Mary Arden’s Farm trip

I will never forget the first time I became a Tudor child. What a fantastic experience that really made me feel like I was in the past. When we first arrived, they told us a bit about how Shakespeare grew up. I remember that they said William had a few siblings, but he was most fond of one of his sisters. Then we split up into our groups to do the activities, and my group went to the herb garden first. I was welcomed to a place of beautiful smells. They started talking about how the Tudors didn’t know what bacteria was, so they had different ways of protecting themselves against germs. They explained how the Tudors thought bad smells made people sick and what they did to stop it. We made pouches that were called a nose gay. I used herbs from the garden, and then we crushed them into small pieces. We used lavender, sage, lemon balm, and rosemary. Most of them had a pungent smell, but I think it really did help with the smells.

In the afternoon, we saw the animals and my favorites were the little piglets. They had a lot of animals, but the most memorable one was the massive pig! We went back to the courtyard to learn a Tudor dance, and I thought it was fun. My partner was Aggie, but I felt like the boys had to do massive steps and the girls (except Mr. Williams) had to do little steps.

All in all, I think everybody LOVED IT!!!!

Sam, 6MC