| AnnieGray.co.uk | Contact Annie Gray

Consultancy: Historic Food Provision

In addition to cookery demonstrations, in and out of character, I can also provide edible and inedible food for interpretation.

This adds an often significant sensory element, in the shape of smell, and helps with the overall credibility of the visitor experience. One of the most common assumptions when faced with food seems to be that it is plastic!

Past food provision includes:

• Tudor pie and jelly for schools workshops at Oxborough Hall (for Hands on the Past)
• Victorian wedding cake (for Audley End)
• First World War estaminet food (event in costume as part of a living history display at the Festival of History, 2011)
• Medieval food for the Tower of London Christmas event, 2009 & 2010.
• Victorian raised pie, medieval great pie and Jacobean cut lid tart for the Great British Bake Off (BBC2, 2010)
• Tudor Food for Past Pleasures: three dishes prepared to withstand rough handling as part of a ‘meet Ann Boleyn’ event at Stoke Museum.
• Victorian pie for Audley End House: one raised pie prepared for publicity photographs for the ‘Service Wing Alive’ project.
• Victorian High Tea for a private party: thirteen C19th dishes and one enormous fruit cake.