It's a Fairfax House Christmas, by George!
A chance to see how the Georgians celebrated Christmas.
There will be a photocall on Thursday 30 November at 10am when Lord Fairfax will be drinking ‘burnt’ wine from the steaming wassail bowl and enjoying his Christmas desserts and celebrating the opening of the “Keeping of Christmas” exhibition.
Plum porridge, pulptoon of pigeon, peacock pie ….swags, garlands and wreaths of evergreen sprouting on every side – a visit this festive season to Fairfax House, the acclaimed Georgian town house museum in York’s Castlegate, will roll back the years to an 18th century country landowner’s Christmas in the city.
At Fairfax House from 1 December to 31 December 2006, the special exhibition “The Keeping of Christmas, England’s Festive Tradition 1760-1840”, transforms the already handsome house of Viscount Fairfax and his daughter, Anne, into a series of glowing, be-decked interiors, inviting its visitors to savour the spirit of Christmases past, complete with costumes, carols and Christmas music, a display of Victorian toys and a demonstration of traditional garland-making for the Christmas season.
The sumptuous displays take in the Fairfax family’s dessert course on Christmas Day 1762, documented in the Fairfax papers and with not a Christmas pudding in sight – this had already been served in the form of plum porridge ‘soup’, as a first course! The forerunner of our plum pudding, the soup was a mixture of beef or mutton broth, brown bread, raisins, currants, mace, cloves and ginger and can be spotted in the boiling pot in the kitchen.
The dining room table has the look of a garden in miniature, with its ground plan of green parterre hedging in sugar enclosing a selection of elaborate sweetmeats and classical statues, also of sugar. The original ‘sweeties’ would have been the work of the Parisian confectioner, Monsieur Seguin, of Minster Yard in York, whose delicate and realistic winter flower arrangements in sugar were always a great talking point, as to whether they were in fact ‘conceits’ or the real thing. (The 18th century aristocracy actually preferred artificial flowers.) M. Seguin advertised his wares, ‘wholesale or retail, at the most reasonable prices’, in the York Courant – the forerunner of the “The Press”.
Elsewhere, a handsome Yorkshire Pie, price £1.16s. in 1764, with its ‘strong walls’ containing pigeon, partridge, chicken, goose and turkey, has pride of place on the Christmas Day breakfast table, alongside a great Cheshire cheese and minced chicken and spice pies. Some of these are left over from the previous night’s celebrations. White roses strewn on the table of this Catholic family symbolise the nativity and the Virgin Mary.
As well as patronising local shops and traders, as evidenced in surviving invoices and receipts, the hospitable Fairfaxes drew regularly on fresh produce and game from their 20,000 acre estates at Gilling Castle, some twenty miles north of York. From there, the ‘odd man’ of the house, Matthew Robinson, journeyed frequently to York during the winter with ‘The Basket’, heaped with carp from the estate ponds, pigeons, pheasants, venison, goose and peacock. The Christmas kitchen at Fairfax House shows some of The Basket’s contents now prepared ready for the dining room table.
The kitchen, where a holly sprig adorns each pane of window glass, contains a special decoration seen nowhere else in the house – the Kissing Bough, in ancient north country tradition, of candles and evergreens atop a ring of apples and hung with mistletoe whose pagan links made it unacceptable in the rest of the house. Among the profusion of evergreens throughout the rest of the house is the earliest English Christmas tree, a holly decorated with candied fruit and paper swirls, a religious farmyard scene at its base.
Fairfax House Director and exhibition organiser, Peter Brown, comments: “Lord Fairfax and his daughter were generous hosts during the winter season, renowned for the quality of their table and cellar. We want our visitors to have a flavour of their festivities by giving the look of rooms ‘holding their breath’ for the celebration of Christmas to begin – as sure as if the wassail bowl were about to arrive, steaming, at the door!”
ENDS
Press Contacts:
Peter Brown
Tel: 01904 654443
Email: peterbrown@fairfaxhouse.co.uk
or
Melanie Paris
Tel: 01904 647408
E mail: hello@melanieparis.com
Editor’s Notes
•More images and a booklet to accompany the Exhibition are available on request.
•The official ‘The Keeping of Christmas’ photocall will be on Thursday, 30 November 2006 at 10.00am. Picture opportunities outside that date and time will be accommodated whenever possible, by prior arrangement.
•Fairfax Opening Hours are as follows:
Monday - Thursday and Saturday 11.00-4.30pm
Sunday 1.30pm to 4.30pm
Friday Guided Tours only at 11.00am and 2.00pm (House closed 24, 25 & 26 December 2006)
Charges:
£5.00 adult
£4.00 concessions
Children under 16 free if accompanied by an adult
Plum porridge, pulptoon of pigeon, peacock pie ….swags, garlands and wreaths of evergreen sprouting on every side – a visit this festive season to Fairfax House, the acclaimed Georgian town house museum in York’s Castlegate, will roll back the years to an 18th century country landowner’s Christmas in the city.
At Fairfax House from 1 December to 31 December 2006, the special exhibition “The Keeping of Christmas, England’s Festive Tradition 1760-1840”, transforms the already handsome house of Viscount Fairfax and his daughter, Anne, into a series of glowing, be-decked interiors, inviting its visitors to savour the spirit of Christmases past, complete with costumes, carols and Christmas music, a display of Victorian toys and a demonstration of traditional garland-making for the Christmas season.
The sumptuous displays take in the Fairfax family’s dessert course on Christmas Day 1762, documented in the Fairfax papers and with not a Christmas pudding in sight – this had already been served in the form of plum porridge ‘soup’, as a first course! The forerunner of our plum pudding, the soup was a mixture of beef or mutton broth, brown bread, raisins, currants, mace, cloves and ginger and can be spotted in the boiling pot in the kitchen.
The dining room table has the look of a garden in miniature, with its ground plan of green parterre hedging in sugar enclosing a selection of elaborate sweetmeats and classical statues, also of sugar. The original ‘sweeties’ would have been the work of the Parisian confectioner, Monsieur Seguin, of Minster Yard in York, whose delicate and realistic winter flower arrangements in sugar were always a great talking point, as to whether they were in fact ‘conceits’ or the real thing. (The 18th century aristocracy actually preferred artificial flowers.) M. Seguin advertised his wares, ‘wholesale or retail, at the most reasonable prices’, in the York Courant – the forerunner of the “The Press”.
Elsewhere, a handsome Yorkshire Pie, price £1.16s. in 1764, with its ‘strong walls’ containing pigeon, partridge, chicken, goose and turkey, has pride of place on the Christmas Day breakfast table, alongside a great Cheshire cheese and minced chicken and spice pies. Some of these are left over from the previous night’s celebrations. White roses strewn on the table of this Catholic family symbolise the nativity and the Virgin Mary.
As well as patronising local shops and traders, as evidenced in surviving invoices and receipts, the hospitable Fairfaxes drew regularly on fresh produce and game from their 20,000 acre estates at Gilling Castle, some twenty miles north of York. From there, the ‘odd man’ of the house, Matthew Robinson, journeyed frequently to York during the winter with ‘The Basket’, heaped with carp from the estate ponds, pigeons, pheasants, venison, goose and peacock. The Christmas kitchen at Fairfax House shows some of The Basket’s contents now prepared ready for the dining room table.
The kitchen, where a holly sprig adorns each pane of window glass, contains a special decoration seen nowhere else in the house – the Kissing Bough, in ancient north country tradition, of candles and evergreens atop a ring of apples and hung with mistletoe whose pagan links made it unacceptable in the rest of the house. Among the profusion of evergreens throughout the rest of the house is the earliest English Christmas tree, a holly decorated with candied fruit and paper swirls, a religious farmyard scene at its base.
Fairfax House Director and exhibition organiser, Peter Brown, comments: “Lord Fairfax and his daughter were generous hosts during the winter season, renowned for the quality of their table and cellar. We want our visitors to have a flavour of their festivities by giving the look of rooms ‘holding their breath’ for the celebration of Christmas to begin – as sure as if the wassail bowl were about to arrive, steaming, at the door!”
ENDS
Press Contacts:
Peter Brown
Tel: 01904 654443
Email: peterbrown@fairfaxhouse.co.uk
or
Melanie Paris
Tel: 01904 647408
E mail: hello@melanieparis.com
Editor’s Notes
•More images and a booklet to accompany the Exhibition are available on request.
•The official ‘The Keeping of Christmas’ photocall will be on Thursday, 30 November 2006 at 10.00am. Picture opportunities outside that date and time will be accommodated whenever possible, by prior arrangement.
•Fairfax Opening Hours are as follows:
Monday - Thursday and Saturday 11.00-4.30pm
Sunday 1.30pm to 4.30pm
Friday Guided Tours only at 11.00am and 2.00pm (House closed 24, 25 & 26 December 2006)
Charges:
£5.00 adult
£4.00 concessions
Children under 16 free if accompanied by an adult