[MR] Weald & Downland Museum Clothing Project

[Garth Groff and Sally Sanford]

Noble Friends,

Today I want to share a resource that is outside my usual (and currently
rather dry) summaries from Wikipedia, The History Blog and the BBC.

While looking for source material about historic horse-drawn vehicles for a
non-SCA project, I was led to the Weald & Downland Museum in Sussex. This
is a fascinating living history museum, which has collected and preserved
historic buildings from the middle ages to the 19th century (or so), and is
staffed by docents who recreate domestic life and crafts from those
periods. Lady Sarah and I visited the W&D back in 2005, but sadly had only
time to see a small part of it. The Weald & Download is very much like the
Museum of Frontier Culture in Staunton, Virginia, but on steroids.

The museum's web site is https://www.wealddown.co.uk .

I happened to click on the "Discover" link on the home page, and found some
wonderful resources. In particular I went to the clothing section and
viewed a really interesting (and very professional) 9-minute documentary on
how their docents research and create period clothing. Much of what is
shown in the film is 17th century, but the methods seem relevant to SCA
garb. I was particularly interested to learn that their lead researchers
found surviving court records in cases where clothing had been stolen to be
a goldmine of information. Thus one of their docents was provided with
green stockings as mentioned in a particular case.

Here's a link to the video:
https://www.wealddown.co.uk/discover/domestic-life/clothing/ . You will
have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the video.

There are lots of other topics to explore under the "Discover" link,
including architecture. I was unable to make any of the 3-D interior tours
work, but that may be because our computer is now rather behind the times.
In any case, there are all sorts of fascinating text articles and lots of
photos, and many of them concern life during the late middle ages.

Enjoy your explorations.

Yours Aye,


Lord Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge  🦆