Spring 2009 Newsletter

News

I Own Britain’s Best Home

Kentwell features in the 5th programme of TV Channel 5’s series to find Britain’s Best Home to be broadcast at 8.00pm on St George’s Day, Thursday 23 April.  It will compete for viewers votes against two other properties.  The property that scores the highest percentage of votes in its week will be the overall winner.

We have done much filming over the years starting with The Women in White a BBC costume serial in 1976 and featuring among much else Terry Jones’s The Wind in the Willows in 1995.  (By curious chance Terry Jones visited the House again yesterday.) All filming is an unknown quantity.  Some crews are very agreeable and pleasant to have about as well as undemanding as to what they want; some are exciting and offer unexpected experiences; while some, alas, can be a drag, unsympathetic, overbearing and disagreeable.  We have had them all.
Britain’s Best Home had a small and very accommodating crew who were with us for three days in all. We enjoyed their company.  What they made of us and how they will make us appear we shall learn when the programme is shown.  We know no more about it than any viewer. Naturally, we have no doubt that Kentwell is Britain’s Best Home which is why we have devoted approaching 40 years of our life to  it;  but will viewers agree ?  We shall see.  Do watch the programme and vote for Kentwell if you wish.

Weather

What joy to have a proper winter again with all the positives that winter can bring including some really awe inspiring fine winter days.  It brought with it bulbs at their due time instead of  unseasonably early as has happened in recent years.  So Aconites and Snowdrops not until mid February and Daffodils not until mid March. Although a very warm (and dry) April meant the main daffodils were over rather too quickly. 

Children Visiting

Our Re-Creations were designed for children from the start and we had had over half a million children visit them since they started in 1978.  Yet Kentwell as a whole is not seen as children friendly.  We are mystified why this should be so as children of all ages seem to enjoy hugely their visits here whether we have costumed activities or not.  No, we don’t have a sandpit or child’s play area.  We have something much more valuable - the resource to stretch a child’s imagination. So much to explore and discover.  Is that not more valuable ?  We have decided to focus more publicity to try to explain why children should visit and love coming to Kentwell but its not easy to get this message across in a few words.

Easter

We enjoyed excellent weather over Easter but had to compete (and lost) to weather forecasts that consistently (and wrongly) forecast adverse weather for each day of the Holiday Weekend.  People seem to take what the forecasters predict as gospel truth and to conduct their life by it. Whatever happened to basic good sense ?  Doing what one wants, keeping an eye on the weather and taking with one a raincoat or overcoat or boots against possible adverse conditions used to be ordinary commonsense but no longer it seems. With central heating and air conditioning in homes, offices and cars, we seem a slave to being cosseted.  Fresh air has become an enemy.  Do people walk anywhere nowadays ?

Our numbers (up from last year’s disastrous snowbound Easter) were way down on normal which was particularly galling as we had an excellent Re-Creation, made more exciting than usual by a Whodunit Mystery as to who had maliciously lit the Beacon. 

The Economy

Did (do) the current economic conditions have an impact on our visitor numbers or spend ?  We can’t really say.  Our lower numbers may be in part due to this and certainly we would have expected more during the fine weather of the Easter Holidays. And, yes, the spend per person is down too.  Yet, it is easy to jump to conclusions.  On the other hand, there should be fewer in the region travelling abroad and those staying at home are candidates for days out to places like Kentwell.  A news bulletin recently said that traffic on the A14, the main east/west artery through central East Anglia was down 49%.  Now much of this decline was due to fewer lorries and less commercial traffic but some of it must be due to the private motorist staying at home.  Are we all costing our driving more carefully ?

Unfortunately, we shall not really be able to cost the full impact of the economic downturn until the year is past.

On a political note, there’s seems even less cause than usual to believe let alone support our political masters.  They talk and behave as if they haven’t a clue which appears to reflect the fact.  They are like a motorist in a foreign country  seeking his destination but unable to read the signposts driving on regardless at speed on the basis that this must be the  right direction.

Future Events

We are now entering our busy time.

May Day Weekend

Sat 2nd to Bank Holiday Monday 4th May, 11 - 5pm - More info

Our Re-Creation over May Day weekend is the liveliest Re-Creation of our year and fun for young and old alike.  There was a time (before the puritan clamp down in the 17th Century) when May Day was the most jolly festival of the year.  Now, what survives (in truth it never recovered from the Puritans) seems generally to have been purloined by Labour and the noise, the fun, the raucousness and the jollity all but lost - but not here at Kentwell.

Whit Weekend

Sat 23rd to Bank Holiday Monday 25th May, 11 - 5pm - More info

Or more formally (and accurately) the Spring Bank Holiday Weekend, sees our main WWII Re-Creation.  Maybe due to the raft of other conflicts which have engulfed the world, WWII has now almost slipped out of the public consciousness.  This is sad.  For all its austerity and hardship there was something noble about those times.  People behaved as if they might not survive the morrow and there was a much greater spirit of togetherness than we find nowadays.  

Our Re-Creation captures much of that spirit.  To make it more accessible to the public we plan another Whodunit Mystery over the weekend.  This is a framework story which will give a very specific context to our Event. This is less about Who Did It and more about something to which all our Participants can contribute and of which they are all a part.

Wool Weekend

Sat 30th and Sun 31st May, 11 - 5pm - More info

We have to shear our sheep each year and this is to make an event of it and have much else to do with wool.  Wool used to be a dominant part of life in East Anglia for well over 500 years up until about the end of the 18th Century.  Then the wool trade was supreme and much of our exports came from wool and cloth.  Now, alas, there is no market for wool. The wool marketing board pay us 50p a fleece if we are lucky whereas it costs about £2 a sheep to shear it.

Great Annual Re-Creation of Tudor Life

Sun 21st June to Sunday 12th July, Open to the public on Sats & Suns only and Friday 10th July (other days for pre-booked school parties only), 11 - 5pm - More info

This year the 500th anniversary of the accession of Henry VIII, we go back to a Henrican year, 1535, perhaps the most pivotal year of his reign.  By then he had broken with Rome and was trying to consolidate that position and started the project to dissolve the Monasteries (to raise money).  He was meeting some resistance spearheaded by Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas Moore, both in June 1535 languishing in the Tower.  Though Bishop Fisher’s fate seemed to have been sealed when the Pope made him a cardinal.  It was an exciting but dangerous time.  You’ll have to come to Kentwell to see how it impacted upon life here in Suffolk.

Later Events

Thos are brief Notes on upcoming Events.  We shall have our Open Air Performances in late July & early August, more Re-Creations of both Tudor and WWII Life, a Boutique Music Festival, Festinho, what has become our very successful Halloween Event, Scaresville 09, and a new Christmas Spectacular in December.  Our year has only just started.