Rockingham Castle

I have been traveling ...

http://www.rockinghamcastle.com/

Details of location etc

This is the best preserved Motte and Bailey castle in the UK. The Bailey is the wall surrounding and the Motte was the hill on which a Keep was built, the last refuge for the besieged. During the civil war the Roundheads accidentally blew up the armoury and the Motte with it, but it is still an impressive place.

Mr and Mrs Watson live there with their children, a practice happening for over 400 years now; and they are very pleasant to guests should they come across them, as I can testify myself when I met Mrs Watson near the private stairs, up which had scampered a little girl, one of the daughters shouting to her sister to get ready for their trip out. Her mother, slightly embarrassed at her daughter's rush and exuberance wished me well and hoped that I was enjoying my visit and afternoon. I said I was which was true. Everyone seemed pleasant and helpful, and the guide knew some interesting facts and made the old house and walls live with anecdotes from its bloody past.

Some things I learnt a Rockinham Castle

1. Charles Dickens, the famous nineteenth century author, was a close friend of the Watsons of his era, who were benefactors of the community, setting up model schools – antitypes to Dotheboys Hall, for instance. They would rejoice in Dickens' plays performed in the house of an evening with guests taking different parts. Bleak House's “Growlery” and Tolkinghorn's offices were based on its rooms. The Long Hall, said Dickens, was the setting for the Dinning Room of Chesney Wold.
   
   
2. In the Long Hall (upstairs) are paintings of men in wigs and a couple of wig boxes. Yes: a big wig was a person of nobility who ruled, and the wig was large acting like a hat of authority may today. On attending, one would look around and decide who was most important according to the size of the wig worn! Hence the term big wig.
   
   
3. And talking about wigs leads me to a tale of horses, or indeed, tails of horses. Rich people could afford to buy the hair of local maidens who grew it long to cut and sell for wig makers to construct the wigs that the wealthy would buy and wear; a cycle that lasted centuries. Aspiring to be bewigged themselves, less wealthy people had their wigs made from the hair of horses' tails. That led to the horses having stumped tails, and they can be seen in paintings at Rockinham. So, now you know why they had docked tails – to sell the hair to make the wigs for the poorer folk. So the wealthy men wore the hair of women and upwardly mobile men wore the hair of horses. I wonder when they realised that the whole thing was quite daft...
   
   
4. I have been known to bake bread in one of those little electrical ovens you can buy now that produce little bricks of often tasty bread using cunning timer programs that do all the work of kneading the dough. At Rockingham Castle, kitchen staff baked bread in the shape today known as that of a cottage loaf; it was not sliced vertically, but horizontally. The bottom was used as plate because it was most likely charred or dirty from the over, and the top crust was given to the family, and the middle crust was eaten by servants. So, those who served came to know their Masters and Mistresses as the Upper Crust.