Caring for your homemade drum

Craftsman, musician, and living history practitioner Lewis Beck gives some advice on how to care for drums made with him during our drum making workshops, using steam-bent birch wood and ethically-sourced goat hide. You can check out all our workshops here.

CARE

• Do not leave your drum near any source of intense direct heat for an extended period.

•  The drum head will contract and release depending on the temperature and humidity. If it sounds ‘slack’, simply place your instrument in a warm, dry place.

•  Never leave the drum face down.

•  Clean with a slightly damp cloth.  

•  If you feel like the outside temperature might over-tighten your drum, simply insert a damp washcloth, or spray it with a water bottle.

•  Use Shea Butter, saddle soap or any other leather conditioner to keep it from drying out and protect it from cracking or splitting over time. Remember, add it sparingly!  

Painting

Your drumskin is a brilliant canvas and will hold vivid colours with ease. Here are a few tips for decorating:

•   Only start decorating when the skin is dry.

•   The biggest killer for creativity is hesitation! Trust in yourself and your capability.  

•   Watercolour (Paint and Pencil): Beautiful, vibrant, and easily applied. Just remember to add water sparingly! Coat with acrylic sealant once dry after application.  

•   Acrylic: A good all-round medium. Apply in thin layers with precision. Coat with acrylic sealant once dry after application.  

•   Permanent Ink: Can be used precisely and does not require an acrylic seal. However, it is not forgiving with mistakes!  

REPAIRS

We understand that damaging a loved instrument is a stressful experience, but by following these simple steps, you should have your instrument back to playing order in no time!

Before you start:  

•  What you need:  

-   Patch of goat rawhide

-   Superglue

-   Medium grit sandpaper  

•  Assess the damage to follow the correct repair guidance.

• Please Note: This repair may lead to a minor change in sound to your instrument

Tears / Rips (Up to 5cm length):  

1) Cut out a section of the patch provided slightly larger than the area of the tear.

2) Lay the instrument face first on a level surface.

3) Apply the adhesive to the patch and press flat against the damaged area from INSIDE the instrument.

4) After the adhesive has settled for approximately 1 minute then lightly sand the affected area with the sandpaper provided. The mix of adhesive and skin dust should create an artificial scar.

5) Once dry, use the sandpaper again to even out any imperfections on the skin.

Holes (Up to 1cm diameter):

1) Cut a section of the patch provided to the size of the hole (Patch A).

2) Cut a second section of the patch provided slightly larger than the area of the hole (Patch B).

3) Lay the instrument face first on a level surface.

4) Apply the adhesive around the perimeter of Patch B and press flat against the damaged area from INSIDE the instrument.  

5) After the adhesive has settled for approximately 1 minute, flip the instrument face up.  

6) Place a thin layer of adhesive to Patch A, then place against the front of Patch B.

7) After the adhesive has settled for approximately 1 minute then lightly sand the affected area with the sandpaper provided. The mix of adhesive and skin dust should create an artificial scar.  

8)  Once dry, use the sandpaper again to even out any imperfections on the skin.

 For any further enquiries, please email us at: Leofric.Designs@Outlook.com  

Win a free family ticket!

This summer, go on a time-travelling adventure at Butser for the chance to win a free festival family ticket! Explore the ancient past, learn skills you’d need to thrive, put your knowledge to the test, and enter our competition to find who’d fare the best. The winner will receive a free family ticket to our festive Midwinter Quest, where you’ll be whisked away on a magical journey through winter folklore.

Read on to see how to enter the competition!

Time-travelling adventures this summer

Get in your time machine and discover how you’d get on in the ancient past! Can you find all five secret symbols scattered through time?

Report for duty as a time traveller to collect your Time Passport and start your adventure… Fill out your passport as you learn ancient skills, explore the past, and go digging for archaeology to put your knowledge to the test.

FREE ACTIVITIES EVERY DAY!

Get hands-on and learn eight new skills over the summer in free hands-on workshops for kids and adults alike.

• Every day: Go digging for archaeology 📿

• Mondays: Create chalk art using flint 🎨

• Tuesdays: Make an ancient sun disk pendant ☀️

• Wednesdays: Learn to spin wool 🧶

• Thursdays: Weave willow stars ✨

• Fridays: Learn to braid the Viking way 🪢

• Saturdays: Have-a-go pottery 🏺

• Sundays: Make ancient rope from grass 🌾

Visiting more than once? With our summer 20% discount on annual passes, they’re cheaper than two trips!

Win a festive family ticket

We’re giving away a free family ticket to Midwinter’s Quest! This Christmas, swap Santa’s grotto for the firelit den of the Deer Queen, or the evergreen hall of the Holly King, and go on a magical adventure through festive folklore.

Here’s how to enter:

1. Join us any day during the summer, and start filling out your Time Travel passport

2. Complete your passport by having a go at ancient skills — you can join us for free drop-in workshops, or have a go at home

3. Show us a photo of your completed passport on Facebook or Instagram. Don’t forget to tag us and use the hashtag #ButserSummer to be sure we see!

4. We’ll enter you into a prize draw for the family ticket, and announce the winner on social media

TIP: If you include a picture of you at Butser or having a go at any of the activities, we’ll enter you into the prize draw twice — that’s twice as many chances to win!

We look forward to travelling through time with you! Terms & conditions apply.

Interior Design Project at Dunch Hill Roundhouse by the ‘Experimentalists’

Margaret Taylor, volunteer Butser librarian and member of the Experimentalists volunteer team, shares an exciting look at the team’s recent projects at Butser.

1300 – 1000 BCE. We are on Salisbury Plain, at Dunch Hill. There is a round house, or at least it seems to be, at first sight, although it may be a stores building. We see a small settlement, where the inhabitants are growing domesticate crops; Emner and other wheats and barley. They have also domesticated sheep, cattle, pigs and horses. This small farm is set in landscape with fences and other field boundaries, with natural woods and grasslands.

We know very little about this house, if in fact it was a house, as this was not necessarily the case in a community settlement, and there wasn’t even evidence of a floor or hearth. In fact, everything about this house is experimental, as the only evidence was the post holes.

This is an ideal project for the Experimentalists, a title suggested for us by John Briggs, of our volunteer team, led by Maureen Page. I joined the volunteer team in late September last year, and am thoroughly enjoying being a member of the group. Since then, we have completed our felted draught excluder for the Danebury Iron Age round house (see The Felters publication below), and a cow/deer skin covering for the Mesolithic shelter. We have also begun working upon deer skins, and we will learn to tan them over the coming months, under the expert eye of Jess, Butser’s workshops and ancient crafts mastermind. However, we are now turning our attention to Butser’s Bronze Age house, from Dunch Hill.

Our aim is to make the house look more homely. First the bed needs to be made more comfortable. We have made a straw mattress, tying together bundles of straw. We completed this in the sunshine of a Thursday morning in early July, with the assistance of Nutmeg, the lovely baby goat. She was quite keen on nibbling the straw, and decided that the best place to have a nap was inside one of the big plastic dump bags!

At the same time other members of our team were breaking up lumps of chalk and making up a ‘paint solution’, mixed with water and applying them to the walls. These will then be painted with artistic interpretations of bronze age designs.

Our next project is to learn how to make a sheep’s wool mattress with a peg loom. We know that our Bronze Age ancestors would have used wool. However, very little evidence has survived, and to find out more about Bronze Age textiles, I read the absolutely fascinating accounts of the lake dwelling houses at Must Farm. Information on this is available in the two open access publications on line (see below), and can be downloaded onto your chosen personal device. They have found evidence of looms and spindle whorls on site but not surprisingly, the catastrophic fire at the site, and the sinking of the houses into the lake has not enabled woollen textiles to survive.

All for now, until the next update  - and Maureen has some exciting ideas for us!

If you’re interested, try reading…

Article on Must Farm at Historic England

The Must Farm Pile Dwelling publications - both volumes are fascinating. Volume 1 provides an overview and Volume 2 provides the detailed research techniques etc; the section on materials is very good for discovering much more about their findings.

I would also recommend: Britain BC by Francis Pryor, and Britain Begins by Barry Cunliffe, for overviews of the Bronze Age.

Volunteer resources

If you’re a volunteer, log in to the volunteer section of the Butser website to find resources on all our buildings and periods, including about the Dunch Hill roundhouse.

You can also find Britain BC and Britain Begins in your Butser Library, along with many other titles including this amazing booklet by John — well worth pursuing!

There is a signing in book on the bottom shelf of the library shelves. Please use this, even if the book is not leaving Butser, as it enables us to monitor book loans. When you return the book, please don’t forget to sign it back in!

If you’re not a volunteer with us but are interested in becoming one, find out more about volunteering at Butser here.

Beltain Celtic Fire Festival 2024: Welcoming in the summer!

It’s Beltain! The ancient Celtic festival celebrated at the beginning of summer, and possibly even the origins of May Day. We celebrated this wonderful festival with an afternoon and evening of music, mead, merriment, and of course, the spectacular burning of our 40ft wickerman. Here’s to good company and sunny days!

This year’s wickerman was a bright-eyed, Stone Age stargazer to celebrate our journey building the neolithic Wyke Down reconstruction. Whilst it always feel bittersweet to see our wickerman up in flames, this giant’s presence overlooking our Wyke Down site this Beltain feels like a good omen for the future of our building.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this wonderful event! To everyone who joined us, to all our visitors and volunteers and supporters here, thank you for making things like this possible.

Stay tuned here for some of our favourite pictures from the event!

relive the magic

Watch the full commemorative video on Butser Plus for as little as £2.99!

beltain celtic fire festival 2024 photo gallery

WITH ALL OUR THANKS

We are a small team from a small museum, and Beltain is an incredibly ambitious event for us to hold each year — one only made possible by an incredible number of wonderful people working very hard.

To all our staff and volunteers, thank you for your tireless work in preparing for and running this event! To the Friends of Butser Ancient Farm for your wonderful support, thank you.

To the Saxons of Herigeas Hundas, the Romans of Butser IX Legion, the ancient musicians of Here Be Flagons, to all the other reenactors and living history practitioners who helped bring our ancient farm to life, and to everyone who turned up in costume — thank you.

To the iconic Feckless who always gets us up and dancing, to the brilliant bards of Fae as Folk, to the energetic Courtiers, to the dynamic duo of the Folk Bus, to the the song-master Damh the Bard, to the beautiful sounds of Liz Overs, to the endlessly energetic Pentacle Drummers, and to the classic Ukes of Hazard, thank you for your wonderful performances.

To Jen Atkinson, Kit Helme, Jon Wylie, Tom Bird and Martin Green, thank you for your wonderful talks on herbs, cunning women, singing, dying, foraging and archaeology. To Beltane Border Morris, Flying Iron, the Bowmen of Petersfield, Steamship Circus, Ostara the Bubble Fairy, Jez Smith, and Eva Greenslade, thank you for your work offering unique and incredible performances and experiences, from handfasting to axe throwing to archaeoacoustics.

To Neil Burridge, Corn Dollies by Brigid, Joe the Smithy, Craig the Saxon Forager, Fergus Milton, Jim Clift, and everyone from Colchester Historical Society and the Ancient Wessex Network, thank you for your wonderful demonstrations of ancient crafts and metalworking.

To Jonathon Huet and Dawn Nelson, thank you for bringing such magic with your wonderful stories.

To HantsAstro for your interesting and interactive stall, thank you. To Chalice Mead, Three Copse, the Whitelands Project, Langham Brewery, Mr Whiteheads, and Blackmoor Estate, thank you for supplying us — whether that’s with mead, local greenery, or our very own unique Beltain Cider!

To craftsfolk and traders Butser Crafts, Feral Fibres, the Wood Beyond the World, Intelligent Hand, Pixie Made, the Special Branch, Kevan Dyne, Silverstrand Jewellery, Chris Page Design, Minerva Crafts, Wesnet Services, Pipers Honey, Wild Willow, Luna Skies Creations, Hare and Tabor, Finn’s Fire and Woodcarving, Woody Wonders Twig Pencils, Haus of Paint, Tangled Muses, the Special Branch, Gina McAdam, Amongst the Gorse, Fantastical Kingdoms, Woolleymamma Leather, Willow and Crafts, Petal and Plume, and Gwen’s Garden — thank you!

To Crêpe Britain, Matt with the hog roast, Earth to Oven, the Cookhouse Street Food, Eden Eats, Off Grid Espresso, Stable and Ground, and Sharon and Wendy of the Butser Bakes stand, thank you for all your work to feed everyone!

To friends unnamed but not forgotten, thank you.

And finally, to our supporters on Butser Plus, to our visitors, and to you 💚

Win a free family ticket for 2024 this winter!

It’s the season of giving! To celebrate the return of our magical Midwinter Quest, we’re giving away a free family ticket every weekend! Read on to see how to enter…

Midwinter magic at Butser

By popular demand, the Deer Queen is back at Butser! Meet her and the Holly King on Midwinter’s Magical Quest, and step into a winter wonderland at Butser for a fabulous festive adventure. Discover winter folklore and escape the commercial holidays on this unique non-denominational day out!

Swap Santa’s grotto for the firelit den of the Deer Queen, or the evergreen hall of the Holly King. Meet characters from winter folklore, and help them restore the light to the land with their magical trail! That’s not all — get hands on with make-and-take crafts to create gifts and decorations, and say no to plastic by using all-natural materials. Explore our ancient houses transformed by winter magic, and get immersed in winter traditions from a simpler time.

Win a family ticket every weekend

We’re celebrating alternative family days out this winter, and that’s why we’ll be giving away a free family ticket every weekend. One lucky family who joined us on the quest will receive a free ticket for up to two adults and two children, to be used any time in 2024.

Here’s how to enter:

1. Join us for Midwinter’s Magical Quest on any of the days it’s running.

2. Take a picture of your merriest midwinter moment! Dress up for the quest, show off your crafts, take a picture with the Deer Queen or Holly King… Whatever makes you feel merry!

3. Show us your merry midwinter photo on Facebook or Instagram. Don’t forget to tag us and use the hashtag #ButserMidwinter to be sure we see!

4. We’ll pick our favourite photo after each weekend. Make sure you’re following us so we can send you your tickets if you win!

We can’t wait to see your merriest midwinter photos! Terms & conditions apply.

A royal celebration for our new Roman garden

After a year in the making, hundreds of volunteer hours, and over 10,000 authentic Roman tesserae (mosaic tiles), our formal Roman garden is finally open — and we couldn’t be more delighted!

Today marked the official opening ceremony, and we had the distinct pleasure of hosting a very special guest to officiate. His Royal Highness Prince Richard, the Duke of Gloucester, has a keen interest in architecture and historic buildings, so we were delighted that he joined us to officially open our new Roman garden.

20 years in the making…

The opening of the new garden couldn’t have been more perfect — the villa itself opened 20 years ago this October, so what better way to celebrate than giving it the formal entranceway it deserves?

It’s also a great example of how our work at Butser is never done. In the 20 years since the villa was completed (the first to be built in the UK for over 1000 years!), it’s seen numerous renovations and redesigns as archaeologists’ understanding of Romano-British villas and aesthetics have changed. The biggest renovation was in 2018, which is also when we laid our very first mosaic — amazing to think that in just a few short years we’ve gone from no mosaics to three!

A Roman country garden

The new Roman garden has quickly become one of our favourite places at Butser — and we hope if you visit you’ll see why! It beautifully represents the types of garden features and plants found in Romano-Britain. We go into it more in our video on Butser Plus, but it’s filled with 65 varieties of plants either indigenous to Britain or introduced by the Romans themselves. At the centre lies a stunning mosaic made of over 10,000 authentic Roman tesserae (tiles), rescued in a dig from under the M4 and generously donated to us for this project.

In fact, none of this would have been possible if it weren’t for the kindness and generosity of our supporters. This garden was entirely funded in memory of Joan Rundle, a long-time Butser volunteer and Friend of the Farm with a special interest in Roman gardens and their plants. May her legacy long stand at Butser and be enjoyed by thousands of people in the years to come.

a royal opening

What better way to celebrate the completion of this special project than with a special opening ceremony? We were honoured to be joined by the Duke of Gloucester, and gifted him a replica bronze axehead crafted on-site to say thank you. After a guided tour of our ancient buildings, the Duke saw demonstrations of timber framing and metal-smelting in action, and even met some enthusiastic students on their school trip! Finally, the Duke officially opened the garden and mosaic to an audience of the original villa build team, mosaic and garden volunteers, and local dignitaries.

We’re incredibly proud of the work we do at Butser, and the things our dedicated little team can achieve, so it means a lot to us to have this kind of support and recognition from a royal visit. The last time we were visited by a royal was in the 70’s, when the queen herself visited Queen Elizabeth Country Park and Butser Ancient Farm, and met our founder Peter Reynolds!

The growth of Butser

Everything we do at Butser is a labour of love, and this garden is such a perfect example. But gosh, it’s so worth it. Just a few months ago, the area outside the Roman villa was just a patch of grass — what a difference some time and love can make!

In many ways, the growth of the villa reflects the growth of Butser itself. Our director Simon was a member of the original villa build team — and, as he says, it ‘hooked’ him on Butser. We’re all so proud of how much this little site has grown in the last 20 years, from a small research site barely open to visitors to a thriving centre that hosts over 60,000 visitors annually, all eager to learn about our rich past. The research is still at the heart of what we do — but now, we share it with more people than ever before.

So… What’s next?

You know us, we never sit still for long. We’re already working on our next big project: a Stone Age roundhouse that would have looked out over a wood henge! We’re so grateful for the incredible support that allows us to keep experimenting, keep learning, and keep sharing our work with as many people as we do. We hope you love the Roman garden — and what comes next — as much as we do!

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Want to help us keep experimenting, and join us on the journey? Support at Butser Plus for the price of a coffee, and get documentaries and updates on our latest projects!