This post presents the Bonus part of the quiz, based on the extra (sixth) display at the Markeaton Park Family Festivities event. The first post in the series (Introduction) provides more information on the activity; and an activity summary provided in the Part 1 Quiz Post. Many households (though probably not the poorest) in the…

How did you do with Part 4: Finding Festive Feasts Quiz?! You can share your answers through project social media. This well-known design is often called ‘Old Willow’, or just ‘Willow’ pattern. Being decorated, it’s not likely to have been generally used by the poorest people, so is unlikely to have been found in the…

This post presents the fourth part of the quiz, based on the fourth display at the Markeaton Park Family Festivities event. The first post in the series (Introduction) provides more information on the activity; and an activity summary provided in the Part 1 Quiz Post. Many sherds of nineteenth-century transfer-printed earthenware were found at Markeaton…

How did you do with Part 3: Finding Festive Feasts Quiz?! You can share your answers through project social media. This large earthenware dish (alternatively called a ‘platter’ or ‘plate’) was probably used for serving meat or poultry, which, as today, was often caved at the table. Such pottery would’ve been too costly for many…

This post presents the third part of the quiz, based on the third display at the Markeaton Park Family Festivities event. The first post in the series (Introduction) provides more information on the activity; and an activity summary provided in the Part 1 Quiz Post. Excavations at Markeaton uncovered numerous sherds of nineteenth-century transfer-printed earthenware.…

This post presents the second part of the quiz, based on the second display at the Markeaton Park Family Festivities event. The first post in the series (Introduction) provides more information on the activity; and an activity summary provided in the previous Part 1 Quiz Post. Display 2: Posh Porcelain Markeaton excavations uncovered porcelain cup…

How did you do with Part 1: Finding Festive Feasts Quiz?! You can share your answers through project social media. Mixing bowl, used in the kitchen by a cook or kitchen maid, to beat eggs, for example. Various recipes for foods consumed during the Christmas season in late Georgian times incorporated beaten whole eggs, yolk,…

If pots could talk… How might they say ‘Merry Christmas’?! These Georgian and Victorian pots will have seen some seasonal celebrations in their time. But how could they have played their part? Who might have used them – rich or poor; servants or masters? And where – in cottages or country houses; dairies, kitchens or…