I love this little library that was not in a big house, but in a middle-class farmhouse! Of course it now appears as a scene set in Treacle Moon!

This small family library contains some of the National Trust’s most valuable possessions.

The middle-class farmhouse lifestyle that is preserved at Townend in the Lake District, England, has meant that some extremely rare books have been preserved.

These books were not expensive when they bought, this family were well off but not rich. These are books that would have been purchased from travelling sellers who brought such luxuries as ribbons, lace and other treats to the door or market.

They were general reading almost pamphlets. Things like Romances. In the same style as those that published the story of Harriett Wilson, the courtesan who inspired the Marlow Family Secrets Series. In most households these books were lost long ago.

In the pictures below is one of the books, ‘The Crafty Chamber-maids Garland,‘ and the full information about this and other books is available on the National Trust website link below.

It’s also lovely that the stewards told us the family obviously read the books as part of their daily life. The pages have food stains, grass stains and even paw prints on them.

http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/3074726.8

Have you ever heard of Macon?

The settings in my next historical book Treacle Moon (which is available on June 23) move from Rome, Italy, to a house on the edge of an English Village Green. Townend Farmhouse was one of the settings used to research this old way of life.

At Townend Farmhouse, which is in the Lake District, England, there is a preservation of a middle-class way of life that is a wonderful step back in time. In the kitchen, above the fireplace, actually within the chimney, they have placed some linen wrapped packages to show visitors how the family used to dry and smoke meat to store it. I assumed they were hams. But the family were sheep farmers and therefore the meat they cured was mutton (from sheep), not pork, and the dried meet they ate was called Macon…

I have not put this in a book, it would take too much explaining as most people will never have heard of it. Ha. Ha. 😆

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/townend