Visiting Agecroft Hall
– A Restored Tudor Mansion outside Richmond (Virginia) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
My sister Kathy, Florence, and I set out for Agecroft Hall outside Richmond (Virginia). Kathy had seen this restored Tudor-era mansion on one of her gardening television shows.
We
took photos in all the gardens and ran around like little kittens with a ball
of yarn in this super cute place.
Agecroft
Hall is an English Tudor mansion from the 1500s that was brought to the United
States stone by stone from Lancashire (England), a major mining center.
It
was saved from destruction by Richmond’s Thomas L. Williams, Jr., who had it
dismantled, transplanted, and rebuilt in the 1920s.
In
a manor house such as Agecroft Hall, the role of the great hall of a fortified
castle changed when servants and masters kept separate quarters. Separate quarters for servants and masters was
a physical manifestation of the beginnings of the stratification of English
society.
A
suit of black armor stood in this room.
Our guide said that the origin of the word “blackmail” comes from
knights trying to raise money for their armor.
The
dining room held its stories as well. A
big salt cellar was always placed by the family head’s seat during a meal. Salt was a valuable commodity.
The
saying, “a man worth his salt” dates form the Tudor Age. The dining room table was called a “board”
during the Tudor Age and gave rise to the expression “chairman of the board.”
The
family head decided who got what choice parts of the roasted meats in much the
same way a modern chairman of the board divvies up perks and corner offices;
divvying profits, however, is overseen by auditors.
An
interesting Tudor Christmas custom was to put live blackbirds in a hard pastry
crust and release them for effect during dinner. Birds in the house obviously did not bother
the lords and ladies. (Bird flu must not
have been identified as a disease during the Tudor Age.)
Some
of the windows in Agecroft Hall held stained glass windows. Our guide told us that stained glass was very
valuable, especially as the art has been lost for the truly lustrous windows.
When
Henry VIII (House of Tudor) dissolved the monasteries as part of his break with
the Catholic faith, looters immediately took the stained glass from the churches
and monasteries.
Outside
in the gardens, we looked at a black gate painted in black pitch.
I
thought of the song by the Rolling Stones “Paint it Black” as little Florence
let herself out through a small door inside the larger, pitchblack door.
Kathy
and I followed her out. I drove back to
Norfolk as Kathy laughed through the mountains and tunnels under the Chesapeake
Bay this time.
Kathy
took out a pasta roller she had given me for Christmas and showed Florence how
to make handkerchief egg pasta.
She
made two flat sheets of pasta and then put basil leaves between the pasta and
ran them between the pasta rollers one more time as I made a homemade tomato
coulis (tomato sauce with olive oil and a little sea salt).
While
the pasta was boiling, I made a homemade fruit salad that was followed by
Lavazza coffee.
We
talked about how much fun it was to visit Agecroft Hall, but I still preferred
American solutions for living quarters.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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