Mary Tilson lived in the early – mid 18th century. In 1732, she married Henry Wise, second surviving son and namesake of Royal gardener Henry Wise and his wife Patience. ...
The Warwickshire County Record Office has, naturally, a vast array of recipes within its archive. Mary Wise’s cookbook is well-known, but there are many other culinary delights dating from the 16th ...
Warwickshire Museum‘s collections include many books on natural history, geology and palaeontology, acquired during the 19th century by the Warwickshire Natural History and Archaeological Society. These include volumes written by some ...
WARNING: Please do not attempt this recipe at home, it comes with a risk of some very nasty (and potentially fatal) bugs – especially if you follow the original recipe’s ...
This recipe, which was kindly chosen for me, is from a recipe book in the Eleanor Archer collection1. Although the book itself is believed to have belonged to her mother, ...
I signed up for the heritage cooking challenge as I like cooking, and I thought I’d be able to give it a decent attempt…
Looking through the list, I thought I would ...
My heritage recipe challenge was to tackle this delightful invention found in the Wise family records.1 The 18th century writing is clear and the instructions quite simple and not too daunting. ...
The background
In April 2017 Heritage & Culture Warwickshire worked with The Play House and pupils from Westgate Primary to create tales inspired by objects on display at the Market Hall ...
It isn’t Christmas without a mince pie and once upon a time it wouldn’t have been a mince pie without the addition of actual minced meat. When the Warwickshire County ...
Warwickshire Museum and its geological collections owe much to the Reverend Peter Bellinger Brodie. Peter was born in 1815 and grew up in London where his father was a barrister. Peter’s ...
Recent publicity has drawn our attention to the importance of honeybees in the production of much of the food we eat. We read about beehives now being placed atop prestigious ...
Small beginnings can be important. A chance remark at a lecture to a well-established evening class at Warwickshire County Record Office in the autumn of 1988 was the starting point ...
From 1950 to 1955 the County Archivist, Anthony Wood, kept an office diary. He had been appointed in 1946 when the Office was re-opened after the war and he set ...
One of the questions most often asked by visitors to Warwickshire County Record Office is ‘how old is our oldest document?’ to which, at least since 1970s, our answer has ...
I approach this task with quite a few misgivings. I can do the silver dish (standard saucepan) and sourcing the ingredients is fine; I have apples on the tree in ...
As the autumn season continues, and the air feels a bit fresher, it seems an apt time to introduce the fourth recipe in our Heritage Cooking Challenge. Taken from an early ...
So we got to the stage of making the pie…
As you may recall, one of the major challenges was hunting for the artichokes in the first place! Tinned seemed a ...
I’d like to say it was a dark, stormy night, as all good stories begin… In actual fact it was a sunny Saturday afternoon in August.
According to reliable websites, the Globe ...
So the first problem was actually reading the recipe…
Having overcome that, the next problem was overcoming the language. A chance conversation saved me doing something overly stupid, maybe. I wondered ...
When looking for a recipe to try for this project, I gazed wistfully over the choices, bemoaned the fact cheesecakes had already been taken (I do like a good cheesecake, ...
This is a real stuffed bear that was probably shot in the Victorian period and was inherited from the Warwick Natural History and Archaeological Society in 1932. It has been ...
No, this isn’t an episode of Breaking Bad, and metheglyn isn’t some illicit substance! It is, in fact, a name for spiced mead which derives from two Welsh terms for healing ...
Having done our prep, we started the mead-making process in earnest. This will be fairly familiar to anybody who has made wine before, so I won’t go into detail here, ...
In keeping with a seasonal theme, what could be better for a cold winter’s day or night than a slice of Carrot pudding from an 18th century recipe? The recipe ...