Christmas in the Apprentice House

We returned to the Apprentice House at Quarry Bank Mill to help celebrate a Victorian Christmas. 

This is a lovely event to be a part of, as it really feels like you are in the past, with little details everywhere.

There is no electric lighting in the house, just candles and the glow from coal fires, with little daylight at this time of year, but somehow this all adds to the atmosphere.

The stone flagged floor is cold though.  Sue wisely wore clogs, but I could feel the cold seeping up through my leather soled shoes.  At least there wasn't ice on the inside of the windows like we had last year.

Visitors make their way in to the house past the vegetable patch and wash-house,

through the apprentices' school room and dormitories,

past the Doctor's treatment room,

and down into the parlour where I was telling Victorian winter tales and ghost stories for Christmas, with intervals of piping.  For much of the day the room was packed full of people listening to tales of the Apple Tree Man, the Hobyahs, Samuel and the Worm, and the Cow that Ate the Piper.

Then our visitors made their way into the kitchen where Sue was preparing a Christmas pudding as well as letting visitors make their own spice bag for mulled wine.

We heard from the hundreds of visitors that the carols, decorations and jolly Father Christmas up at t'mill building were very good too.  We're back there next Sunday (16th December 2012) to do the whole thing again.  Why not come to join us?