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How do I create 16th century English music?

  • Take two small pipes and a hurdy-gurdy

  • Sing 198 songs, carols and hymns until you find just the right ones!

How do I create a character for you? It’s all in the detail. 

​Sewing the clothes takes...

  • 15 metres of woven wool and linen

  • One kilometre of sewing thread

  • 5 books of historical clothing patterns and 20 flipchart pages of squared paper

  • 1 sewing machine – 110 years old!

  • Two pairs of hand-stitched leather shoes

  • One pair of wooden clogs

  • 6 metres of whalebone (actually steel and pvc) in the corsets and hooped petticoats

  • Three sisters, helping to sew sleeves in and take them out again SIX times!

To cut quill pens, make ink and all the other bits and pieces:

  • 12 books on calligraphy

  • 20 goose feathers

  • Gum tragacanth, heelball, pewter, beeswax, bone, oak gall, borax, lavender, sheep-gut (yes, really) and lead​

Finding the back-story 

  • Two years of research and two archives

  • 20 patient professors, librarians and historians 

  • 63 enthusiastic tour guide colleagues

  • Three National Trust properties

  • An alchemist

  • Two national libraries; 32 manuscript letters and bonds from over 400 years ago

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