Coughton Court and Iron Bridge and The Laziest Blog Post Ever!!

We spend Friday and Saturday on our last trip with our High Point group. It was an overnight trip to visit Coughton Court and Iron Bridge. This trip was by far one of the most informative because we went to like six museums!! We started off with a tour of Coughton Court which is an absolutely GORGEOUS country home that has been in the Throckmorton family for hundreds of years. This is where the Gunpowder Plot was believed to have begun. Also, they held many secret Catholic masses during a time when Catholicism was outlawed. The house was equipped with many secret cabinets to hide the religious artifacts and hiding places called priest holes where the Priest could quickly hide himself if anybody came searching during a service. While the tour of the house was very interesting, our favorite part was getting to explore the many gardens and feeding the sheep that were grazing!

 Carriage Gate (where we entered) at Coughton Court

 This table was pretty neat, it serves as a compass and told you which direction certain cities were!

On the roof!!

 This piece went missing for several hundred years and they still have no clue where it went. The flaps were part of the door that allowed the owners to communicate with travelers and provide them with food or drink without fully opening the door.

We walked through an apple orchard and Peter told us all about all of the different types of old English apples.

Hanging out with our new sheep/goat friends!!

After we had lunch and spent some more time wandering around Coughton Court, it was time to make the hour and a half trek over to see Iron Bridge. The bridge itself is actually only two years younger than the United States which was really cool to see. It also symbolizes the start to the Industrial Revolution because it was the first bridge made of iron (hence the name... ba dum tsssst...) We first went to a museum that explained to us the making of Iron Bridge and how iron was processed. Personally, I didn't find this too terribly interesting, but seeing the bridge in person was really cool just because it is so old, but still in such great condition. Saturday, we went to a lot of different museums that generally told us the same exact thing. 

 A creepy wax figurine of Richard Reynolds... Don't ask me who he is because I honestly can't remember!! Sorry!!

 Small model of the bridge

 When the river flooded in 1796, the water came up to that red line. Kind of reminded me of the great flood of 2008 that happened at Camp Longhorn!!

 A pumped used during the iron making process...

 No worries y'all... we found the Iron Bridge!!!

 View from on top of the bridge!

 We were getting a little restless as this point and reverted to acting like our shoe size instead of our age... oops!!

Saturday, we toured the houses that belong to the main developer of the bridge. We read the information cards out loud to each other because we were getting a little bored. The highlight of these house tours was watching our friendsdress up like the Quakers and fancy people of the 19th century. I passed on this adventure because the idea of putting on a hat that had been worn by hundreds of people didn't appeal to me. Thank you for that, Dad!! After that, we ate lunch back at the hostel and then proceeded to the China museum. This was really cool because there were actual people making teacups and plates in certain areas. We really enjoyed looking at the various different tea sets and learning about how the shape of the teacup has changed over time. Peter lead Lindsay, Dr. Vess and her family, and me into the Kilns that displayed how the china was baked. There was an audio recording of something shattering and a voice yelling out that periodically would play. It scared us all pretty badly when it went off!! After begging and pleading to Peter, he finally decided to allow us to go to Enginuity, the children's museum. This was probably the most fun we had all day because we just got run around and touch everything, push all kinds of buttons, and play around.

 Inside the kiln!! (I have no idea why, but my pictures started taking upside down for a while...) 

 Ava and I were playing this game where you had to turn a wheel really fast in order to produce enough joules of energy to move this train back and forth. Pretty neat!!

 X-Ray of a cell phone

We got to construct an arc out of foam pieces... such a huge struggle!!!

This trip was great and extremely informative, but Lindsay and I cannot wait for our two Harry Potter filled days in London! Until then, Muggles!!! Mischief Managed...

xoxo 

SG