President Lynne Tuckley welcomed over 80 Soroptimists and their guests to their December Christmas Celebration when they were entertained by Master Henry. Alan Rawlins is a steward at Little Moreton Hall, a National Trust property in Cheshire, being a member of the education team. Little Moreton Hall demonstrates Tudor life for the majority of the population at the time – the poor people – rather than the Royals and the gentry of the period. We are all familiar with the way the rich dressed and behaved; Alan, as Master Henry, dressed in the clothing of a Tudor peasant, gave us a taste of life experienced by over 95% of people in Tudor Britain.
Master Henry was both entertaining and informative: he told how much information has been gleaned from wills which was when all possessions had to be checked. If someone left their ‘best belt’ then they must have had more than one belt, so were doing quite well. The population increased and decreased dramatically because of plague and also because of bad harvests which caused hundreds of thousands to starve to death. Eating habits varied tremendously depending on your station in life: Royalty would enjoy 14 courses at meal time; Nobles would have between 8 and 12 courses whilst the poor had just the one course – of pottage! Each person would make his own wooden plate, which was square [hence the term “a square meal”] as well as their own knife and spoon. The average life expectancy for a man was his mid thirties and for a woman her early thirties.
The poor had just one set of clothing; and there were a range of laws stating exactly what they could and could not wear. The poor were allowed to wear only wool, linen or leather and any colours could come only from the hedgerow, thus it was only the rich who wore red, it was a colour forbidden to the poor.
A ‘volunteer’ was chosen to demonstrate the clothing for a poor woman of the Tudor era and ‘Mistress Trish’ was dressed in the linen petticoat, bustle, corset, overdress, jacket and bed hat and bonnet of the time. The bed hat was worn to protect the head from bugs as they slept on mattresses of straw. She was excused from wearing the shoes – both were exactly the same shape, no right and left, and incredibly uncomfortable!
Vice president Sue Cartlidge gave the vote of thanks which was fully endorsed by everyone there!