Christmas at the Red House

The Telegraph and Argus brings us news from the Red House and its Christmas events. Try not to miss them if you're in the area!

Regency Christmas at Red House was a quiet, family affair. While taverns around the area were filled with ale-fuelled sing-alongs, the Taylor family preferred low-key festivities, with a slice or two of medlar jelly, a helping of whim-wham, carols at the fireside and maybe a game of charades with the children. Two hundred years later, the customs of an early 19th century Christmas continue at Red House Museum with a week of period decorations, festive food, craft activities and a Christmas Past exhibition launched tomorrow.
The Regency Christmas Festival allows visitors to experience festive celebrations from a simpler age, before the Victorians turned them into a commercialised affair.
Walking into the hallway, I’m greeted with evergreen garlands of holly, ivy, rosemary and laurel woven around the banister up the staircase. Taking centre stage is the kissing bough – a traditional decoration from before Christmas trees became popular in England. If you stand underneath it long enough, your Regency beau might appear… In the kitchen there’s a selection of delicious-looking sweet-and-sour 19th century dishes, including Hedgehog Tipsy Cake, Whim-Wham – a trifle with cream, wine, lemon and redcurrant jelly – brandied grapes, almond shamrocks, pearled fruit and medlar cheese. A medlar, I’m told, is a fruit from the apple family, popular in the 19th century, that is left to go rotten before being used to make jelly or cheese, eaten in slices. There’ll be samples on offer to taste.
Also on the kitchen table is a huge round plum pudding which would be carried, aflame with brandy, to the dining room after a roast goose Christmas dinner. ‘Henrietta’ the cook will be giving cookery demonstrations throughout the festival.
In the dining room there’s a huge Yorkshire Christmas Pie, filled with goose, and 1830s-style mince pies made with puff pastry. Upstairs is a fascinating journey through 200 years of Christmas, from lace-trimmed greetings cards to a Bayko building set. The Christmas Past exhibition is a delightfully nostalgic exploration of festive customs and traditions, featuring Victorian and Edwardian Christmas cards – and cards sent by soldiers in the First and Second World Wars – stocking fillers through the ages, 1840s Christmas crackers, glass baubels and 1950s decorations.
The 20th century toys on display include a David Nixon magic box, The Victor Book For Boys 1971, a box of tiddlywinks and a Rubik’s Cube. Many items on display have been loaned by local people. I was delighted to see a Tiny Tears doll like the one I had as a youngster. Mine didn’t actually cry because she’d been passed down from older cousins, and somewhere along the line her eyes had been poked in.
Nestled among the toys is a stocking filled with oranges and nuts, symbolising the simpler Christmas gifts of times past.
For older visitors, the exhibition will bring back memories of Christmas past, and for younger ones it’s an insight into how the festive season was celebrated before the days of frenzied shopping sprees, mass-produced mince pies and the EastEnders Christmas special.
Costumed staff will show visitors how to make Regency and Victorian Christmas trimmings, including almond and raisin garlands and gilded walnuts, and family craft activities will include making a Victorian-style Christmas card or ‘scrap’ tree decoration. Tomorrow, the Clifton Handbell Ringers are putting in an appearance, and next Saturday the Valley Flutes will be playing. On Sunday, December 21, Victorian parlour magician Chris Black will round off the festival with traditional card tricks, along with carol singing group Gaudeamus.
The pretty red-brick house, built in 1660, was home to the Taylor family, cloth merchants and manufacturers. “There was no splendour but there was taste everywhere,” wrote Charlotte Bronte about the house. A friend of Mary Taylor, daughter of the house in the 19th century, Charlotte was a frequent visitor and featured the house as ‘Briarmains’ in her novel, Shirley.
Red House itself looks much as it would have in Charlotte’s day. Each room brings you closer to the 1830s, from the elegant parlour to the stone-flagged kitchen with its range and colourful crockery.
The stained glass windows, described in Shirley, are preserved in the dining room, and the 19th century garden has been lovingly maintained, with authentic varieties of plants and shrubs.
Further up the garden is a barn housing an exhibition on Charlotte Bronte’s Spen Valley connections, and in the restored cartsheds is the Spen Valley Stories, re-living old schooldays and the days of Teddy Boys, dance marathons and street parties through the pictures and mementoes of local people. (Emma Clayton) (Picture source)

And if you are not in the area... well, you can still have a Brontë Christmas!

Categories: Art-Exhibitions