like i have to get my glasses out one thing i like is here and here we have um the tudor rose interestingly on this side it has a twisted ribbon and on this side we have a convoluted ribbon we have yet to learn exactly what that actually means other features in here and we've got a much later edition doorbell dates to victorian times but of particular note are these stone benches now these were used so that the tenant farmers could wait out here whilst waiting to pay their rents to the lord of the manor and in later years from 1614 onwards when the memorial court was in session this is where supplicants would wait for their turn in the court but enough from me what we'll do now is we'll head into the house and we'll investigate some of the interesting features there so follow me okay well let's see if brigitte is in here um oh yes hello brigitte do you want to welcome our guests hello welcome everybody to our home which also happens to be a museum of the 16th and 17th century so i'm delighted to be able to show you some of our exhibits that we live with uh mostly furniture i'm the one in the family who collect 16 so tudor furniture and any other artifacts that i can pick up that we present the time that we are also very fond of let me start with some of the pieces of furniture in here our library it originally used to be the ladies withdrawing chamber and it still has the original plaster ceiling which is very rare to have an example so intact as this one we also have tudor flooring tiles uh and i just very quickly give you a rough guide to the furniture in here most of the furniture in this room is 16th century renaissance furniture and mostly from italy that is quite significant because in henry the eighth uh time anything italian was very much in vogue and anybody who wanted to be seen being fashionable would have invested in italian furniture we have here for instance an italian center table and either side we have typical italian benches which also work as storage because the lid opens and it offers you plenty of storage space we also have a very nice selection of 16th century books well absolutely essential in any library but let me show you one piece that is really special today as it was then it's a book cupboard but what's so extraordinary is the fact it's not made for a public or a big library it's made for a private individual and that is rare even then i'll take you over to it i'm using my head here here as long as you're not losing your heads dear here you have a book cupboard 16th century book cupboard probably french um because of the type of hinges you can see here it is most likely to be french and not italian but you know how to tell it has a lock because books were really valuable items you had to lock away today it's been used for our collection of dvds all featuring clearly historic dramas or documentaries about tudor life it's good to see you've got a copy of the tudors in there brigitte yeah right and over here we have um something also quite um rare but not uh not original to this library it's an elisabethan coughed oak fire surround with atlantes either side and it it it definitely would have been in some uh place like a library but unfortunately it didn't come with this house i bought this many years ago but it's it looks very much at home here it certainly is a wonderful addition right and there's another one i wanted to show you if you come and follow me over here here we have a pair of true italian library chairs they are walnut walnut is very typical for italian live italian furniture and some people think it's a new chair oh no no no because underneath the cushion no hole but a nice little cupboard where you could store your books anyway i am ready to take you next door to what is now our dining room and it used to be the hole well i'm looking forward to seeing that one brigitte let's go follow me okay let's come into the dining room and um brigitte tell us something about the dining room yes as you pointed out tom we use it just as a dining hall but originally it used to be used for not just dining but also entertainment what you see here is what's left of the original pool which would have been actually bigger than this uh going all the way this way through to the other side of the house so this internal wall is actually a later addition but what's still original is this magnificent original early tudor ceiling above us and my personal favorite is actually yes apart from the ceiling is also the original oreo window which you see here on my right which gives you a beautiful look outside into the garden and especially in the morning when the sun shines in here there's no better place to have breakfast two items in here that i'd like to quickly point out because they are of interest to all tuna fans are the two chests both of them are 16th century so tudor period the one just underneath the window it dates to henry the eighth so it's earlier and the bigger one the really massive one over here with linen fold uh is slightly later and would have housed all the valuables of any noble household but in particular all the table furniture and table linen and it still has its original key there you go see it's quite big and yeah i think it's time to take you upstairs to show you one of our most magnificent rooms we have to offer indeed brigitte but just before we go i'd also like to add to what you've said and explain that in the wall there on the outside of the wall that's where we originally saw the minstrels gallery remember or the window yes indeed and just behind that wall would be that window you saw outside and the minstrel gallery leading all the way from this side of the house to that side and it is our dearest wish that we will be able to restore that minstrel gallery sometime within the next few years so we can entertain into tudor style and having our own musicians play while we are sitting down to a lovely tudor dinner i'm looking forward to that one brigitte that'll be absolutely fantastic but i think we've dwelt long enough here in the dining room uh where should we go next did you say the parlor the 1614 parlor lead on right on the way up just before we get to the pilot just point out this here this is a dog gate it's original and dates to probably around 1620 and the whole idea is to keep the hunting hounds which would have been downstairs from entering any of the upstairs living accommodation and living rooms but enough of that let's go through it and check out the parlor come on okay um this is the door into the parlor i thought we'd just stop before we actually go in here because again we have this wonderful oak door um not sure this dates all the way back to 1514 but it is certainly of that sort of age now i've brought this light to better show you some of the features on the door in particular notice the tudor rose on the one side and here you can see a heart which was the symbol or the heraldic beast if you like of the chamberlain family who built it and again notice like we did on the front door we've got the ribbon twisted that well all scrawled that way and on the other side we've got this convoluted ribbon and i say we still need to investigate the exact meaning of these but enough about the door let's head inside because as i said it's a very interesting room i think you really like this one and i know brigitte is itching to tell you about it ah hello right here we are in the great chamber or the parlor as we know it this part of the house was built in 1614 so exactly 100 years after the other side of the house this particular room was very used for all sorts of purposes including as a minorial court but the stunning thing about this room is the ceiling you've not seen a ceiling like this one let me just put some light on some of the features so we have for example flowers here we have all of this work going here including fleur de lis see various fleur-de-lis another one over there [Music] and the fiesta resistance is really this center rose here we've got figures of tudor gentlemen there you can also clearly see the hose unfortunately the head is a little bit well absent but there are other features in here which are quite fun we can't really see them too clearly here but when you come and visit we'll be able to show them to you in detail now how do we know that this room originates from 1614 well if we follow this freeze work around the side in fact let's go on the other side and follow it all the way around we can see that on this side as we get to the middle we have the date six you bought it you notice the figure with his sector and his uh scales this is it was it knows a book so it's a book of um law but let's talk to brigitte now and she'll take you through some of the items of furniture before we head into the priests room yes this room has mostly got furniture that reflects the date of this particular grand room so we are talking about the early 1600s and you can see there is a lot of chairs and benches and almost every single one i have restored and re-upholstered so many years of hard work have gone into the furniture of this particular room however i'm not just going to talk about seating furniture in here but there's one item i'm particularly fond of and it's just in front of me it's a little chest these days it's much lower than it used to be it's actually a chest from haddon hall the very famous medieval castle in derbyshire and it's lost quite a lot of its original height but it was used as a rent table so very much in keeping again with the history of this house another piece of furniture that i very very much like in here is on the other side of this room it's the lower part of an italian renaissance 16th century book cupboard whatever happened to the top we don't know but it's walnut and it's the carving in particular that is absolutely magnificent certainly gets my vote brigitte it's lovely one chair i am going to also show you is a very early example of an upholstered piece of furniture and we've got it here it dates to around 16 40 and it has its original upholstery you can see it therefore looks rather worn but in museum pieces like this you don't touch the fabric so clearly this is one of the few chairs where nobody is allowed to sit on this is a discussion point we talk about it we are allowed to touch it gently but clearly not even the cat is allowed to have a little slip on it but i think it's just very very interesting to see what original uphold wall street looked like and in my case it's very important to see how they did it in order to replicate that authentically for any other furniture certainly a very spectacular piece brigitte but now shall we go into the uh priests room which i think you've now functioned to a more modern uh functionality yes let's do that okay well lead on because it's right off this room through this uh somewhat diminutive door i'll after you brigitta okay so here we are in the priest's room now uh the room of course dates back to 1546 or the 1546 part of the building but brigitte what can you tell us about what we've got to see in this room well we clearly can see what it is it is this original tudor war painting what it shows is the tears of christ a very iconic catholic symbol and that tells us a lot about the chamberlain family yet again they seem to be backing the trend that isn't the one to go for being roman catholic in the in the 1540s was okay but it would become a real problem later on in elizabethan times because richard father richard chamber chamberlain who lived here and practiced here every day until his death in 1570 by then it would have become a bit of a problem doing something so clearly roman catholic but we don't have a priesthole here so they were proud enough to show that they were roman catholics but what we do have is a bit smaller than the priesthole but just as interesting let me show you something else is this where we'd keep the holy spirit potentially well show us then right what you can see here is an original bible box cabinet where you he would have kept his bible the chalice and anything else you needed for conducting a proper catholic mass of course the bible being in latin none of this newfangled english bible that the more protestant church would have used absolutely what i find interesting here is we all still have the vestiges of wall painting just about visible yeah yes there you go you can just still make out the stripes underneath there was it there we go the stripes here yes it's just fantastic to still have all this original part of somebody's life yes living in a museum is very exciting but it also has drawbacks like no heating in this room this room we don't have any heating anywhere in the house except for obviously open fireplaces so in the winter it gets a kind of chilly but that's when wearing this tudor woolen dress is just perfect i'm telling you the wooden doublet and hose works well too all right okay take that out again well thank you very much brigitte what should we check out now what about if i showed you my pride and joy tudor vegetable garden and our orchard just one suggestion before we go shall we take visitors into one of the bedrooms um only because you lot are so special i am going to show you my bedroom which is to die for lead on right welcome to my tutor bedroom you are indeed the very first strangers who've ever seen this so you are very privileged let me show you one of my all-time favorite chairs over here walnut so yes you know it now italian this is a rare example a rare survivor of the early types of chairs they often refer to x-frame dante chairs and there are a handful of other names but what i wanted to show you is how it works this is indeed a folding chair why would it fold well furniture in the 16th century used to be remarkably expensive even for the very rich it was a huge expense they often had more than one house especially as in the summer and the winter they would move around from one to the next house so they took their furniture with them and if you have to transport the furniture of a whole house you clearly are interested in folding furniture by the 17th century furniture just became a little bit more affordable and therefore it wasn't necessary to take the furniture with you you had enough money to equip both houses and then folding furniture became a thing of the past there is one other piece of seating furniture in here that is very dear to me not because of what it is but the way how it found me come over here it is a stool it's a little stool oak and dates to the late elizabethan h you can clearly tell by the carving down the legs now the elisabethan age is the first one ever where you are beginning to see upholstered furniture before then you had the frame the wooden frame and on top of it you had cushions so a few years before i bought this magnificent little stool on ebay i came across a piece of fabric that was labeled as vintage now one of the things i studied at university are fabrics so i looked at it and i thought that's not vintage that's a lot older and i guessed it was 17th century but as it happened i got it uh for very little money we're talking ebay vintage material and i kept it not quite knowing what to do with it as it happened on one day i went down to knoll house in seven oaks kent where at the time the national trust had uh one of their fabrics experts and i showed it to her and i said what do you think that is she was quite overwhelmed because she told me that this is indeed italian 16th century tudor age now i obviously was over the moon but what do you do with a piece of fabric that's that old that special and they were to put it so i put it away and i said to my husband at the time i shall keep that until i find a piece of furniture that needs a re-upholstery i remember that very clearly and you said to me and and how likely is it that you find a piece of furniture that needs to be upholstery that's authentic to that period and it's that small because your piece of furniture your piece of fabric wasn't exactly that big exactly and i said well you know we'll see not very likely and just as likely as winning the lottery but hey you know it's very it's very small it falls away no problem and years later i saw you know in an auction this beauty and it had no upholstery it was gone missing lost some sometime between its manufacturer and modern day and i said to my husband this is it because it had the upholstery missing all the people who usually would invest in this type of little stool weren't interested because it had the upholstery missing i think this store was waiting for me it wanted to be reunited with this fabulous piece of original silk which came from italy and would have been exactly what this little beauty would have had to start with how exciting is this absolutely anyway brigitte whilst you're standing there do you want to talk anything about the fireplace and the apotropaic marks on it oh i think i'll leave that one to you tom you are our expert anything to do with fire marks okay well i'll i'll briefly expand about that what we see on this piece of um architecture are down here these fire marks now these are not caused by somebody's errant candle these were put in on purpose they are apotropaic in function which means they are there to ward off evil in this particular case they're not witch marks as most apotropic marks are these ones are to ward off the risk of fire and in original buildings you'd often find these apotropic marks on things like these wooden lintels this one is very special because it's just got so many of them i mean look let's count them one two three four five six seven eight i mean how many more can we find moving across nine um i'm sure we can find one or two more there we go ten so we have ten fire marks on this particular piece but enough about fire marks let's now go back to brigitte because she wants to talk to you all about the exciting bed right here you stand in front of my bed but also the oldest bed we have in fact the oldest type of bed you can get it dates to henry the seventh so around 1500 either give or take either side but you cannot get a bed that's earlier than that and i am extremely fortunate to be sleeping every night in this magnificent bed when i saw this sitting in an auction in parts what drew my attention to it were these pillars because they are absolutely iconic for henry vii or the early henry the eighth you will have come across it if you follow the marriage bed of henry the seventh to elizabeth of york which i have a picture here so i knew it was early but the other part i really really enjoyed was this wonderful brilliantly carved headboard and there are some of your early more fire marks more apotropaic fire marks yes brilliant so i'm all right i'm safe right i think that's enough furniture for one go for one day i think it's time to go outside again because i can't wait to show you my recreated tudor vegetable garden and my orchard because they are so important for what we do here because as part of the 2 and 17th century experience as it says experience we take our guests back to life in 16 17th century england that means all the food that i prepare for you has been cooked two original recipes seasonal meals that means i have to with my own hands grow it and therefore it is actually very very essential to the whole concept and the same goes with my choice of fruit trees and the whole concept of having your own orchard so let's go outside and explore a little bit further right we are now standing in front of my recreated tudor vegetable and herb garden and we've built it in the most authentic way possible by using fence panels like this woven and those are then surrounded by hawthorne having spikes prevents any animals trying to push through the fence panels shall we go in and have a quick look around let's see what's right and ready for harvest i believe there's a pottage to be made [Music] [Music] right here we are in my orchard behind me you see the inherited orchard which probably dates to around 1900 and supplies me with a nice healthy crop of apples pears plums but what it's really all about is this orchard in front of me because this orchard has now got over 50 different varieties each one dates or was mentioned before 1700 and it's mostly apples and pears plums and some cherries medler quince and hazelnuts i am lucky enough to be able to show you my very first ancient apple right next to me here it is it is a costart and this apple has been mentioned for the very first time in 1265. so it's a very rare very early apple and i can't wait to have a bite into this one but it's not quite ready yet what's almost ready are my very first crop of ancient pear i'll lead you to my ancient pear now which is quite interesting because it doesn't look much like a pear but that's so typical you see we associate pear with a pear shaped fruit look at this one okay some wasps have been nibbling at it already good sign it means it's nice and sweet but they don't look anything like a pear from the outside they are very round and it's only the leaf that would give it away that indeed we are dealing here with a pear this pear comes from an ancient orchard in caldecott which is in southern england where it's been taken from a tree that is a good for 500 years old and this one is ready any day so i can't wait anyway i'm afraid we've come to the end of our tour for today however we will be absolutely over the moon and delighted and excited if we could welcome one of you or more at some stage the next time you come to england we are in norfolk about 20 minutes south of norwich but we are even happy to come and pick you up from any airport you would always be able to tell us from a distance because we actually turn up at the airport looking like we do today you can imagine lots of people taking pictures of but it works anyway i hope you enjoyed our video and hopefully one day we can see you in person okay well that's it from us um i hope you've enjoyed this uh brief video introduction uh to our house to our home to our garden to our orchard and business and definitely business and we're certainly well looking forward to welcoming you here as our guests [Music] you

Channel: Kathryn Holeman

Views: 12,474

Rating: 4.9285712 out of 5

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Id: 1ocH_n8JutM

Length: 45min 37sec (2737 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 17 2020