News

Dealing with loneliness: A guide from the experiences of Mrs Smith.

Mrs Smith outside the cottage
Mrs Smith standing outside the cottage

Even when she received multiple visitors most days Mrs Smith often felt lonely.  We know this from letters she wrote, and things said to her very closest friends. These feelings would occur in the evenings when her last visitors had left and she spent another evening by the fire with her TV for company, or worse when she had no visitors at all that day.

Loneliness is a very common feeling, and everyone will experience it at points in their life. The elderly, single parents, people with disabilities, and those who have recently moved to new communities (possibly far away from their old homes) are particularly vulnerable to these feelings which, without support, can lead to depression or anxiety.

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Mrs Smith in 12 Objects

To help visitors understand the character and story of Mrs Smith’s life, we want to select 12 objects which represent her best. We have asked lots of people who knew her to nominate objects and dug through the collection to find those objects that reveal how Mrs Smith lived throughout the year. These will be on display in the Visitor Centre when we reopen spanning the 12 months of the year.

We need your help to select the last object for the month of May.

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Egg Box Museum Competition

Over the last week we have been spending a little more time in nature, encouraging everyone to celebrate the signs of spring. To follow this we have put together a competition, where you could win yourself a family ticket to Mrs Smith’s Cottage (when we reopen).

We want you to go on a walk, either in your garden or to a local green space, and fill an egg box with items you find interesting. It is important to follow social distancing rules, staying in your family group and staying 2 metres apart from other people, washing your hands as soon as you get home.

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Making Food go Further

With current restrictions it is important that we are all able to make the most of the food we buy, making use of items before they start to go bad and storing food to make it last as long as possible. This not only reduces our impact on waste collection teams, but will also reduce the number of times we need to go food shopping.

Mrs Smith wasted very little food, always making sure to use what she had in the house. Unlike most of our homes today Mrs Smith never invested in a fridge or freezer and was still using her meat safe in the 1990s. Eating seasonally was a large part of this, along with the creation of many different kinds of preserves.

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Friday Craft Tutorial

We are delighted to bring you our first Friday craft tutorial led by Nicki Jarvis, our artist in residence. This week she is sharing how she makes the small weekly diaries she uses to record her time spent at the cottage.

This craft has been inspired by Mrs Smith’s diaries. She wrote something in her diary everyday, making a note of what she did throughout each day. Including information about who she spoke to, what she ate, what she watch on TV, and what she planted in the gardens.

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