"Up Them Fields", and What was Found There
The Riches of Blackden

An illustrated talk by Alan Garner

Saturday 10^th March 2012 at 3.00 pm

The Methodist Church, Holmes Chapel
Knutsford Road, CW4 7DE

The Friends of The Blackden Trust have organised this talk to launch the 2012 season of events. After the talk there will be stalls and displays relating to both the Trust and to the Friends, when you will be able to book places for our events at reduced ‘Early bird’ rates.

Refreshments will be available.

Fee: £5.00

Tickets can be purchased in advance from:

Mrs Kettle's General Store, 168 Main Road, Goostrey, CW4 8JP

J. Chetham Ltd, 38 London Road, Holmes Chapel, CW4 7AJ

Amarya, 109 King Street, Knutsford, WA16 6EQ

Use the link below to read more about the speaker:

Dr Alan Garner, Author

Finding Your Voice
A three part creative writing programme for aspiring first time novelists.

Part 1 - Saturday 14^th April 2012
1.00 am – 4.30 pm
Introduction

Part 2 - Individual writing to be delivered by
Friday 23^rd June 2012

Part 3 - Saturday 21^st July 2012
1.00 – 4.30 pm
Troubleshooting

Tutor: Elizabeth Garner

Always felt you had a good story inside you but don't know where to start? Then this is the course for you. You need no previous experience; just a desire to write and a willingness to share work in progress.

Writing a novel takes more than just a good idea. It's a process that requires determination, hard work and lots of practice. This course will be an introduction to how to structure your story and develop your individual style; in short, how to write your novel on your own terms. It will also teach you a few "tricks of the trade" useful for combating the notorious writer's block.

Tutored by award-winning novelist and professional freelance editor Elizabeth Garner, this is an intimate course which will provide you with practical support and the opportunity to meet other aspiring writers.

It is structured in three parts, over a fourteen week period. By the end of the course, you will have the first chapter of your novel written, and your book outline planned.

Part 1 - Introduction
You will learn how to turn that initial spark of an idea into a story outline, with an awareness of the genre you are writing in.  We will work together on the core elements of character development.  In addition, we will be discussing how to make sure you write what you really care about, as oppose to second-guessing any commercial criteria. 
We will end the day with a group writing exercise to get you started.

Part 2 - Individual writing
You will have ten weeks to write the first three chapters of your novel and a story outline.  You will submit your work to Elizabeth Garner by Friday 23^rd June for a professional edit.
You will receive an individual feedback on your work before Part 3.

Part 3 - Troubleshooting
This will be your chance to share your experiences of the writing process.  We will discuss the issues raised by the submitted work, and Elizabeth will share some tips on how to maintain the writing process and get your novel finished.

Drinks and biscuits will be served during the afternoon sessions.  

Use the link below to read more about the tutor for this course:

Elizabeth Garner, published novelist, screen writer and script editor

Open Day

Saturday 19^th May 2012
10.30 am – 3.30 pm

Visit the Tudor Old Medicine House in its ancient setting.

There will be a range of activities to give you a taste of the variety of opportunities offered by The Blackden Trust: demonstrations of Tudor herbs and spices; period music played on instruments of the time; artefacts relating to the house and site to be puzzled over; a taste of archaeological skills in the washing and dating of pottery sherds found in the garden and surrounding fields; a chance to buy replica pottery based on those sherds; and tours of the Old Medicine House and garden.

Refreshments will be available.

Parking 1/4 mile from the house.  Approach to Old Medicine House along a farm track.  Limited disabled parking on site.  

Herbs: their cultivation and uses
A new perspective on herbs
How to grow herbs and how they were used in the 16th century

Saturday 23^rd June 2012
10.00 am – 4.00 pm

Tutor: Sue Hughes, Elizabeth Musgrave

Spend a day looking at how herbs were used in history and learning how to grow and care for them today.

The morning session starts with a tour of the Old Medicine House, a stunning Tudor building once used by an apothecary. Sue Hughes, will talk about how herbs were used in medieval and Tudor times. You will be able to handle the herbs and make a “tussie mussie”.

In the afternoon session you will spend some time in our recently planted herb garden and see how many herbs you can identify. Elizabeth Musgrave, will then take you through how to grow a variety of herbs with tips on soil preparation, use, propagation and care.

The whole day will provide plenty of hands on experience in an inspirational setting. A day with a real difference.

Please bring a packed lunch. Drinks and biscuits will be served during the day.  

Use the links below to read more about the tutors for this course:

Sue Hughes, Museum Director, Grosvenor Museum, Chester and Chair of Cheshire Museums Forum
Elizabeth Musgrave, gardener, writer, blogger

Archaeological Training Excavation

Monday 20^th - Friday 31^st August 2012
10.00 am – 4.00 pm

Tutors: Mark Roberts, Richard Morris

This third season of excavations will concentrate on characterising, dating and explaining traces of outbuildings that appear on maps from 1789 and disappear by the end of the 19th century.

A survey of 1789, the Tithe Map and first edition of the Ordnance Survey show a long building that lay aslant and across the south-western boundary of the site as it exists today. However, the maps disagree as to its position, the boundary has itself been adjusted, and none gives enough detail to suggest its function.

Other buildings mapped in 1789 stood in the curtilage of the house.

In August 2009 the Trust undertook a small exploratory excavation to locate the 'long building', using methods and with results about which you can read in our reports page. In 2010 the area of study was extended, revealing a line of structures and features. Work was resumed in August 2011 with results that indicated a structure mainly built of timber on an unmortared masonry substructure, and increasing evidence for recycling of raw materials (such as glass) across the site. The 2011 campaign also examined a small length of a potentially ancient land division that appears as a crop mark on air photographs. The boundary was deeply cut, becoming a hollow way by the 17th/18th century and abandoned c.1900.

The plan for 2012 is to sharpen dating and understanding of uses for the structures and principal features so far revealed, and to examine one or more of the other outbuildings to obtain dates and ascertain their uses.

The work is open to anyone over the age of 16 who would like to gain experience of archaeological excavation. Beginners are welcome. A rebate is available for those who have dug with us before.

The dig will be led by Dr Mark Roberts (Institute of Archaeology, University College London) and Professor Richard Morris (University of Huddersfield). The tuition ratio will be 1:4.

Use the links below to read more about the tutors for this course:

Richard Morris, Professor of Conflict and Culture, The University of Huddersfield
Mark Roberts, Principal Research Fellow, University College London

Open Day

Saturday 15^th September 2012
10.30 am – 3.30 pm

Visit the Tudor Old Medicine House in its ancient setting.

There will be a range of activities to give you a taste of the variety of opportunities offered by The Blackden Trust: demonstrations of Tudor herbs and spices; period music played on instruments of the time; artefacts relating to the house and site to be puzzled over; a taste of archaeological skills in the washing and dating of pottery sherds found in the garden and surrounding fields; a chance to buy replica pottery based on those sherds; and tours of the Old Medicine House and garden.

Refreshments will be available.

Parking 1/4 mile from the house.  Approach to Old Medicine House along a farm track.  Limited disabled parking on site.  

Who do you think you are?
Sources for your past and place: how to find them, how to use them

Saturday 29^th September 2012
10.00 am – 4.00 pm

Tutor: Professor Richard Morris

Discovering who you are involves tracking down and combining different kinds of evidence - wills, names, relationships, occupations, census and tax records, old newspapers, pictures, things that people made, tools they used, clothes they wore.  Further back, archaeology and its auxiliary sciences are all we have.

Such work is challenging; this course introduces you to how it is done. As an example, we shall set out to find who has been living in Toad Hall for the last four hundred years: who they were, where they came from and what they did. In the process we shall meet members of history’s silent majority and ask: how can we find out about the millions of ordinary people in the past who wrote little or nothing about themselves, and about whom few surviving records were kept?

The day will make use original documents, and materials discovered during the archaeological training excavations undertaken since 2009, and will culminate in disclosure of the scientific dating of Blackden's oldest-known occupant so far.

Please bring a packed lunch. Drinks and biscuits will be served during the day.  

Use the link below to read more about the tutor for this course:

Richard Morris, Professor of Conflict and Culture, The University of Huddersfield