Living history

They are still learning about America's first colony.

To bring all that history back to life, we now head over to another part of Jamestown, the Living History Museum at Jamestown Settlement.

Here, costumed interpreters immerse you in the life of the earliest English settlers, including the baker who likely had a couple of roosters to keep him company during those long days of baking for the entire town.

So all of the, I think what's interesting is that all of this had to be shipped over in the early days.

This is where all the goods coming into the colony from the port were taxed.

But, of course, Yorktown is historic for another important event, the American Revolution.

You can experience Yorktown's role in the war at two locations, Yorktown Battlefield and the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, where there is another living history museum with enthusiastic costumed interpreters.

The Outdoor Living History Museum will help you to experience what life was like for the soldiers here.

been creative.

So I've been doing some work overseas for the British Council consultancies, you know, about living history.

I did something called Living History, which again was built out of the experience of Basham Fair.

In a nutshell, we worked out that if we We could pretend that a place like Orford Castle hadn't fallen down, but it hadn't yet been built.

Therefore, we organised a building site as if it was 1113 and brought children in groups to work there for the day in medieval costume and cook and do everything.

All that spun out of Barsham Fair living history.

So I was being sent by the British Council around the world to do things.

Blimey.

Historically speaking, this wasn't that long ago.

I mean, to us, this is living history.

This is not archaeology.

This is not a distant thing, right? But they look at the Palestinian as an archaeology, as a thing of the past.

This is the back end also of what happened to get this style to the museum.

It's an

exhibition of a living history, and it's allowing people not just to be passive recipients of history, but also to take part of it.

Many of the prompts are questions for people to actually answer, not

Enjoy today's episode.

A Living History Production

I'm Peter Hart.

And I'm Gary Bain.