Mrs Hudson Says... January 2022

Every month, Mrs Hudson, along with her three children and Dinky the Irish Wolfhound investigate the best family and dog friendly heritage attractions that the UK has to offer.

Read on to see where the Hudsons have been this month.

This year, the Hudson household has decided that we want to experience everything that our great country has to offer and so we have pledged to find somewhere new to visit every month – after all, how can you be proud of a nation you don’t know much about? That’s what my oldest, Florence, says anyway – she’s quite precocious and becoming even more so with every passing year. For me, I’m just keen for us to do more as a family before the kids get too old to think hanging out with their mum is cool.

Though we intended to jump into our year of adventures feet first, we didn’t get as much done in January as we had intended. With the wet and cold weather and the kids all being tired after heading back to school following a long Christmas holiday, it was difficult to get out and about but we did manage to have some fun over the past month.

The twins, Elwood and Bertie, were learning about ancient Egypt last term and excitedly told me that the anniversary of Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun was coming up, so we decided to head into London and visit the British Museum. Not only is it free to enter, but it is home to the largest collection of Egyptian artefacts outside of Egypt!

As we live in Wiltshire, trips to London aren’t too strenuous, especially now the children are a little older. As always, we made our regular stop off at Stone Henge, something we always do when travelling towards the capital.

Admittedly, the kids aren’t as interested in the stones as they once were, but it was still nice to hear Florence lecturing her brothers about the stone’s mysterious origins!

The boys loved the trip to the museum and very much enjoyed explaining the different relics that they recognised from school to us – so a good start to our year of adventures!

As we were in London, we thought we’d make a weekend of it and be tourists for the day to explore some of the places we’d not been to before. Florence has gotten really into the Tudors recently thanks to getting a couple of books about Henry VIII and Elizabeth I for Christmas and as the boys had their day on Saturday, we let her pick our destination for Sunday. Of course, we’ve done the infamous Tower of London before and we didn’t quite fancy the trip out to Hampton Court (maybe next time), so Florence settled on Syon Park, one of London’s last great houses. It was previously a monastery, but after Henry VIII dissolved them during the reformation, it became a family home. Florence was particularly excited to learn that Henry VIII’s funeral procession spent the night there on his way to his final resting place.

The house later passed into the ownership of a certain Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset who would go on to be the main advisor to Henry’s son, Edward VI and was the brother of his third wife, Jane Seymour. All three of the kids were fascinated by the house’s history, particularly the stories about the English Civil War and gazed in wonderment around the gardens trying to imagine the battles that took place there.

After a busy weekend in London, we wanted something a little quieter for the rest of the month, but I felt bad that Dinky was left out of our adventuring and no doubt Dinky felt bad too after being repeatedly told about the cats of ancient Egypt.

To finish off the month, the five of us bundled onto a train and headed into Salisbury for the day. The kids always love wandering around the streets and looking at the various historic buildings and Dinky loved having the chance to run around on the green outside the cathedral.

Now to get planning for February’s adventures!