Tudor history and Country Roads

Thoughts on the past

I’ve been reading the book ‘How to be a Tudor: a dawn to dusk guide to Tudor Life’ by the delightful Ruth Goodman. Her enthusiasm, knowledge and first-hand experience in trying out ways of life from the Tudor era are exciting and inspiring to me. I think, even if you didn’t have a previous interest in the Tudor era, this book would change your mind.

A page from the Book of Hours belonging to Henry VIII. Morgan Library.

After I began reading, I discovered that Ruth Goodman had also been in the “Tudor Monastery Farm” series, and that she was the historic consultant on the TV series “Wolf Hall”.

There is something about the past that calls to me. I know that I romanticize it, but I’d love to try some of the ways that people lived in that era: use a comb to brush my hair, rub myself down with a linen cloth, and wear only natural fibers that I’ve sewn myself. I’d like to try some of the food they ate too: the breads, the pottage (a sort-of soup with grains and fresh vegetables and herbs), the roasted meat!

A comb found on the Mary Rose, a ship which sank in 1545 and was raised in 1982. It has been studied and preserved since and can be visited in Portsmouth.

Something about participating in these activities gives me the sense of tapping into a knowledge that isn’t otherwise available to me in my modern daily life.

I realized that this is the same feeling I get when I see an abandoned house, or, as recently happened when Nick and I were on a drive, when I see an old, grassy country road. My heart leaps and I get this sense that there’s something there that I’m missing. Something old and true that if I can just grasp it quickly enough, I’ll understand. Something I’ll find out about the distant past, bringing it close, or something I’ll learn about myself. I’m not sure which.

Road in Dundee, NY. September 2024

The road pictured above wasn’t actually abandoned, but it looked as though it was private property. Nick and I soon after found another road that had an overgrown “limited use highway” sign on the side. This we drove all the way down, wondering how it could ever have been called a highway.

Perhaps it had been, back in the day when people rode in carriages, and traveled on horseback. Amazingly, it was still there for us, on that quiet Sunday afternoon as we drove down it slowly in our car. It’s been on our minds since, and we’d like to go back and walk the length of it on foot.

Perhaps we’ll discover something when we do.