Period Features

Christmas Opening Hours

We shall be closed from Christmas Eve till the 4th January inclusive. We wish all our valued customers a very Happy Christmas and Prosperous New Year. The website will be open 24hrs but orders will not be despatched until we return.

Home Spun Christmas Ideas

For 100+ ideas for a home spun traditional Christmas visit www.allaboutyou.com With suggestions for making decorations, cards, gift wrapping, advent calendars, ideas for table settings and home made gifts, there is bound to be a project here that will keep younger members of the family busy in the lead up to Christmas!

A Letter From Father Christmas

There's still time to order a personalized letter from Father Christmas for the young people in your life - or at least the young at heart! The letter includes the person's name, their age, where they live, what they would most like for Christmas and details about something nice that they have done this year. The letter arrives in a Christmas red envelope marked 'Mail From Father Christmas' with the words 'The North Pole Mail Room' at the top, closed with a gold embossed Father Christmas Seal. The letter itself is tied with red velvet, and contains a small envelope with some special 'Magic Dust' to assist Father Christmas in knowing where they would like their presents left on Christmas Eve. Or it can be sprinkled on the doorstep to guide Father Christmas to the correct house. Available for £5 from www.mailfromfatherchristmas.co.uk

China Matching Services

Do you have a home full of former 'sets' of china, glass or cutlery? Perhaps these do not get used as much as they once would because you no longer have a set? China matching services have been around for some years but the Internet makes it even easier to search for those items that will allow you to make up a full set once again and bring out your much loved family china, silver or glass for the festive season.

For china matching try the longstanding www.chinasearch.co.uk, offering not only a buying and selling service for dinner services but also making good use of all those odd items by selling mis-matched tea services of a tea cup, saucer and plate, in delightful vintage styles from the 1920s onwards, for just £10 or a set of six mis-matched tea plates for £10 Mismatched vintage cups and saucers would make wonderful planters for small plants indoors or outdoors or even as a quirky gift! Also available are both large and small cake stands in a variety of styles and a selection of glass cake stands, candle sticks, dishes and bowls that have many uses around the home from sweets and cakes to storing and displaying jewellery and soaps. www.chinamatchers.co.uk also offers a matching service for glass and cutlery too. China matching services are not limited to the famous names of Wedgwood, Doulton, Spode and Poole, you will also find BHS, Marks & Spencer and Tesco among the lists. If an item is not in stock most services offer to search for the item for you free of charge without any obligation to make a purchase. Many items, even from well known manufacturers, are just a few pounds each so a matching service can be a good way to bring your china, glass or cutlery back into use.

Condensation

This is the time of year that many homes suffer from condensation. www.heritage-house.org considers how we can get rid of this problem without resorting to desperate measures!

One of the things we often see in old houses is water streaming down windows in winter and collecting in pools on the window ledge. This is because the rooms are not able to breathe - the air is not circulating and able to get away, and the warm, moisture laden air thus releases moisture on the windows. The commonest problems with old houses that stop air circulation are listed below:

• Installation of plastic (UPVC) windows with no ventilation
• Ventilation bricks blocked up
• Fireplaces blocked up with no ventilation
• Draught excluders around doors
• Lack of ventilation to cellars

By tackling each of these problems, air circulation will dramatically improve, and far from making the house colder, will actually make it warmer, because there will be a lot less moisture in the air. If you have a cellar, the best way to dry it out and stop the dank smell is to fit a ventilation grille to the door, with a little electric extractor fan (bathroom type) on a timer switch, which is fitted to the outside wall near the ceiling of the cellar. This operates for an hour or two a day, and draws warm, dry air from the house into the cellar, and pushes cold, damp air out from the vent fan to the outside. Read more at www.heritage-house.org/condensation.html.

Rent a living tree this Christmas

Have a live tree delivered right to your front door. It's fun, it's easy and it's great for your home and environment. All you have to do is choose a tree you like and then trees for rent will do the rest, by delivering it right to your door and then after Christmas, they will come and pick it back up.Trees for rent has been established to help make your Christmas be as environmentally friendly as possible.

By renting a live pot grown tree that can carry on growing outside after the Christmas period, you are not only saving a tree from being destroyed but helping the natural ecological system of wildlife that can use this tree for the rest of the year.

The trees have been graded, cared for, pruned by hand and fed supplements of sea weed to keep them in top condition.

The idea is to rent the tree for the Christmas period so that the tree can return to its field to help combat carbon dioxide emissions, thus helping the environment.

Visit www.treesforrent.com for more information.

Cleaning Encaustic Tiled Floors

From The 1860s geometric and encaustic tiled floors started to appear in public buildings, churches and the more expensive Victorian villas. Their rise to fashion was assured by their use in such prestigious buildings as the Victoria and Albert Museum, and by the 1890s they had become an essential feature in the most ordinary Victorian terraced houses from Dover to Aberdeen. As well as adding prestige and colour to a Victorian hall, they were also remarkably practical. Although it’s improbable that the average Victorian builder gave much thought to the lifespan of such a feature, it is a fact that most domestic interior tiled floors have survived 100 years of family wear and tear. With a little care, they will probably be good for another 100 years. There can be few other floor finishes that offer such durability, while looking so good.

Although these floors fell out of fashion during the 1960s and ’70s, when many of them were covered over, they are now being rediscovered by their present owners and restored to former glory. Although many need a significant amount of work carried out, around nine out of 10 are generally repairable.

PeterThompson is Restoration Consultant for Original Features (Restorations) Ltd. He has been examining and reporting on Victorian and Edwardian tiled floors for 11 years and has overseen restoration work to around 1,000 tiled floors and pave-ments, including a ten week project at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2003.

You can contact Original Features direct and request a copy of their Tile Cleaning Guide www.originalfeatures.co.uk

Visit Leek This Christmas

Not all of our products are available on the website but here is still time to visit our wonderful period shop before Christmas. We have worked hard to realise a traditional ironmongers in the lovely market town of Leek on the edge of the Peak District. We are open from 10am to 5pm Monday to Saturday. If you are planning a journey to visit us you might like to tie it in with events happening in the town to celebrate the Christmas season: Friday 11 December sees Leek's Living Nativity from 6.30pm and Saturday 19 December - Christmas Fine Food Market all day. For more information on any of these events visit www.visitleek.co.uk

Visit Father Christmas in Lapland (Kent)

There is also still time to visit Father Christmas in Lapland - Lapland in Kent that is www.laplanduk.co.uk This British version of the more exotic trip abroad to meet Father Christmas has no connection with last year's Lapland in the New Forest and, despite some criticisms for being expensive, has received good reviews in the national press for the quality of the experience. It does cost up to £87 for each adult and child but as all the activities, gifts and a two course meal is included in the price it is still arguably less expensive that the overseas alternative and better for the environment. There is even an Eeko Elf on hand to explain the importance of the environment to the children! Activities include making gingerbread with Mother Christmas, helping the elves in the toy workshop, ice skating and writing and posting a letter to Father Christmas and, of course, a visit to Father Christmas's cabin to meet the man himself and receive a present. There is currently a last minute buy two tickets and get two free offer available on telephone bookings made before 11 December. Call 0871 221 9627.

Christmas Markets

Christmas Markets in the UK were very popular until Oliver Cromwell banned the celebration of Christmas in the fashion people had become used to and this affected the Christmas Markets which died out instantly. There were of course many markets in Britain during the Victorian era which would sell Christmas related products and foodstuffs in the run-up to Christmas but they were not known as Christmas Markets.

Lincoln in the East of England was the first UK Xmas Market to be revived and from small beginnings is now in its 26^th year.

UK Christmas Markets often have continental themes bringing over French, German or Italian traders. There are traditional German markets in London, Bournemouth, Canterbury and Glasgow.

Xmas Markets in the UK can be found in all sorts of venues ranging from town centres to stately homes. Some happen just over a weekend and others last for six weeks or more.

Visit www.christmasmarkets.com/UK.html for more information.