Hello and welcome to the National Trust podcast. In this mini episode get ready to transport yourself back to the 18th century with your guides, Gwen Irving and Alex Morgan at Wordsworth House and Garden.
If you come in as a visitor, you can walk into this house, you can feel like you're actually stepping back into the 1770s. I'm Alex Morgan and I'm the interpretation and communications manager here at Wordsworth House and Garden, the birthplace and childhood home of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. In a lot of rooms, you can touch things. You will see real food
on the tables, not fake food. You will see clothes that might have belonged to the Wordsworth's lying around, the books left open, the toys left lying around. So hopefully, what you get is a feeling that the Wordsworth are just not very far away. They've just wandered out of the room, but if you go into the next room, you might meet them. So let's go through to the kitchen, which really was, I think the heart of the home and we'll see what we can see in there.
We've got a cook, preparing something at this huge range. Oh, my goodness! Oh! Forgive me, I thought you were a mannequin.
It happens a lot. It happens a lot. Usually if we're leaning over the fire cooking, somebody comes in and you often don't hear them because you're concentrating. We just get on with what we're doing. We do our cooking. If people happen to come in when we're doing it, then, that's lovely. They see the ingredients, they see the recipes we're using. They see us burning things! Well, me anyway, usually! And it's more informal. We're trying to give people an experience.
Is your name, Amy, the cook?
Well-
Who was the cook in Wordsworth's time? [ Cross-talk] the maid of all work. [
Cross-talk] The Wordworth's were only middle class, middling sorts. So they couldn't afford to have a housekeeper and a cook and a maid and everything. So they had a maid of all work and that title described exactly what she had to do everything, cooking, cleaning, helping with the laundry. Looking after the children, 16 to 18 hour day.
My goodness I bet! Now look, what sort of things would have been cooked here?
We do a very nice beetroot pancake which some people turn their nose up at when we first mentioned it. But when we say that it has in it, cream and nutmeg and brandy, then they tend to think it sounds rather nice.
Is that something Wordsworth would have had?
All our recipes are from 18th century cookery books.
What was the staple diet?
One of the staple things that we had was clap bread. It's made with oatmeal. This is where you grind the oatmeal. This is where we get the expression, the daily grind. And when you've made your dough, you obviously pull a piece off it, flatten it on a floured board to start with in the normal way, perhaps with a rolling pin, etc. But then the final bit is you have to pick it up and flatten
it like that. Clapping it between your hands and the nice thing about that is we get people from all over the world coming and they say, oh yes, we have that. This is what we like. It brings it to life. It sounds like a real kitchen in action is like a real kitchen in action. But unfortunately, we're also very grubby, very unhygienic. We wash up with tallow soap, which yes, which is disgusting. So we can't let people eat.
So, what we do is we tastings for people and it's usually Kendal gingerbread or rum butter on a bit of oatcake to represent the clap bread.
It's sort of beyond experimental archaeology, isn't it? You're not only recreating the look and the smell and the utility and the use but sort of living the life from plot to plate it is really?
Yes, we thought you might like to have a little go.
Where are you taking me?
Down to the cellar!
Down to the cellar? Yes. Sort of a store room and preparation room?
That's right. Yes. It was a store room as you can feel it's pretty cold. What we thought we would make is some Syllabubs. And these are our silver glasses.
What other things have we got here? We got a whisk that seems to be made of little bits of wood like willow or something.
Birch.
Birch?
Birch. It's a birch twig whisk.
Yes.
It's absolutely brilliant. It works really well.
Prove it!
Well, I think you're going to prove it!
I hoped you weren't going to say that.
Pour the wine into the Syllabub glasses and it just needs a small amount.
I think we just stop here! We can take the afternoon off and just drink that!
And then you've got your cream there.
Ok. Look it is, it's going!
Right. Now the difficult bit, this is where you have to put the cream in so that it just settles on top of the wine.
I don't think that is going to pass muster at a polite meal. I think I'd get the sack for that. Do you think?
Possibly, Yes! So the house is open again from the 10th of March right through to the end of October. There are costume servants here. During term time they're just here on a Wednesday and a Saturday. But in school holidays, there's servants in every day that we're open. The only day we close is a Friday. So if people would like to come in and join us here at Wordsworth House, hopefully we can give them a really lovely experience. Something that they'll always remember.
Thanks for listening to this mini episode. I'll be in Agatha Christie's Devonshire retreat the week after next, but next week, there'll be another short mini episode where we'll hear how Wordsworth's Home, Allen Bank, continues to offer inspiration to today's creative minds. So until then from me, James Grasby, goodbye.