Kate Fletcher

Kate is a trained teacher, experienced musician, qualified linguist and skilled crafts-person. Through her work at Ancient Music, she has been able to combine her love of music, crafts, history and teaching, delivering high quality projects, workshops and interactive performances for museums, events, and historical education centres over the last 7 years. In 2011 Kate took the leap from her job as head of Music at Cranborne Middle School, to concentrate on her projects at Ancient Music with Corwen Broch. She also went on to work as a part-time tutor at the Ancient Technology centre for almost 4 years, planning and delivering day and residential programmes.

With a Middle Years PGCE (specialising in Music) and over fifteen years experience of working in education from Primary to the FE sector, Kate is used to planning and delivering cross-curricular projects for all ages and abilities.

As well as being familiar with ancient singing styles, she plays a range of historical instruments including Lyre, psaltery, shawm, and other woodwind. She is interested not just in music, but also in the everyday sounds of the past.

Kate's interest in languages means she can perform in several languages, including a few dead ones! She is delighted that her Latin O level has finally come in useful, when teaching about the Romano British. She loves making cordage and playing with fibre, whether spinning, felting, sewing or making rope, and is slightly obsessed with Dorset buttons and traditional smocking. Her interest in herding history extends to the language of animal husbandry and the clues this can give to the history and spread of farming and agriculture. She is probably the UK's only practitioner of Kulning, the ancient Scandinavian musical technique for calling cows.

Kate holds an enhanced DBS, First Aid and Food Hygiene certificates.

Corwen has a degree in Religious Studies and an interest in ancient religion and culture. He is also a professional musical instrument maker specialising in reproducing historical instruments. Through this work he has acquired many ancient skills including the tanning of skins and working in bone, antler, horn and wood. As a musician Corwen's interests are primarily in Folk Music and Early Music, he is a multi instrumentalist though specialises in historical wind instruments and bowed lyres. He is a Scandophile and travels regularly to Scandinavia to attend and lecture at conferences on Scandinavian and Finnish historical and traditional music.

Corwen has a fascination with ancient trackways and pilgrimage routes and has completed several long distance walks and pilgrimages, including the Greater Ridgeway and The Pilgrims Way to Canterbury. He and Kate together walked St Olav's Way (Oslo to Trondheim) and the Camino de Santiago de Compostela to Galicia, starting from home in Dorset.

His teaching experience includes conducting freelance evening Viking Music workshops over seven years with Kate Fletcher to residential groups at the Ancient Technology Centre, Cranborne. He eventually became a tutor there, responsible for day and residential visits, delivering activities as diverse as blacksmithing, wattle and daub construction, coppicing, fire lighting, felting and tanning. He has also given workshops in schools and to adults in diverse contexts, from one to one music tuition to bush-craft workshops at camps and festivals and weekend instrument making courses. He currently works part time for Poole Museum as a Learning Activity Leader, developing and delivering activities as part of Poole Museum's education team. He holds Food Hygiene (useful for camp-fire cooking) and First Aid certificates as well as an enhanced DBS check.

Romilly has many years of experience developing skills and teaching ancient technologies and crafts to a wide audience. She is a trained botanist with a Botany degree and botanical illustrator with an expansive knowledge of herb lore and crafts through history. Through her work with children from foundation years to university students, delivering cross curricular activities, she has developed her flare for inspirational and entertaining education. Known by many as ‘the lady with the flute’, she is a quirky pied piper and story teller, able to transport imagination to any place and time. She is currently the Education Manager at the Earth Trust in Oxfordshire.

Over the years Romilly has acquired and practised a great many ancient rural skills, sharing these and the context from which they came is an absolute passion. From grinding ochres, to grinding wheat, it can all help humans understand their journey. Romilly helped to build and helps run a Tudor dye house for a living history project in Wales, demonstrating natural dyeing to hundreds of schoolchildren each year.

As one half of The Outside, Romilly demonstrates ancient crafts, especially those associated with colours and plants to the general public and school groups. Since its creation The Outside has worked at many events and been acclaimed for the quality of their workshops and demonstrations. Most recently in June The Outside took their Woad Show and the Extraordinary Story of Cloth to Salisbury Museum for a week. Romilly holds an Outdoor First Aid certificate to instructor level, National Caving Association Cave Leader Modules 1&2, BELA, expedition leadership Level 2 and has studied Landscape interpretation at Oxford University.

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