Ford Green Hall 17th Century Yuletide

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We visited Ford Green Hall to find out how Christmas was celebrated in Tudor/Stuart times. There were a lot of fir tree branches and holly used as decorations. Whereas people may have a wreath on their front door nowadays; back then they simply had a fir tree branch hanging down, with some holly interspersed among the leaves, and the berries adding some red among all the green. My first impression was that they had half a tree hanging from the front door!

Moving inside, the decorations were the same inside the house. There were fir tree branches hanging down, with sprigs of holly, and some of them had candles in the decoration. The candles used weren’t real ones, but I can imagine that back in the 17th century, when they would have used real candles, that it was a bit of a fire hazard.

Every Christmas time, I have always wondered why mince pies are called ‘mince pies’ when they don’t have any meat in them.  After going into the kitchen area, we found out! I think, on balance, I prefer the mince pies we have today! We also discovered how wealthy people showed off their wealth at Christmas time and discovered just how expensive sugar was back then!

Heading upstairs, we found an area where you could make pomanders. Essentially, they had an orange and stuck cloves in it. This area was really busy and there was a queue of people waiting for a go. As George doesn’t cope well with crowds and waiting around, we decided the best option was to leave.

We decided to stop at a supermarket on the way home and get some oranges and cloves, so we could make our own pomanders at home. Fortunately, at the supermarket, I grabbed a basket rather than a trolley as we ended up getting mince pies, cake, Quality Street, Pringles and trifle mix, as well as the oranges and cloves that we’d originally gone in for! I dread to think what else we may have bought if I’d have grabbed a trolley!  We made our own pomanders at home and have placed them around the house, so every so often we get a waft of orange and cloves.

We enjoyed this visit to Ford Green Hall and found it really interesting finding how Christmas was celebrated in the 17th century.