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The Tudors

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Clothes were mainly wool now but these clever people had learnt how to dye the wool into different colours and then weave it into patterns. There were lots of different plants or insects to use for various colours. These are some of them they might have used:

Blue – Woad, elderberry, sloe, wild pansy
Black – Blackberry, oak bark, water lily roots.
Brown – Birch bark, larch needles, meadowsweet
Red – Kermes (like cochineal), alder, sorrel
Purple – Dandelion roots, sea slugs
Green – Nettles, privet (leaves and berries)
Yellow – Heather, gorse, broom

The wool would be soaked in the dye for weeks and sometimes iron or salt would be addded to make the dye stick to the wool. Men wore tunics and baggy trousers (Richard said I should say this was madness but I don’t know why. See if you can find out what he’s on about) with a belt while the women wore long dresses. Both would use a cloak for extra warmth in cold weather. Cloaks would be fastened round the neck with a brooch. The Iron Age people loved jewellery even more than the Bronze Age people before them and, although we had moved into a new age, ordinary people still had jewellery made of bronze. A wealthy person or tribal king would have their jewellery made of gold.

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