Monthly Archives: December 2009
A wonderful Xmas at Swarkestone Pavilion
A wonderful Xmas at Swarkestone Pavilion, built in the 1630s for William Cavendish’s step-daughter Cate, and probably designed by John Smithson. I first visited years ago,while researching my PhD on dear old Smithson. This visit I spent my time devouring biographies of Alan Clark, James Lees-Milne, and France Partridge. The state of my belly suggests that I might have devoured some Xmas
Continue ReadingIf Walls Could Talk
I’ve been cold, tired and hungry for most of December, but I’ve also been having a glorious time. For the ‘If Walls Could Talk’ series, I’ve been down a Victorian sewer, spent the night in a Tudor bed, worn eighteenth-century underwear in public, cooked eight Tudor chickens on a spit and done a load of Tudor laundry using urine
Continue ReadingI was watched getting dressed
Today we filmed a scene about the public dressing of Queen Caroline by her Mistress of the Robes, Lady of the Bedchamber, Woman of the Bedchamber, Dresser and Page. I was poor old Caroline, shivering in my linen shift in the Queen’s Bedchamber at Hampton Court, and the Mistress, Women, Lady, etc., were played by my
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