Tewkesbury is a town with a wonderful architectural heritage. It is also full of surprises and hidden alleys. On the main road and overlooked by the Abbey there is a row of medieval houses, in the middle of which is the John Moore Countryside Museum. Just opposite is one such surprise: up a narrow alley there is the country's oldest Baptist Chapel and burial ground, which in its turn developed inside a medieval hall house.

It was in this unusual but appropriate building that the ladies of The Guild set up their tudor businesses. It was appropriate because the overhanging gallery enclosed much of the ground floor and gave us the atmosphere of enclosed rooms. Beth the weaver plied her spinning wheel producing linen thread that could be woven into material for shirts and shifts. She also explained about different fleeces and helped children discover for themselves how to draw a thread from raw wool. There were different methods of weaving on display, and both children and adults had a go at using weaving sticks. 

Mistress Eleanor Spencer not only modelled the latest fashion, an indication of the success of her spice business, but she also held visitors' attention as the told the tales her sailors had brought back of their adventures in search of rare and exotic spices and flavourings. The tall - and taller- tales helped to justify the alarming price of items like pepper and nutmegs which today we take for granted.

But Alys was responsible for the smell on which many visitors remarked. Like the chemists but without the packaging, said one visitor. All along the front of her apothecary's shop were bunches of herbs waiting to be dried and blended into cures for everything from sore throats to painful feet. The bizarre and mysterious rubbed along with old herbal lore, some of which we are rediscovering today . The doctrine of signatures and the need for balance in the humours was also explained to visitors.

We were invited to Tewkesbury as guests of the John Moore Museum and the town's newest visitor attraction, the heritage centre called Out of the Hat, and we would like to thank everyone involved in this joint initiative for making us so welcome.