I have some brand new leather hand-plaited bag/purse decorations inspired by the brilliant cultures of Celtic and Viking. These are part of my new range of historically inspired jewellery and accessories and these will be introduced to you soon. In the meantime, these are already up on my Etsy shop, and retail at £14 – £16.
If
you love Christmas you will be all excited by my next topic, and if
you aren’t, you might want to find somewhere safe to gibber quietly
until I’ve gone away again.
Did you know there are only 35 days until Christmas? Yeah… 35. You’re glad you popped in now, aren’t you?
With
this revelation in mind, here are my last ordering dates for
Christmas:
Monday,
December 16 for
UK first class mail
The
rest of the world using the International Standard (formerly known
as Airmail) service the dates are:
Saturday,
December 7 for
Eastern Europe, Australia and New Zealand
Tuesday,
December 10 for Canada
and USA
Thursday,
December 12 for
Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Portugal, Netherlands, Norway,
Switzerland,Spain, Belgium, France, Ireland and Luxembourg
I will be closing for Christmas after my last date for UK orders (Monday December 16) and will reopen again after Christmas – usually Boxing Day. (December 26)
Right
then. Lets have some fun links now, shall we?
Have you ever wondered what is the most expensive piece of jewellery ever? Here are the top 7
If
you like your history hands-on, this could be the place for you.
Situated
about 5 miles south of Petersfield in Hampshire, England, Butser is
an open air museum, a ‘living history’ experiment, that tries to
re-create the bygone ways of life. It now has reconstructions of
ancient homes from the stone age and includes Iron Age and Anglos
Saxon dwellings, as well a Roman villa, all of which you can wander
around.
Butser
was originally funded
in 1970 by the Council
for British Archaeology,
and
was intended as a working archaeology experiment to learn more about
the old ways of life, and to test theories on agriculture and
domestic economy. Butser now has a number of rare breeds on site,
such as Manx Loaghtan sheep from the Iron Age and Soay sheep from
Scotland and these are said to be be typical of the sheep around in
the Bronze Age and early Iron Age. These are very independent animals
that cannot be worked by sheepdogs. Butser also has goats and,
sometimes, pigs, although these are more seasonal to the site.
Apparently the Celts regarded pigs in very high regard.
The
site is open to the public most of the year, but check for times as
the winter season has shorter hours. Butser gets a lot of school
parties, and on occasion they do hire the venue out – not
surprisingly a lot of filming has taken place here – and at certain
times they run workshops and courses for visitors. Sadly there was
none of these in operation when we visited, which was a little
disappointing.
However,
this made no difference to our enjoyment of the day. We visited on a
glorious summer day – there was a school party but they didn’t
really bother us and it was otherwise fairly quiet. It was quite
amusing to watch the children encounter the various unfamiliar
animals and dwellings, and in predictable child humour the outside
loo created lots of ribald hilarity!
My
favourite was the Saxon Longhouse, based on excavations of an
Anglo-Saxon settlement found in the nearby village of Chalton. The
archaeology discovered a large rectangular structure with opposing
doors in the middle of the long sides of a dividing interior wall.
The structure made at Butser is primarily of English oak, sweet
chestnut and hazel, and has a thatched roof.
The
building was really cosy inside, with an open fire on the left hand
side when entering, and with benches huddled around on three sides.
We were told that Butser sometimes has evenings with the public where
everyone gathers here and tells stories. That sounded like huge fun
and we were sad to have missed that – we would be tempted to go
back to the village just to take part!
The
work on all the buildings is ongoing, and we particularly noticed
this at the villa. This was the first Roman villa to be built with
authentic materials and techniques for over 1,600 years. Work on the
floors began in 2017 and when we visited, they were installing a real
mosaic floor. It looked intricate and fiddly and I’m sure it will be
beautiful when its finished, and the process looked fascinating.
Apparently Butser has its own Roman re-enactment society, and this
makes the perfect headquarters for them!
All in all it was a really enjoyable day, and although the village was smaller than we’d expected, it was still really worth the journey to see it. I had hoped for more insight into the fashions and jewellery of the time, but there was very little on view for those. The location is very open and the view down over the surrounding countryside is lovely. Most of the village is fairly flat and would be fine for most people, and the management state that the site is completely wheelchair accessible. However, the area is pretty much all grass and I would imagine that on a very wet day, it could get very muddy and probably hard going for anyone with mobility issues.
