Back in Time

Ludlow Castle, we go every year for the medieval fayre. The Knights greet us at the door and mead and authentic food is served. We climb the castle, to see the view, the reason why it was built.

To see the enemy coming. 

It's lovely to see the Castle full of people and learning even if they don't know they are!  Modern people are cut off from life. They may not think so, but they have an easier time than Medieval folk.  Hawking is cruel - one woman said - with nothing to go on but seeing this falcon asleep on it's perch. Hawking was for sport and food.

Breeding dogs over and over and throwing the mother dog still alive in the wheelie bin when she can no longer produce - that's cruel and that's today.

 Kinights and a lady discussing the day's events.  A teenage girl asked "Who made the ladies armour?"  Women weren't Knights came the answer. "No, really who made the women's armour?" she asked again.

Because Hollywood films have changed History by equalising women and men, young girls like this do not realise the frustration and struggles that medieval women had. 

They had to keep the household, make sure enough food was stored over the winter to last until spring, make clothes, tapestries. Treat wounds and ailments and in the case of lower class women work on the fields and in the byres, and have and care for children and their husbands.

Yes it's right women have equality now. I was one of the women who fought for it. This is my time, my history. But it wasn't like that in medieval times, where a woman could be sold as a wife, or the Lord of the Manor could claim "first fruits" the virginity of a maid.

My latest book  The Kings' Men is about the Legend of the Rollright stones, Knights bewitched into rocks. The research has been interesting to say the least.  History is made every day, we don't have to change the history of the past. There's a danger in that, the struggles and wars for what we have today forgotten.