In 2015 we developed a small area at the back of our Tudor garden in order to plant some old varieties of apple tree, which you can read about here. Nine years later and the trees are looking good and have become established enough to produce quite a few apples this year. As it’s Halloween, perhaps we might try the traditional game of apple-bobbing!
Thanks to all our volunteers who maintain our lovely garden.
Anyone who has been following our updates for a while may recall that a number of years ago we featured the planting of some heritage variety apple trees at the site. This October 31st marks five years since the trees went in!
The apple trees are all English heritage varieties, at least one of which pre-dates the existence of the Weaver’s House itself:
Old Pearmain, the earliest recorded English apple, existing before 1200AD.
Wyken Pippen, which has a Coventry connection. It is thought that Lord Craven took a pip from an apple brought back from Holland or France and planted it at Wyken.
Leathercoat Russet, this apple was once widely grown and referred to by Shakespeare in Henry IV.
English Codlin, a cooking apple which as its name suggests requires only gentle ‘coddling’ to soften.
And since the original trees went in, we have added Lemon Pippin, a very old apple, thought to be English or Norman, in existence before 1685. It is an oval fruit, with lemon yellow skin and flesh often covering the stalk, giving it the same shape as a lemon. It has crisp, sweet flesh with a slight tang. It was dried as well as being cooked.
Apples trees take a few years to produce anything much of a crop, so it was exciting to see a good amount of fruit on the trees in early October. However – a mere few days later, all the apples were gone, and the single chomped fruit pictured was the only sign that there had been any at all!
Perhaps some New Year wassailing will bring everyone better fortunes in 2021.
“Gardening is a way of showing that you believe in tomorrow.” Anon
The first Weaver’s House Open Day this year saw the house spring to life on a sunny if slightly chilly April morning. Visitors were impressed and appreciative of the restoration project and the extra activities provided by our volunteers. There were tours and talks, special Easter themed cakes, a spinning demonstration and an exhibition of dyes and samples. Younger visitors enjoyed an Easter trail, crafts and colouring.
Our garden is well and truly coming to life now spring is here, and the heritage apple trees which we put in a few years ago are in blossom.
With visitor comments on the knowledge, enthusiasm and welcoming approach of the volunteers, it was a shining start to the season!
In just a few weeks, the next Open Day will be part of the May Day weekend. Special guest reenactor group Coventry Militia will bring history to life on site, demonstrating arms and armour of the War of the Roses. There will also be some late medieval tabletop games to try, and as this was the period when the royal court was held in Coventry, visitors can find out about the importance of the city during this period.
This one-off event will be on Sunday 5 May, running from 11am until 4pm. You can also keep up with the latest from The Weaver’s House on Facebook and Twitter. Come and say hello!
According to Wikipedia, the tradition of wassailing ‘falls into two distinct categories: The house-visiting and the orchard-visiting wassail.’
The first involves going door-to-door, singing and offering a drink in exchange for gifts, a practice mostly now overtaken by carol-singing. The orchard-visiting tradition features reciting incantations and singing to the trees to encourage a good harvest. So possibly we should be gathering in the garden of The Weaver’s House to serenade our apple trees.
Wassailing is part of the Twelfth Night tradition (either 5th or 6th January). The word ‘wassail’ originates from the Anglo-Saxon words ‘waes hael’ which mean ‘good health’.
The wassail was a drink made of mulled ale, curdled cream, roasted apples, eggs, cloves, ginger, nutmeg and sugar, which sounds like a good start for getting some singing going!
You can read more about the origins and find a recipe at this informative site.
Once fortified by your wassail, take inspiration from Steeleye Span’s version of the Gower Wassail, and also linked below, a traditional wassail in Coventry from a few years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2tF44lvGno
Happy New Year and waes hael to you! We hope you’ll join us for one of our Open Days this year.
Barker’s Wassail 2013 from Kenswick ©muffinn on Flickr under Creative Commons licence
January is a quiet time at The Weaver’s House – our Open Day season is still several months away and the garden is for the most part effectively dormant.
We were delighted to welcome a group of learners from the WEA (Workers Education Association) recently for a tour of the house. The small group was greeted by volunteers Adrian and Tina who provided mugs of vegetable soup as it was a particularly chilly day. Not a million miles from the potage that medieval residents of the house would have eaten…
The group comprised people from across the globe so there was an opportunity to compare historical life in different countries with the medieval life represented in the house.
The group were able to examine replica objects in the house as well as features from the house’s original construction.
Although the day was cold, it followed some unseasonably mild weather so we had an additional and unexpected visitor to the garden in the form of a very early flowering Feverfew.
It won’t be long before the garden comes well and truly back to life and the gardening volunteers’ work will begin again. The apple trees planted the previous October have weathered the winter despite some extremely wet and windy days.
Find out how to organise a tour for your group.
The Gardening group met on 31 October to plant some new additions to the garden – four apple trees. The apple trees are all English heritage varieties, at least one of which pre-dates the existence of the Weaver’s House itself:
Old Pearmain, which is the earliest recorded English apple, existing before 1200AD.
Wyken Pippen, which has been selected for its Coventry connection. It is thought that Lord Craven took a pip from an apple brought back from Holland or France and then planted it at Wyken.
Leathercoat Russet, this apple was once widely grown in Britain, and is referred to by Shakespeare in Henry IV.
English Codlin, a cooking apple which as its name suggests requires only gentle ‘coddling’ to soften.
The planting of these trees was the culmination of months of research and hard work led by gardening volunteer Margaret. It took place on a beautiful autumn morning, unseasonably warm and sunny for Halloween. There was a concern that the planting had hit a literal stumbling block with the discovery of a hefty piece of wood buried right along the bed earmarked for the trees. However this was quickly excavated and the trees were planted starting with the newest variety, Wyken Pippin and completed with Old Pearmain.
The fruit trees were supplied by Bernwode Fruit Trees.
