News from the Castle

The Hay Castle Autumn Newsletter is out and, despite the problems of working during a pandemic, they have quite a lot to report.

The first thing is that the lift shaft has been installed in the tower.  It will connect with the different floors of the Castle and go up to a viewing platform at the top of the tower.

The roof is still being worked on, and when that is finished it will be possible to do more work on the interior of the building.

Emily is running workshops to make costumes, to be used when the Castle is finally able to open to the public.  I've already had a lot of fun talking to her about 13thC clothing, and I'm hoping to go along to at least one of the workshops.  

The introductory session is on Saturday November 21st, in the afternoon, and then  the workshops where the costumes will actually be made will be held on Saturday 16th January, Saturday 20th February and Saturday 20th March.

They are also looking for interesting fabrics to make the costumes from, especially things like velvet, satin, cotton and braids and trims suitable for noble clothing, in rich and natural colours.  They will need to be hard wearing because of the handling by the public that they will receive, and machine-washable.

The authentic fabrics for the period are wool, linen and (just coming in, all the way from China) silk.  Cotton was another luxury fabric of the period.  Patterned cloth was unknown, and so were buttons and (of course) zips!  Fortunately 13thC fashion was mostly of the loose, pull-it-on-over-your-head variety.

Another fun project is Hay Castle in 100 Objects, which the Castle is sharing on Facebook.  So far they've had a trebuchet ball, a HAY car bumper sticker, and the War Memorial, among other things.

Meanwhile on Twitter they are sharing excerpts from Kilvert's Diary, 150 years on.

On Instagram, they are sharing some of the historic photos of the Castle.

They also have two new Trustees.  Fiona Howard was head of Hay School and on Hay Town Council, including periods as Mayor.  Chris Fyles is a recent resident of Hay, having moved here from Cornwall eighteen months ago.  He has experience of being a Charity Trustee from his time as Trustee of the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum near Penzance. 

In the gardens, the yew trees on the terraces above the Honesty Garden have been clipped by a team of volunteers.

And Cosmic Carrot have been designing a short piece of animation to introduce visitors to the characters who have lived in the castle.  The idea is for the animation to be projected on the walls of the cellar, which are not the smoothest or whitest surfaces, but they've managed to produce something that can be projected onto the rough stone walls.  The narration will also be in Welsh and English.