I ahve some more pics of the stitching at Tatton to share with you. There are also some more pics of the armour and battle.

Stitching first! The Old Hall was occupied continuously from the 15th Century so the display reflect this as various rooms are decorated in period style. Upstairs all the earlier rooms have been restored and this room is typical of the Jacobean period complete with reproduction crewel work bed curtains.

This is a typical tree of life design and is beautifully worked. The volunteer looking after the room didn’t know anything about crewel work so I was telling him about various aspects of the design – hopefully he found it useful!

Downstairs there were Victorian rooms with some beautiful whitework laid out on one of the beds.

I find it incredible that such fine work was done on everyday garments – one of the items on display was a child’s pinafore which had obviously been well used judging by the stains on it!

We also watched the firearms and cannon display by The Company of Ordnance, there are usually these weapons on the battlefield but we are the other side of the field from them for safety reasons during the battle so it is nice to see them close up.

This is Bucket lighting the cannon – pity we don’t have sound cos it’s very loud! Bucket is a very talented embroiderer as well as making things go bang – you can just see the blue bag hanging from his belt with a heraldic horse on it.

Esme, one the kids, was taking pics on the Sun so we got some really good photos. Here is one of the guys all ready for battle.

 I think this is a great shot – very atmospheric!

 Hope you all have a good week!