Starting May 2017, we will be able to accept credit and debit card payments (chip+pin, contactless and magnetic strip) when you meet us in person at fairs and markets. Do make use of this where possible, the limiting factor will be the availability of WiFi or 3g / 4g signal. Please bear with us if this is not available in some more rural events.
Salisbury Museum Archaeology Festival, Hampshire, 23rd – 24th July
As always, a brilliantly organised and very well attended event.
Chalke Valley, Wiltshire
Large multi-period festival with many expert speakers and living history encampments from the Bronze age to WWII. Held in a beautiful bowl valley of rural chalk downland with some fantastic wildlife.
Lovely to see so many dedicated reenactors from so many different periods in history. One of the charms of Chalke Valley is the unusual combinations of people from different times interacting – Romans, Vikings, Tudor and WWI soldiers conversing while a Spitfre flys overhead. The kindness and co-operation between the participants was particulaly overwhelming this year. We had several offers of assistance to move our tent, stock, etc. and many sympathetic conversations about the ankle-deep mud in our area of the site!
Unfortunately we were unable to stay for the second day, as the mud and flooding in our area of the site had become unmanageable. Luckily our wools and tents survived!
Chalke Valley History Festival
Great to be back at Ufton. A successful day with many colours dyed and lots of weaving on the Iron Age warp-weighted loom. We also placed some little looms outside, resulting in spontaneous weaving!
The willow longship was growing very successfully and is clearly well used. It is fitting in well within the new living history area.
http://www.uftoncourt.co.uk/index.php/40-front-page-news/303-family-open-day
A lovely one-day local event for us, with plenty of crafty activities for families, including Martin Way, a brilliant re-enactor. Everyone we met, visitors, staff and volunteers alike were very interested in our demonstrations and extremely helpful.
To celebrate the new Wessex Gallery, the Salisbury Museum held a day of events for the public. We had a wonderful spot on the front lawn, which was great for displaying our rainbow of natural dyes – especiually as it was a very good dyeing day, with many of the colours working better than expected. It was great to be able to show how loom weights and spindle whorls are used, as there were archaeological examples of them in the new gallery.
Wood is a wonderful first festival of the season. Small, family-friendly and very varied, they’re always very kind to us.
With spinning and weaving in the mornings and dyeing in the afternoons, we had a busy time. A lot of interested spinners and many children who mastered weaving on both the modern and Iron Age looms in a suprisingly short length of time! Weaving seems to have the power to transfix many children, and some returned to our workshops both days to get as much weaving done as they could!
The dyeing demonstrations and workshops were especially popular this year, many people got an opportunity to be on the our side of the rope and dye some wool themselves. We also dyed the new range of silk scarves, which will be on sale soon!
Our second yule fair at Braziers. The community was very welcoming and the atmosphere was very festive. Our new sock colours and cards were especially popular.
A delightfully friendly craft fair in the most wonderful of settings – the galleries of the museum itself. This fair was ideal for the early christmas shopper, and had some brilliant local craftspeople displaying and selling their work. We look forward to being involved with the museum more in the future, after their redevelopment.
http://www.reading.ac.uk/merl/whatson/merl-tradcraftfair2013.aspx
A gloriously sunny day which brought in over 2500 visitors on a single day! Everyone was fascinated by the dyeing and the Iron Age loom, we were most impressed when people weren’t misled by us being dressed in Tudor costume and the loom being Iron Age. It was very interesting to see the house, especially the priest holes.
