Hall of plenty...
HISTORIAN MERVYN EDWARDS TAKES A TRIP THROUGH TIME WITH FORD GREEN HALL MUSEUM SUPERVISOR CHRIS BELL
CHRIS Bell’s hirsute features are well-known in the Ford Green, Smallthorne and Norton area, so it is no surprise that he still loves Ford Green Hall after all these years.
It’s the passage of time, of course, that helps to sell one of Stoke-ontrent’s proudest tourist attractions – and to an extent, Chris confesses that he has lost track of it: “It’s possible that I have worked here for about 17 years – having started as a volunteer – and now I am Museum Supervisor, full-time for the most part, dealing with school groups, tours and general cleaning. We have 10-plus regular volunteers and some that come in just for events.”
The subject of time regularly trips off his lips as we catch up for the first time in a decade – and it is partly why he works where he does.
“I have always liked 17th century history, since I was a child,” he conveys, “watching the Three Musketeers film with Oliver Reed and then going out and making swords and playing with them. I just love reading about the seventeenth century, particularly as it is my job to talk to visiting school parties about the diarist Samuel Pepys. I’ve had to study him and his times and I dress in character.
“Sometimes, I might appear as a highwayman, or I may dress up in costume if we’re trying to convey something about the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.”
Chris likes to throw dates into his conversation, which reminds me that Ford Green Hall was once thought to have been built in 1580 before dendrochronologists checked the timbers and decreed that it was actually younger.
I have wondered over the years how difficult it was to re-interpret the Hall’s past in the light of what must in some ways have seemed an annoying discovery – particularly as Henry VIII (and his six wives) have fascinated school children for generations.
“Actually, there is still a lot on the internet about the house being of Tudor construction and of 1580, but the date is 1624 and it’s early Stuart. We try not to correct people too often,” says Chris. “And we still cater for school groups covering the Tudor period, because things hadn’t changed too quickly by then.
“You still had plenty of countryside, whilst fashions altered a lot slower then than they do now. Consider also that this area was quite a few years behind London in terms of what was happening.
“One difficult question we receive from children concerns the Henry VIII costume that we have upstairs. One child pointed to the codpiece and asked what it was for.
“We said, just ask your teachers and they’ll tell you.”
I mean it in the nicest possible way when I declare that there is a lot of sham history attached to Ford Green Hall. Despite the work that has been done on the wills and inventories of the Ford family, it’s only been possible to give a flavour of the times the Fords lived in.
Then again, like Johnny Cash’s motor car, Ford Green Hall was built one piece at a time. Every room is a palimpsest, building on the past – as Chris explains: “There are four different, mis-matched types of cheap wall panelling in the house, so it may seem inauthentic but it’s just like the history of your house or mine. You change things as you buy new items.
“In the 1950s, they covered all the Victorian panelled doors up with hardboard. Bear in mind that the house was re-invented anyway when converted into four cottages, and that was well before it opened as a folk museum in 1952.
“We’ve tried to make it look livedin, as if the Fords have just nipped out to the top field. There has also been some re-evaluation of the relative wealth of the Ford family.
“We think now that the Fords – although yeoman farmers – were actually quite wealthy with decent status, with interests in coal mining etc. The furniture we have represents the entire period that they lived here for.”
So part of the joy of visiting Ford Green Hall is spotting what is genuine and what isn’t. There’s a rather tasty-looking pie on a table in the
kitchen section, but I wouldn’t recommend taking a bite, as it’s made of plastic.
“Schoolchildren often ask about the house, the food and the hanging game birds in the kitchen and whether they are real,” nods Chris, who informs me that he has also had a go at preparing authentic fodder for event days: “We’ve studied recipes here and cooked outside for our Tudor and Stuart days – for example, roasting a joint on a spit all day, only to find it was still bloody on the inside!
“However, this shows how skilled the cooks were back then. They knew how different parts of the fire cooked different parts of the meat.”
He cites the location of the house – in the valley below Smallthorne and Norton – as part of the attraction of the hall, as well as the cosiness of the interior. However, that’s not to say that it cannot be unsettling at times.
He relates: “I’ve not seen any ghost here, as such – but I have seen a ghostly cat once, when he just slipped beneath my feet and disappeared somewhere. We do hear lots of footsteps and floorboards moving.”
Perhaps there is no reason to fear ghostly goings-on. The symbols on a wooden beam over one fireplace are thought to have been apotropaic – i.e., for protection against evil spirits that it was supposed might enter via the chimney. They may also have had a mystical or religious meaning.
However, there is the apotropaic … and the prosaic. Chris outlines: “Another interesting item we have is a very old comb which was found beneath floorboards. It was possibly placed below them in order to keep evil spirits away – or it may just have been dropped by somebody and fallen beneath the floorboards!” Cod history? Maybe – but Chris is cool about the authenticity or otherwise of some of the hall’s exhibits: “There’s an unusual item in one of our glass-cases, namely the bones of a cat. It was probably just a family pet, whose bones were found in the garden here about the 1800s.
“The fireplace that you see in the hall section today is not original, as it would have been a walk-in fireplace. The present fireplace was bought in 1952 for about £6 from the castle at Alton Towers. Our Thomas Toft plate – recalling the local slipware potter – looks the part, but it is a replica.”
Heritage detectives should be warned that the hall is a place full of history mysteries and potential bum steers – and yet we continue to research the more inscrutable elements of this building’s past.
“We’ve been trying to discover who lived here after the Ford family and during the days when the house was split up into cottages – in other words when the property’s status faded,” muses Chris.
As Ford Green Hall’s 400th hoves into view, plans are afoot to celebrate with an event on March 31 that looks at how Easter was celebrated in 1624 as well as a timetravel spectacular, where there will be different re-enactments from the four centuries that the hall has been here. If you search Ford Green Hall events on the internet, you can access the programme.
Meanwhile, what else tickled my fancy on my most recent visit?
Well, the Butchery Chamber has been revamped in recent times in order to tell the story of medicine, superstition and witchcraft in the seventeenth century and there’s a model of a plague doctor in one corner. There are also herbs that you can smell.
And talking of smells, there’s a new addition to the garden to the rear – a mock-up privy complete with curtains.
■ You can catch Mervyn on Tuesday when he will present a history talk entitled Middleport: A Suburb of Burslem. Meet at the Harper Street Shops in Port Street, opposite Middleport Pottery. It starts at 11am promptly. Admission is free.