Guernsey Press

Castle Cornet gets creative with big activity weekend

CREATIVITY was king at the Castle over the weekend to remember the days before televisions and computer games.

Published
Rory, 10, and Esther Tolcher, 7, at the Guernsey Museums Creative Castle event at Castle Cornet. They enjoyed trying out the camera obscura that had been set up in the clock tower. (Pictures by Andrew Le Poidevin, 29907416/8)

Castle Cornet hosted live music, interactive displays, dance, film and photography.

Visitors were invited to take part in the first ever castle art trail, which included a camera obscura, an arts and craft room, a draw it yourself dragon art class, and a digital arts installation.

Rory Tolcher, 10 years old, was taking it all in.

‘We’ve looked at the obscura camera, you have to put your face in and then it turns your face upside down,

‘And we’ve been to see the soldiers, their main food is bread and meat.

‘They don’t like peas, and they drink beer.’

In the barrack room there was shove ha’penny, cribbage, dominoes and cards, but the main focus was food.

Russell Doherty, who was dressed as an off-duty soldier, circa 1880, said people were always fascinated to hear about their diet.

‘Meat and bread were the major part of a soldier’s ration.

‘A soldier would get between one lb and two lbs of bread per man per day, and he would get at least one lb of meat per day in theory, and that would be substituted, plus or minus, with dried beans, peas etc.’

‘I’ve been doing this for over 30 years and the one thing that stands out now is people’s interest in food.

‘It’s the one thing we all think about, our daily bread and daily meals.

‘So we’ve honed in on that aspect of soldiering because we know it’s always going to interest people.’

One of the castle keepers, David Malledent was showing around his young grandson Arthur Walsh.

‘Part of the arts festival is that we’re dressing up in period costume from 1880, we normally wear these uniforms for setting up and firing the canon.

‘Arthur has never heard the canon before so we’re not quite sure how he’ll respond to that, but he’s thoroughly enjoying his trip.

‘He’s 18 months old, and we last saw him when he was a week old, so it’s a special reunion.’