Award Winning Re-Creations at Kentwell
The First and still the Foremost
Kentwell's Re-Creations of Tudor Domestic Life are the most outsatnding evocation of the Tudor Age in the UK. The most authentic Tudors in a most authentic Tudor setting.
Kentwell's WWII Re-Creations are a rare exercise in nostalgia showing how WWII impacted upon civilian life.
Tudor Re-Creations
Tudor Re-Creations - Kentwell offers a unique opportunity for both Schools and also the General Public to see how a Great Tudor House might have been lived in, operated and sustained a community in its heyday in the 16th Century.
In these Re-Creations, the first of which took place in 1979, Kentwell's Tudors bring the 16th Century to life for visitors, young and old. Schoolchildren and visitors need little (if any) knowledge of the period to enjoy their visit.
Innovation
The novelty of the Kentwell approach was that it concentrated upon everyday domestic life rather than battles, which living history events at that time usually featured.
What Kentwell started in 1979 others now follow, but few other places, even today, have such an unrivalled location, as many Tudors, as great a range of activities to match the scale or breadth of Kentwell Tudor Re-Creations.
Children
Kentwell has always focused on making its Re-Creations accessible to schoolchildren. The Great Annual Re-Creations by their 25th year in 2003 had then been visited - and hugely enjoyed - by approximately half a million schoolchildren. Kentwell has probably the biggest schools programme of any Historic House in East Anglia, accessible to all schoolchildren in the region. Schools are encouraged to bring children in costume (for which Kentwell provides visiting schools with easy-to-follow instructions to make). Children thus feel part of the Re-Creation - not mere spectators.
Awards to Kentwell
Kentwell's Re-Creations have received several Awards, not the least being the contribution the Re-Creations made to Kentwell being declared Heritage Building of the Year for 2001. This Award is gained only by the UK's foremost Historic Buildings. Kentwell joined an elite body.
WWII Re-Creations
WWII Re-Creations - The WWII Re-Creations were started in 1995 partly to celebrate Kentwell's role as a huge transit camp when requisitioned during WWII and partly because there seemed to be few major events to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of VE Day. That first WWII Re-Creation, 1945 Re-Lived, was very large with many 1940s vehicles and hundreds of Participants, representing both the military and civilians. It stretched Kentwell's resources and energies to the very limit. No attempt has been made to repeat the scale of it.
Instead, Kentwell has developed three quite different WWII Weekend Re-Creations each year. Each has its distinct theme. They are smaller than the original 1945 Re-Lived but each still enables visitors to indulge their own, or their parents' (or grandparents'), nostalgia for those, now distant, times.
Whatever the Period
Whatever the period, whatever the year, Kentwell's aim is to bring that period, and that year, to life as authentically as possible through the dress, speech, activities, historical events and atmosphere of the time.