Gladstone's Land

Today we went on a field trip with Tawny all around New Town and Old Town. It was a lot of walking. ONe of our first stops was Gladstone's Land, an old tenement building that has been restored to look like its natural state, well as much as it can.

I love museums and places like this so I was excited. It was actually very educational and informative. All of the tour guides in each room were little, old Scottish ladies and they were so cute and hilarious. They said that some of these tenements could reach eleven stories high if you counted from the back. One thing we learned was that often times each floor would have sand in between them to prevent the spreading of fires. It's amazing these buildings even stayed standing.

The first floor was the shop, and they had the colors of the different dyes they used back then. Then we went up a spiral staircase into a small room that was something like you'd describe a study today. All of the large dressers, and bureaus and such had hidden nooks and crannies to store valuables and money in. Sometimes you would have to knock on it a certain way. The kitchen was pretty small. The maid, and if she had children, would typically sleep in there on a pull out bed. We also got to see the shoes that women wore over their shoes so that the hems of their dresses wouldn't hit the ground. The front multipurpose room was the coolest. It had the original ceiling and wall paintings still on it and that was incredible (faded of course). There was a creepy walker for a child. I was shocked at how ornate the bed was. People back then would entertain people in their bedroom. This place was so tiny, but this was where one of the wealthier families would have lived.

The back room was restored to a much later date and was an entertaining room. Here we learned where the saying "her face fell off" came from. Women's makeup had a wax base, so when they say by the fire their faces would literally melt off. There were screens that women could sit behind to prevent this.