Page 1109 - Reading Mercury

Many readers will know her as Madame Za, the great mystic reader of the tarot
cards at many town fetes and fayres. She is also a familiar face at Martin’s Pool where
she swims four times a week but every summer Bea, of Elms Road, Wokingham
changes. She takes off her jewellery, wipes off her make-up and pulls on a cloth cap, a
dress smelling of roast pig and starts talking funny.
Kentwell Hall!
Unlike other ladies aged 73, Bea does not look forward to a quiet summer holiday
but rather a hot, busy two weeks in a Tudor kitchen as Mistress Bet, the dragon cook,
of Kentwell Hall. She, along with 200 volunteers takes part in a reconstruction of
history at an old Tudor hall in Long Melford. All the volunteers live and breathe life
as it was in the days of Tudor England. Right down to the language quoth Bea.
They also use Tudor-style tools and artefacts and have authentic accessories of all
kinds. The unique feature is that those participating never leave their Tudor roles so
that visitors feel they are meeting figures out of history.
According to Bea the funniest thing about it is the people who come and see you.
They pull at your clothes and help themselves to the food when you aren’t looking.
But Mistress Bet is not a lady to be taken lightly. If she sees anyone helping
themselves to a swift bit of Tudor tart, she roars at them. And if anyone dare suggest
that she should take her apron along to the laundry she plays ignorant. After all who’s
ever been to a Tudor laundry?
Bea started spending her summers in a different world three years ago when she
spotted an advert in the national press. From then on she has never looked back as she
convincingly portrays a chief cook in Tudor times. Everything about the set up is as
authentic as possible—even down to the gossiping in the kitchen among the servants.

1988
Thur 21st Jan
TOWN SAYS OUI TO FRENCH CONNECTION
Wokingham townsfolk said “Oui, s’il vous plaît” to plans to twin with the Paris
suburb of Viry Chatillon at the weekend. Some 340 signatures in favour of twinning
were collected prior to this week’s public meeting called to hammer out if the town
should—after seven years of discussion—set up a French connection. The response
has left the chairman of the town twinning association Elsie Hudson feeling
optimistic.
Wokingham Town Council is the only authority which can formerly set up twinning
links with another town and it is the council which will make the final decision. Talk
of Wokingham twinning with Viry Chatillon in a tri-partite twin with Erfstadt was
mooted in July 1979.

rd
Thur 3 March
MAYOR GREEN GETS A VIRY WARM WELCOME
This time next year Wokingham will be twinned with the French town of Viry-
Chatillon. Wokingham’s Mayor, John Green and Deputy Mayor, Fred Clark have just
returned from a weekend visit.
Viry-Chatillon is about 18 kilometres south of Paris, just South of Orly. During their
stay both visitors from Wokingham liked what they saw. Unfortunately a previous
attempt to link with the town ended in disaster when a member of the Twinning
Association, Victor Forsythe, likened Viry to Fulham or Wandsworth.

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