Tudor kitchen

Also in a Tudor house, the kitchen is the most fun to make. I was content with the kitchen as it was after I had painted the walls and the fireplace and started filling the kitchen with furniture and utensils.

I consulted my book on Tudor dollhouses about the kind of kitchen tables they had. Tudor kitchen tables were made of trestles with boards on them, not fixed so that they could be put away when not used. They had holes to hang on hooks on the wall. Masters would put notices on the board for the servants - hence, notice board. The trestles came in many shapes, such as the comb trestle, which is what I made. (Two weeks before, I had no idea what a trestle was, still less a comb trestle. You learn so much when making a period house).

With the table, the kitchen looked like this: 

 

The dark shelf on the right is something I had before; it was a wall shelf with a set of porcelain kitchen tools. These went to the Victorian house, but the shelf was too large. Now it fit here as a dresser. I made the bench by the window from bits of wood.

However, on further investigation I realised that a Tudor kitchen would not have this kind of fireplace. They would have an inglenook. By this time I was so confident that I made an inglenook with instructions from a book. It was a lot of work, but I am very pleased with the result. I removed the old fireplace (and later used it elsewhere) and built in a whole new wall of cardboard. I had to sacrifice three centimetres of space behind this wall, but otherwise I would have to break the outer wall of the house.

 

I added details described in books, such as the oak beam for mantelpiece, fireback (an unidentifiable buckle I bought at a flea market), horse brasses, pot crane, chopping block and meat hooks. My dollhouse discussion group said the hooks looked too modern so I changed them later. I also wanted to make a rotating spit, but it took me some time to figure out.