York Museums Trust Blog

If you like Christmas pudding, head over to York Castle Museum where they’re making them nearly every day until Christmas Eve!

Liz mixing the wartime recipe pudding

Liz Page, one of the guides doing demonstrations of three historic recipes, said she was enjoying it so much she intended to make one at home.

“I have always made my own cake but this year I’m thinking of making a Mrs Beeton puddingl!”

Each day (apart from three special event days on December 3, 11 and 12) visitors can see watch ingredients being weighed and mixed, smell the aromas of cinnamon, orange peel and brandy, and then – the best bit – have a taste of the finished pud.

Liz weighing out brown sugar for Mrs Beeton's recipe

Liz said the firm favourite with the public was the Mrs Beeton pudding from her recipe book of 1923, and second favourite was medieval Frumenty, which she had been surprised by as it was a bit different, more like a porridge consistency, but flavoured strongly with cinnamon. Last, but not least, was the Second World War rations recipe, using powdered egg.

“There’s been a really nice atmosphere and it’s going down really well with visitors – but it’s a traditional thing isn’t it, making a Christmas pudding. I’m really enjoying it!” said Liz.

There are recipes to take away or you can download two of them here by clicking on each of the images below:

The Christmas pudding making in the museum’s Kitchen Studio is part of the Christmas at the Castle month at the museum. Visit our website for more information.

The aroma of roasting coffee will be wafting down the galleries of York Castle Museum during our Georgian week as our staff and volunteers demonstrate the art of roasting green beans from scratch and brewing up some Regency-style concoctions.

Coffee expert Sadie Hopkins from York Coffee Emporium has been into the museum this week to pass on some tricks of the trade and talked us through how beans change from green, scent-less beans, through to the dark brown, rich-smelling beans we are much more familiar with, as they are roasted.

Sadie Hopkins shows how to roast green coffee beans in our Kitchen Studio

This is how beans were always roasted from scratch when coffee was first drunk in Ethiopia and the Yemen, but as consumption increased and became popular across Europe during the 1600s and 1700s, the process became more mechanised.

By the Georgian times, coffee was often roasted in containers hung over open fires, with  most Europeans buying their coffee ready-roasted by the original suppliers or by merchants.

These days coffee beans can travel thousands of miles from their origins in Columbia, Indonesia or Ethiopia, to be roasted, often in Europe, before being shipped elsewhere to be packaged and distributed.

At the other end of the scale, small businesses such as Sadie’s specialise in importing green beans, then roasting and packaging them to order all in one place.

The green beans before roasting

Starting to go brown...

A bit browner still...

Starting to look like coffee beans

Finished - the roasted beans

Lucy Knock, our assistant curator of social history learning, has been doing masses of research into the history of coffee and has found that coffee has been credited with some powerful effects over the years. 

The early Yemen coffee drinkers knew it kept them alert during religious practices, but in the 1600s many believed it could cause impotence, sterility and barrenness. In 1674, a group of London women tried to get coffee banned as they were worried about men drinking it in coffee houses!

By the Georgian period, the main function of coffee houses was to act as a centre for serious discussion, reading newspapers and doing business - and for simple gossip - and they were exclusively a male preserve.

Next week we will be letting some lucky visitors see how the beverage could have tasted in these coffee houses, and will be heating up freshly-ground beans with water in a large pan on an open fire. Come and taste it if you dare!

Find out much more in our Kitchen Studio over half term. For dates and times visit our website.

Our senior guide Denise Hamilton helps stir the beans!

Take a look inside the walls of the new-look Yorkshire Museum in this clip from M&H Online, the website of Museums and Heritage magazine. Lee Clark, our media co-ordinator, talks about what we’ve been doing to improve the museum as well chatting about new offers for visitors like our Kids Go Free scheme.

The galleries are filling up at the Yorkshire Museum as we approach opening day on Sunday.

Here’s our moa skeleton, still partially wrapped up, in place in the Extinct gallery.

Along the wall of the same room a puffin, a red squirrel and a grey squirrel share a wall with a collection of brown and black rats!

Meanwhile, in the Medieval York gallery, our four statues from St Mary’s Abbey stand waiting patiently for opening day…

The Yorkshire Museum’s new Extinct gallery is now being populated with fossilised, skeletal and stuffed birds and animals – ready for our reopening on 1 August!

Pip Strang, assistant curator of biology, is pictured, top left, with one of our Great Auks, and, right, with our selection of Dodo bones which have been mounted with a manmade skull. These feature in a section on relatively modern extinction stories.

Below is an image of a huge whale skull which is suspended from the ceiling and at the other end of the room a lion skeleton sits high up on a ledge, as if leaping out over visitors’ heads. Both these animals are featured to highlight conservation efforts to save them from decline.

Over in the Roman York gallery, staff and volunteers have been busy installing objects into an area devoted to activity before the Romans arrived in York, in the Neolithic period, Bronze Age and Iron Age. Jackie Logan is pictured, bottom left, filling a case with Neolithic flints.

One of the display cases will be open so that visitors can pick up pieces of sharpened flint tools and Natalie McCaul, assistant curator of archaeology, is pictured with one of these larger flints, bottom right.

Natalie, incidentally, is also the photographer behind the atmospheric images of the northern English landscape used as the backdrop for this section – which you’ll be able to see in full when we reopen on 1 August!

The new Roman York gallery at the Yorkshire Museum is coming to life as more and more artefacts and displays are installed in time for our reopening on 1 August.

Here are some pictures of what visitors will be able to do while they walk round. First is the chance to mint coins inspired by a coin featuring Severus, the African emperor who lived in Eboracum (York) for three years. The second picture shows our map of York – visitors will be able to lift flaps around the city to find out what archaeologists have found where.

And finally here’s just a portion of what is sure to be one of the most popular parts of the Roman gallery – the chance to walk on a real Roman mosaic.

Roman gravestones and sculptures are being brought back into the Yorkshire Museum this week to take pride of place in our new Roman York gallery. Panels of text and colourful photos of Roman mosaics and statues are also appearing around the walls and the whole place is looking like a new museum already!

Earlier this week Mars, God of War, was put into position in the Central Hall, see pic below. Stonework was being put in place around the walls, including a piece of a statue of Neptune, the God of the Sea, riding on his chariot. Andrew Morrison, head curator, is pictured putting it into place, in front of an image of a Roman mosaic showing the same scene.

Pictured centre right is the gravestone to Lucius Duccius Rufinus, a French standard bearer of the Ninth Legion, in the next section of the Roman York gallery,as our exhibition fitters discuss the best position for him.

Another gravestone was being brought in at the same time by Geoff Hutchinson and Dave Evans who are pictured pausing a while to look at the lettering, which tells of the sadness felt by the father of Corellia Optata, who died at the age of 12. The final picture shows some of the next section of the Roman York gallery.

Our inscription to the famous Roman Ninth Legion has now been put into place in the Central Hall of the Yorkshire Museum, which reopens on 1 August, 2010. 

The mysterious Ninth Legion has been the subject of many stories after its soldiers apparently disappeared after travelling to Scotland to fight the Picts. Our inscription is the last dated record of them and dates from AD 107-8. It was found in York and celebrates the building of the south east gateway to the city’s fortress. The skill of the letter cutter suggests he was probably imperially trained.

The inscription has been positioned above a Roman gateway, which will hold a screen giving a sneak preview film of our six citizens of Eboracum – Roman York. These various characters feature later on in a trip around the museum and their stories have been created using evidence from skeletal remains found in York and the surrounding area. Here’s a picture of the inscription and the gateway taken from above:

Downstairs the Medieval Gallery is nearly ready for our array of Anglian, Viking and Medieval treasures to move in. Now that the space is clear, the windows exposed and the floor covered, the sunlight really does light up the arches of the ruined St Mary’s Abbe

Painters, decorators, shopfitters – they’re all hard at work now preparing our Yorkshire Museum galleries to be filled with fascinating things to see once we reopen on 1 August.

Here’s three pictures taken yesterday showing:
1. painting the room which will hold our dinosaur footprint trackway (you can see it at the far end of the room surrounded by spotlights);
2. a frame going up to hold three huge sea reptile fossils - the ichthyosaur, the plesiosaur and the pliosaur;
3. a lone Roman fresco already up on the wall as fitters get to work on part of the Roman York gallery.

After a few weeks of building work (and there’s still a little bit of work left to do!) our new shop and cafe have opened at York Castle Museum

They’re both now next to the entrance area looking out across the Eye of York towards Clifford’s Tower.

The shop has lots of new stock including vintage-style enamelware, retro style souvenirs and nostalgic gifts featuring old-style adverts.

The cafe has some gorgeous-looking cakes on sale as well as sandwiches, soup and hot meals, and healthy snacks for hungry kids.

If you’re passing, why not pop in and have a look – there’s no admission charge to get into the shop and cafe area (and remember admission is free for York residents anyway!).