Discovering Seventeenth-Century Life at Llancaiach Fawr
\nFriday, May 17, 2013<\/p>\n
Dad and I left Somerset and drove along the M5\/M4 toward South Wales, where he was born.\u00a0 We stayed with my Great-Aunt Dorothy and my Uncle Martin for a few days.\u00a0 On our way down, though, we stopped at Llancaiach Fawr.\u00a0 Just off the M4, Llancaiach Fawr (pronounced Hlan-ky-ack vowr) is a seventeenth-century manner house that belonged to Lord Edward Prichard in the 1640s.\u00a0 It is now a tourist attraction that gives visitors the opportunity to experience life during the English Civil War.\u00a0 I\u2019d visited the site several years ago with my Aunt Dorothy and cousin Mark, and loved it so much I convinced Dad he had to see it.<\/p>\n
In the visitors centre, we were given documents of introduction.\u00a0 These were supposed to have been provided by the brother of Mary Prichard, the lady of the house, to assure her husband and his servants that the documents\u2019 bearers were persons of good repute and trustworthy.\u00a0 In a country torn by a civil war, where brother fought against brother, such papers were the only way of gaining entrance to a family home.<\/p>\n
Below Stairs
\nWe presented our papers to Rachael, the under dairy maid, at the front door of the manner and she explained to us that her master and mistress were not at home, but that we would be welcome to explore the house on our own, or to be escorted through it by one of the servants.\u00a0 We opted to be guided through, and Rachael took us down to the servants\u2019 hall, so that we could \u201crid our minds\u201d of the lower aspects of the house as soon as may be.\u00a0 In the servants\u2019 hall, she showed us the wooden trenchers the staff would have eaten from\u2014heavy, squarish wooden plates with a large round indentation in the centre for porridge or stew, and a very small round indentation in the top corner for salt; musical instruments like a psaltery (something like a dulcimer), a fiddle, and a drum whose Welsh name translates to \u201cthe pig\u2019s nose.\u201d<\/p>\n
We then proceeded to the kitchen, where we got to have a look at the huge fireplace with its rotating spit.\u00a0 It would have been the spit boy\u2019s job to turn the spit for up to 12 hours a day.\u00a0 He would have worked in the house since he was about five\u2014even though his mother might have worked in a different house\u2014and would be paid 2 pence per day, plus food, and a place (under the table near the fire) to sleep.\u00a0 On the table were a variety of herbs and spices that the family would have enjoyed, including cinnamon and nutmeg; some oyster shells for scooping, and a wooden mould for making gingerbread men and women.<\/p>\n
The Children\u2019s Room
\nRachael then escorted us upstairs and passed us off to the under cook, who showed us the room the Prichard girls shared.\u00a0 Edward and Mary Prichard had two girls: Mary, who was about 3 when the war started, and Jane, who was 7.\u00a0 The girls had a number of toys, including a bilboquet (a ball-and-cup toy), a hobby horse made out of maple, a rocking horse, and a hoop and stick game that was usually used by boys to practice swordplay.\u00a0 The hoop would be tossed up, and the child would try to thrust a stick through it.\u00a0 There was also a Diablo, an hour-glass-shaped piece of wood that must be balanced and spun on a string held loosely between two sticks.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had the chance to try one of these, and I was absolutely useless at it, but my then seven-year-old cousin, Sam, had no difficulties throwing the diablo around like a pro.<\/p>\n
For educational purposes, the Prichard girls had hornbooks, which were similar to today\u2019s board books: a piece of parchment with writing on it would be placed on a wooden plaque.\u00a0 Then, a piece of cow horn would be heated and stretched until it was clear and tacked over the parchment to protect it from grubby fingers.\u00a0 Edward Prichard\u2019s children spoke Welsh and English from an early age, and were also being taught French and Italian.\u00a0 The music master taught them singing, dancing, and to play the bowed psaltery, which is similar to a modern violin.\u00a0 Sewing clothes for their wooden dollies let the girls practice their stitching.<\/p>\n
The Indoor Toilet
\nIn the short corridor joining the girls\u2019 room to their mother\u2019s is a small bench with a lid.\u00a0 When the lid is lifted, it exposes a 35-foot pit.\u00a0 This is one of the earliest indoor toilets in Wales.<\/p>\n
The Lady\u2019s Chamber
\nLady Prichard\u2019s room is large and sunny, with a huge tester bed.\u00a0 This looks a little like a four-poster bed, but there are actually only 2 posts at the foot of the bed, the headboard being a solid piece of wood.\u00a0 The hangings and covers on the bed are all hand stitched and embroidered in beige, burgundy and dark green.\u00a0 These would have taken 2 skilled seamstresses nearly 3 months to complete, and the entire bed would have cost 5 pounds.\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t sound like much today, but when you consider the under cook\u2019s salary was 2 pounds 6 pence per year, you realize just how important a piece of furniture it was!\u00a0 Lady Mary Prichard would have used her bedroom as a private parlour, and the bed was a way of showing her status to the visiting women.\u00a0 Ladies would spin and sew and be entertained by the music master, whose job it was to provide music for the house as well as to educate the children.<\/p>\n
We were allowed to look through Lady Mary\u2019s cosmetics.\u00a0 In the seventeenth century it was fashionable to be very pale.\u00a0 Lady marry would have worn a half-face mask\u00a0 of soft leather as well as a large hat and veil if she went out in the sun.\u00a0 She would also have powdered her face with white lead, which could be applied by a cloth puff or by a hare\u2019s foot.\u00a0 She would have carried cloths soaked in scented oils to make herself smell nice, as well as to mask any unpleasant odours that might be floating on the air.\u00a0 It was still believed that bad smells carried illness, and if you were able to mask the scent, you could stave off sickness.<\/p>\n
Lady Prichard was very fashionable, and had gowns sent over from France\u2014even during the civil war.\u00a0 She would have worn her hair in the French style\u2014in a large bun on the top or just to the back of her head, with ringlets coming down in front of her ears.\u00a0 If her hair was not dressed, she would cover it with a coif\u2014usually a white cloth.\u00a0 All women of all classes wore coifs, but Lady Prichard\u2019s would have been of the finest linen and trimmed in lace.<\/p>\n
The Lord\u2019s Study
\nJust down the hall from Lady Prichard\u2019s room is her husband\u2019s study.\u00a0 Two stone walls in the centre of the room frame a narrow staircase that leads down to the steward\u2019s rooms; when the lord was away, it was the steward\u2019s job to take care of estate business, so he had to have access.\u00a0 This room is the only room in the house that has a window capable of being opened.\u00a0 This is because Lord Prichard kept pigeons, whose nests could be reached through a panel in the wall.\u00a0 These pigeons were used to send messages to the surrounding nobility, and would fly as far as Cardiff.<\/p>\n
The best part of this room was the weaponry.\u00a0 If the house was ever attacked, all the men in the house would arm themselves with the equipment stored here.\u00a0 We were shown a matchlock musket\u2014which looks basically like a flintlock musket (the kind most people think of when they hear the word \u201cmusket\u201d) except for the striking mechanism.\u00a0 Flintlocks, which came into prominence a little later in the century, use a piece of flint that snaps forward when the trigger is pulled, creating a spark when the flint strikes a steel plate; matchlocks, by contrast, have a long piece of rope that is kept lit, and which snaps back when the trigger is pulled, so that the flame touches the hole in the barrel and ignites the powder inside.<\/p>\n
I pressured Dad into trying on seventeenth-century armour\u2014a backplate, breastplate, and helmet with gorget (a neck guard), and he was given the musket to hold.\u00a0 The musket was taller than I am\u2014though admittedly, I\u2019m pretty short \u00a0\ud83d\ude09\u00a0\u00a0 I was then pressured into a seventeenth-century cavalry costume\u2014a hugely heavy leather jacket that could stop a sword and even a musket ball (at long range), a \u201clobster tail helmet\u201d (which has a neck guard like a lobster\u2019s tail at the back), and then given a flintlock pistol and a sword to hold.\u00a0 The cavalry men would guide their horses with their knees, fire their pistols as they charged, then rely on their swords.<\/p>\n
The Great Hall
\nFinally, we joined a group of about 50 women from Pembroke in the great hall.\u00a0 There, we were greeted by Evan James, the music master of Llancaiach Fawr.\u00a0 He was very funny, and when the women from Pembroke heckled him, he had no problem heckling back.\u00a0 He began by saying that he was glad my Dad was in the room, because it meant he wasn\u2019t the only man.\u00a0 Then he went on to say that many of the court cases that Edward Prichard heard in the great hall, as a justice of the peace, had to do with wives who heckled or nagged their husbands.\u00a0 Punishment for this \u201ccrime\u201d consisted of a metal scold\u2019s bridle, which was fitted over the woman\u2019s head, and a plate that was inserted into her mouth to press on her tongue and make it impossible for her to nag.\u00a0 The husband would then be required to lead his wife around the town by the chain attached to the bridle.\u00a0 If the same woman appeared before the court 3 times for nagging, a metal spike was added to the plate and pierced through her tongue.<\/p>\n
One of the women present mentioned modern-day tongue rings, and Mr. James expressed both horror and fascination at the type of woman who \u201cwould so wilfully pierce herself so.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 \ud83d\ude09\u00a0 \u00a0He then went on to say that he was concerned about one of the women in the room, because of the way she was sitting: in the seventeenth century, crossing one\u2019s legs was enough to suggest that one was a strumpet.<\/p>\n
After that, Dad and I made our way downstairs and out through the main door.\u00a0 Llancaiach Fawr was a fortified country house and, as such, had only one way in and one way out.\u00a0 The stairs were also made unevenly, so that those familiar with the steps could race up, but newcomers had to take the stairs slowly to avoid tripping.\u00a0 We were bidden \u201cGod\u2019s speed,\u201d by Rachael, and left the seventeenth century to drive on to the little village in the Vale of Glamorgan where my Dad was raised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Discovering Seventeenth-Century Life at Llancaiach Fawr Friday, May 17, 2013 Dad and I left Somerset and drove along the M5\/M4 toward South Wales, where he was born.\u00a0 We stayed with my Great-Aunt Dorothy and my Uncle Martin for a few … Continue reading