The Weaver's House

Tag: Tudor

  • Medieval tunes in June

    Medieval tunes in June

    The Weaver’s House hosted special guests for an Open Day that whisked audiences back in time via English music history. The Sherbourne String Quartet featured a selection of pieces that spanned several centuries from the Tudor era until the present day. This music was a backdrop to the usual Open Day activities, with the opportunity for people to sit and listen inside, or hear the music as they enjoyed the garden.

    The next Open Day is on Saturday 12th July when Coventry Woodcarvers will be on site to show off their skills. As usual admission is free, and the site will be open from 10am until 4pm. Following that the house will be open for only three more days this year!

  • Medieval Music in the Garden at August Open Day

    Medieval Music in the Garden at August Open Day




    The next Open Day is Saturday 10th August (10am – 4pm) when the Sherbourne String Quartet will be playing a selection of medieval and baroque music at various points throughout the day.  The group’s performance will be alternated with Weaver’s House trustee Jennifer Waters playing music of the period on the recorder. This will be the final chance this year to see the ‘solar’ the upstairs part of the house containing the replica loom.

    UPDATE: 3 August – the musical element of this Open Day has been postponed.

  • Flashback to fifteen years ago

    Flashback to fifteen years ago

    Fifteen years ago today The Weaver’s House was looking rather different (although it was well on the way to restoration). Here’s some photos from then and now.

    Left, The Weaver’s House in 2007, and right, in May 2022

    Some more photos of the garden site before we added all the beds and the wooden shelter at the top of the garden, and the view in 2022.

    Still a building site but it will become a medieval garden
    a blue sky above visitors in the garden
    Visitors in the garden

    Below, the garden as it appears today.

    A lot of leftover building materials
    a sunlit garden, raised beds of soil, a medieval cottage
    The raised beds ready for growing

    If you would like to come and see the transformed site for yourself, we have regular Open Days.

  • Gardening update – October 2020

    Gardening update – October 2020

    A man digs over a garden bed
    Volunteer Kevin digs over one of the herb beds.

     

    A strange year indeed, which has seen us open precisely zero times.

    However, the garden does not know this and it has required the usual amount of work to keep it in order. It ran rather wild with all the sun and rain but thanks to volunteers including Tina and Kevin, it’s now looking in good shape.

    plant label and leaves - Marsh Mallow
    Marsh Mallow – nothing like the pink and white sweets!

    Lavender - one last flower remains
    The last lavender flower in the garden.

    a few green leaves left in October
    A few green herbs including lemon balm.

    teasels against a blue sky
    A bright October day.

    sunlight and shadows in the garden, empty veg beds
    The garden looking much tidier ready for next year.

    Huge thanks to our volunteers for getting stuck in and doing a lot of hard work to get the garden sorted.

  • We came, we saw, we gardened…

    We came, we saw, we gardened…

     

     

    We were fortunate to be given funding from #CelebrateNationalLottery25 to buy some much needed items to improve our garden. To celebrate, we held an all-welcome gardening day with the aim of tidying the garden, planting trees and installing our new woven fencing panels.

    We were joined by some new volunteers as well as some regulars, and all worked hard in both the house and the garden, as we had to dodge the raindrops a few times. We did, however, make significant headway with the overgrown gardens, planted a medlar and a hazel tree, transformed the fence into a Medieval marvel and left the site looking markedly better than when we arrived.

    We even had a flying visit from BBC radio on the hunt for clues for their Gold & Treasure feature!

    All in all a satisfying day which has seen the garden metamorphosed into a much more Tudoresque state.

    Showing off our new lovely garden features should have been the focus of our upcoming April Open Day, but due to the Covid-19 outbreak, we have taken the decision to cancel both that and the May Open Day.

    This is very disappointing of course, but we must put the welfare of our volunteers and visitors first. We look forward to welcoming you all again in the future.

  • That was 2019 at The Weaver’s House

    That was 2019 at The Weaver’s House

    What a busy year it has been for The Weaver’s House. This is the first year that we have had a special theme for every Open Day. Let’s take a whistle-stop tour…

    It doesn’t seem a blink of an eye since we began the open season with Signs of Spring, on a sunny April day. A few weeks later, we had an extremely memorable day as reenactor group Coventry Militia brought expertise, costumes and weaponry for an authentic historical experience and some exciting medieval action! We are hoping they will join us for a future Open Day.

    June and July delved into delicacies and dirt respectively, with Open Days on Tudor cooking and an archaeological dig. The Tudor recipes included Pease Pottage which visitors sampled on tiny trenchers (bread plates), and mostly declared that it was better than they expected! Coventry And District Archaeological Society (CADAS) ran the on-site dig for July, which unearthed finds including medieval pottery and later dated items such as glass, animal bones and pipe bowl/stem.

    August brought a day of Summer Fun in the Garden. Young visitors enjoyed making woolly snails, weaving and “rub-a-bug” a brass rubbing style activity, featuring mini-beasts.

    Before we knew it, it was September, and the annual festival of Heritage Open Days, this year celebrating its 25th anniversary. Back in the 90s it was just a single day. It runs across nearly two weeks now, and we opened for both weekends.

    This year, the first Saturday coincided with the Spon Spun Arts and Heritage Trail, with the house hosting artwork by Karen Rose Textiles, marking the connection between weaving and the nearby river Sherbourne. This work is currently displayed at the Healing Arts Gallery at University Hospital Coventry & Warwickshire. During the second weekend, we celebrated the centenary of the birth of previous resident, Sid O’ Neil, with his descendants. Of course, we had cake!

    Thanks to the skills of the Weavers’ Workshop, throughout September the window of The Weaver’s House was turned gold, along with most of Earlsdon, in tribute to Ben Crowther.

    Although Open Day season ended in September, the house was open in October and November this year for Coventry Biennial. Three artworks were brought together to explore weaving as a historic and contemporary practice which is undertaken in almost every community across the globe. The exhibition closed in late November, ending our public openings for this year.

    We also had some private groups in of course, including the Design Nation project and visitors with ancestors connected to the area.

    What a busy year! We have next year’s dates in the diary and once we have finalised a few details, we’ll be listing them here very soon! We always welcome new volunteers, so if you have an interest in heritage, Coventry history, gardening or would just like to get involved, find out more here.

  • Heritage Days are here again…

    Heritage Days are here again…

     

     

    Well, almost! It’s now August, and that’s Heritage Open Days Eve in our book!

    We’ll be open for both weekends of the national festival, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Do you remember the early days of the festival, and the first venues you visited?

    You can visit us on:

    Saturday 14 September (on this day, we’ll also host the Arts Trail, see details if you are visiting)

    Sunday 15 September

    Saturday 21 September

    Sunday 22 September

    All opening times are 10am until 4pm, recommended last entry time 3.30pm. Admission is free!

    Tea, coffee and homemade cakes are served on Open Days.

    Find out how a Coventry narrow-loom weaver and his family would have lived and worked in the 1540s. Discover the history of this medieval building and how it was rescued from demolition by a group of local residents. Explore the working medieval garden showing the plants that would have been grown for food, flavouring, medicine and household use.

    Please note there is no entry to the solar, the room containing the loom on Heritage Open Days. If you miss our August Open Day and therefore the last chance to see the loom, you could always book onto a private group tour.

     

     

  • Making a meal of Open Days

    Making a meal of Open Days

    “The rain it raineth every day”.

    Oh and hasn’t it just? June has had a distinctly autumnal feel so far, although on the upside, the garden is looking fantastic! Medieval buildings are often pleasantly cool during the summer months but it certainly can be chilly when it’s cold.

    We were therefore surprised, and pleased, to see so many visitors considering how dire the weather had been all week. Looking at the forecast we had resigned ourselves to the fact that we might just be on our own huddled around a vat of pease pottage in an effort to keep warm.

    Speaking of the pottage, it went down incredibly well with most tasters saying that they enjoyed it… or that it wasn’t as bad as they had feared it would be! One visitor enjoyed it so much that, after several samples, he claimed to be off home to make some.  If you were that visitor, we’d love to hear how it turned out!

    We served the pease pottage on a traditional medieval trencher – basically a plate made of bread – in rather non medieval style mini-trenchers. Perhaps it will catch on and pease pottage vol-au-vents will be sweeping the nation by Christmas.

    Of course, our usual delicious homemade cakes were available in the tea room for anyone who was not enamoured of the idea of pottage!

    We also had an insight into the fascinating rules of Tudor table manners.  Our volunteers set this up as a game, a taste of which is below.

    A few comments from the visitors book illustrate the enthusiasm with which the day was received:

    “So interesting and inspiring. Wonderful volunteers, wonderful cake!”
    “Very well done especially the pease pudding and the strawberry chocolate
    cake. An unexpected gem.”
    “Very interesting. Have wondered about these buildings for years. Great to
    hear some fascinating facts.”

    It was very heartening to see that the rain did not stop play with other great events across Coventry, including a Wellbeing event at the Herbert, including the Weavers’ Workshop, and Positive Images Festival. Heritage and culture fans seems to be a hardy bunch!

    Our next Open Day is in July when we’ll have all the usual tours and refreshments, and we’ll have some added archaeological interest thanks to CADAS (Coventry and District Archaeological Society). Do join us on Sunday 21 July from 11am until 4pm.

     

  • Medieval Meals Open Day this June

    Medieval Meals Open Day this June

    What did people eat in medieval times? Our upcoming Open Day on Saturday 15 June will include delving into the delicacies of the Tudor table. Delicious or disgusting? It’s time to find out!

    We’ll also have our usual tours of the house, and the garden will be looking lovely. As ever, our fantastic volunteers will have been baking and there will be some homemade cakes to savour – these definitely fall into the delicious category.

    So do pop along and find out what a trencher is, and all about pease pudding, made famous by the nursery rhyme.

    We’ll be open from 11am until 4pm and admission is free.

     

    Please note there are no spinning demonstrations this time, the spinners will return in August!

  • The merry merry Open Day of May

    The merry merry Open Day of May

    A fantastic turnout for our ‘Old May Day and Crafts’ Open Day, with a steady stream of visitors – from even before the doors officially opened until they finally closed at 4pm.

    We squeezed as many guest stalls as possible in throughout the house and garden, welcoming return craftspeople from Warwickshire Craft Circle alongside new guests from Quite Contrary Baskets and Byatt’s Brewery.

    Visitors were invited to enjoy a free sample of Byatt’s Urban Red, the patterns on the label of which pays tribute to Coventry’s textile heritage. A taste of the city’s culinary past was also on offer in the triangular form of Coventry Godcakes. Of course, the usual delicious array of homemade cakes supplied by our volunteers was also available and completely demolished by the end of the day!

    Younger visitors enjoyed the challenge of a trail all about growth in springtime, and making flowers to decorate the cabbage tree ‘maypole’. All ages enjoyed playing the Tudor games introduced on our previous Open Day, skittles and Nine Men’s Morris.

    a cabbage grown to tree height decorated with paper flowers

    A fine day meant that the garden was used to full advantage. Mary from Quite Contrary Baskets demonstrated the art of willow weaving, with beautiful and complex structures made from this simple material.

    Guest woodcarver Peterson arrived with a large chunk of timber which visitors who lingered at the house were able to see carefully being transformed into a carved owl during the day.

    Meanwhile inside The Weaver’s House itself, textiles expert Jane was on hand to discuss the art of patchworking, alongside the Weavers’ Workshop who made progress on the tenth anniversary weaving project.

    The next Open Day is on Saturday 10 June, which will see full steam ahead on the anniversary weaving project with a piece of cloth being created by weavers and visitors throughout the year. Pop along and have a go and weave yourself into the history of The Weaver’s House!

    Find out more about our special guests:

    Jane Cobbett, textiles
    Peterson Cobbett, woodcarver
    Quite Contrary Baskets
    Byatt’s Brewery

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