Christmas through the ages at Rufford Old Hall
As you sit down to tuck into a traditional turkey lunch on Christmas Day, have you ever thought how our ancestors marked the festive season? At Rufford Old Hall near Ormskirk they’ve delved into the past to find out.
Rufford is one of Lancashire’s finest Tudor buildings – it’s magnificent Great Hall the scene of many feasts and festivities. It also has a beautiful Victorian interior and it was when she was planning Rufford’s Christmas programme this year that Catherine Hazley, Rufford’s Visitor Services Officer decided to link these two historical periods with the theme of festive food through the ages.
Christmas with the Tudors
“Christmas was the greatest festival celebrated by the Tudors” says Catherine. Advent was a time of fasting with no meat, cheese, eggs or dairy products being eaten – although you could get around this by drinking milk made from almonds.
In Tudor times, the entire 12 days of Christmas were celebrated (25 December – 6 January) and all work stopped. People would visit friends and it was seen as very much a community celebration. Most of the 12 days were Saints’ Days – the most important being Christmas Day, New Year’s Day and 12th Night (6 January). On these days the most sumptuous feasts were held, and left over food used to feed the poor.
At Rufford Old Hall, Lord Hesketh’s Christmas guests would on arrival have been greeted with the Wassail Bowl – ‘wassail’ means ‘good cheer’ or ‘good health’ and took the form of heated cider or ale. Pieces of toast were floated in the drink which contained spices, nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon and cloves. A single cup (not the bowl) was shared between guests and it’s from where we get the phrase ‘To toast someone’. A slight variation on the drink was Lambs’ Wool Ale made from hot ale with spices to which were added roasted apples. These caused the ale to froth resembling lambs’ wool – we think this was more a drink for servants rather than lords and ladies!
In the Great Hall there would have been a Banquet Table at one end to which family and special guests were invited. Everyone else would sit at tables laid out around the sides of the hall, generally depending on your rank – the higher you were in society the closer you were to Lord Hesketh’s table.
The centrepiece of the Christmas Day meal would be the Boar’s Head which would be garnished with rosemary and bay and would have been carried into the Hall ceremoniously before being presented to the diners. Other food would have included been a selection of meats such as mutton, pork, veal, ‘souse’ (pickled pig’s feet and ears) and the Tudor Christmas Pie. The latter was an extraordinary dish in which a turkey was stuffed with a goose stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a partridge stuffed with a pigeon – and all put in a pastry case called a ‘coffin’. It was then surrounded by jointed hare, small game birds and wild fowl. Imagine working your way through that!
Out of the entire festive period the most important day was Twelfth Night – 6 January. The banquet for such an occasion would have been a show stopper with the centrepiece being the Twelfth Night Cake. Traditionally, a gold coin or ring was baked into the cake. The idea was that whoever found the prize within their piece would preside over the evening’s festivities. If it was a man, he would be the King of the Bean, if it was a woman, the Queen of the Pea and they could do more or less whatever they wanted for the day.
These names originated from poorer households that couldn’t afford to bake gold into the cake, and thus used a pea or a bean instead. This tradition is still maintained in France, where a coin or a small gold figurine of the Christ child is baked into an almond tart.
If you were wealthy, as were the Heskeths of Rufford, one of the ways you showed off your wealth was through sugar. This was immensely expensive – and consequently if your Christmas or Twelfth Night table was loaded with sweet things you were communicating the fact to your guests. Marchpane, made of sugar and almonds and similar to marzipan today was used to make ‘fruits’ which were gilded in natural colours – beetroot for red, saffron for yellow and woad and saffron for green. A Marchpane cake painted and gilded with real gold leaf was often the centrepiece of the table and would have cost a considerable amount of money: in addition to sugar, almonds and saffron were also very expensive.
Other delacies on the Tudor dessert menu would include Maids of Honour, crystallized ginger, fudge (made from sugar, milk, raisins nuts and angelica) and ‘Leach’ – made from milk, gelatine, rosewater and sugar and much like Turkish Delight today”.
Christmas Victorian style
It’s during the Victorian period that the dinner we now associate with Christmas began to take shape, as Lynne Mills, Rufford’s House and Collections Manager explains: “After attending church on Christmas Day morning, the Heskeths would return to Rufford for Christmas dinner.
Evergreens, flowers, and the best china and linens would have graced the dining room table: Christmas wasn't the commercial occasion that it is today – it was more about food than gifts, because what you gave to one another or to your friends was a feast.
When the Heskeths sat down to Christmas dinner, it would have been a pretty sumptuous affair. There would certainly have been a turkey or perhaps roast beef, and Christmas pudding – and in more affluent homes such as Rufford, the family would have enjoyed a clear turtle soup for starters.
Festive menus varied according to country and region - these ranged from roasted goose, standing rib of beef with Yorkshire pudding, a boar's head, turkey, ham, oysters, dressing, potatoes, cranberry pie, mince pie, and plum pudding. When Victoria came to the throne, the centre piece of the Christmas feast in the northern counties of England was most likely to be roast beef, whilst in the south it was turkey or goose. Later the popularity of turkey took over as its size meant it could feed a large Victorian family gathering! (The turkey was first introduced into Britain in the 1520’s and Henry VIII was among the first people to eat it as part of the Christmas feast).
The serving of the pudding was one of the great rituals of the Victorian Christmas dinner; indeed it was almost as much a ceremony as the pudding’s actual creation! Made up of suet, bread crumbs, raisins, and spices, the plum pudding was a family effort. On Stir-Up Sunday at the beginning of Advent, as was the tradition across the country, each Hesketh family member would take a turn a beating the pudding, making a wish, and stirring clockwise for good luck. Then a ring, coin, or thimble was tossed into the batter. Until Christmas Day the pudding hung from a sack, then it was boiled in beef broth for eight hours. After dinner it was turned out on a platter, topped with a sprig of holly, set alight, and carried into the dining room.
Lord Hesketh as head of the household would have sliced and served it, asking a blessing on all who prepared it. Biting into the portion with the ring meant marriage; the coin, wealth; and the thimble, a happy but single life.
Another Christmas favourite of the Victorians was sugar mice – they were everywhere – as Christmas tree decorations, on the festive tea table, and were given as presents to children. No Victorian Christmas was complete without them!”
A taste of Christmas at Rufford today
If you visit Rufford over the Christmas period today, you won’t be tucking into a Boar’s Head or turtle soup. Instead, cook Carla Maloco is working on a traditional winter soup, a warming Lancashire Hotpot with local red cabbage on the side, homemade mince pies and a delicious assortment of cakes for hungry visitors.
“Mince pies were initially made from meat, a tradition dating back to Tudor times” says Carla.
“Lord Hesketh and his family would have enjoyed ‘minst pyes’ during the 12 days of Christmas. But unlike our pies, theirs held religious significance and included 13 ingredients representing Christ and his apostles. The ingredients typically consisted of dried fruits, spices and mutton. In Victorian times however there was a bit of a revolution and mixes without meat began to gain popularity leading to the sweet mince pies we make today”
Like our Tudor and Victorian ancestors at Rufford, our tradition is to use locally sourced produce whenever possible.
“Our meat comes from butcher DC Scotts – which has been a family business established in Ormskirk in 1923 by Donald Cameron McCloud Scott – great great grandfather of Anthony McCloud Scott who runs it today. We buy diced lamb for our Lancashire hotpot, and a range of cooked and sliced meats. Just down the road from Rufford is Causeway Farm Shop. This started trading in 1928 and became established in 1931 – so we’re now on the fourth generation. The Halton family pride themselves on offering 10 different varieties of potatoes and 25 lines of brassicas, all of which are grown in their own fields.
Lancashire cheese is of course on our menu and we use our own apples and pears from Rufford’s orchard which we put in our fruit pies and crumbles. In the summer our small veg plot grows parsley, herbs, chives, rosemary, radishes, beetroot, courgettes and squash”.
You can see examples of Christmas food through the ages as part of Rufford’s ‘A Magical Family Christmas’ taking place on weekends, 6/7, 13/14 and 20/21 December.
Staff and volunteers will be in Victorian costume, there’ll be a huge musical organ in the courtyard, Punch and Judy and of course Father Christmas will be visiting. You can make origami Christmas trees and cards to take home and listen to a special Peter Rabbit Christmas story. On the final weekend (20/21 December) there’ll be donkey rides in the paddock and for the first time all the rooms in the Hall (except the sitting room) will be open.
Click here to find out more about visiting Rufford Old Hall this Christmas time.
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