"Dear Lord and Lady Saye and Sele, Thank you very much for letting us come to tea on Tuesday. We enjoyed it very much and had a lot of fun. Your Butler, Wilkins (Christopher Jones). P.S. I liked your hat."
1982: King Edward VII drops in for tea with the real life Lord Saye and Sele in an event organised by the Oxfordshire Museum Services' Education Department. More than 20 local children participated, dressed in Edwardian costume, playing the roles of people who used to work and live at the castle in the 1900s when the king used to visit.
The children learned what life was like "below stairs" where the servants lived - how they worked, how much they earned and how they prepared cucumber sandwhiches and sponge cakes for the King's visits. Lady Saye's hatA thank you letter from one of the children is pictured below:
"Dear Lord and Lady Saye and Sele, Thank you very much for letting us come to tea on Tuesday. We enjoyed it very much and had a lot of fun. Your Butler, Wilkins (Christopher Jones). P.S. I liked your hat."
