Old cake tradition revived for Seaton Delaval Hall
Nov 12 2010 by Tony Henderson, The Journal
MARKING the first anniversary of a stately home’s new life as a major visitor attraction will be a piece of cake.
The old tradition of the Twelfth Day Cake will be revived as the focus of the celebrations at the National Trust’s Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland.
On January 6 people would gather for a party with the Twelfth Day cake, adorned with sugar paste characters, as the centrepiece.
Now the Northumberland-based performing arts company November Club is to combine the tradition with the hall’s past reputation for grand theatricals and practical joking .
Working with Northumberland Archives, November Club will stage a series of events under the banner Twelfth Day with the Delavals, enabling the local community and visitors to relive the fun of the Twelfth Day Cake and party, at which guests would draw lots for the characters they were to play over the meal.
Two Twelfth Day cakes will be created and illustrator Margaret Lonergan has designed 22 characters with links to the hall and its history.
The venture will be launched on November 20 when Maurice O’Connell will be appointed as Lord of Misrule (pictured) to oversee the proceedings.
A group of itinerant players, made up of professional performers and hall volunteers, will provide a taster of the events when they appear from December 8-12 at Saltwell Park in Gateshead as part of the Enchanted Parks programme.
The players’ tent will house a Twelfth Day cake made by Lisa Bain, who is part of the hall’s “welcome team” and who also runs her own cake decorating business Giraffes Like Cake.
The players and the cake will appear on December 15 at Seaton Delaval’s Pavilion centre where community groups will create work around their chosen characters. From December 12 a second Twelfth Day cake, created by food historian Ivan Day and Newcastle designer Imogen Cloet will be displayed in the Crescent cafe in Seaton Delaval.
On December 18 the cake will be paraded by community groups along The Avenue to the hall, where it will be placed on the Twelfth Day table setting in the building’s central section and be on show until the end of January.
The players will give eight 7pm performances based on the characters from December 27-January 6.
Cinzia Hardy, November Club creative director, said: “Itinerant players were always welcome at the hall and the events are about animating the building and injecting some of the fanciful elements of its past.
“It is a playful take on an ancient tradition and will allow us to tell the many different stories linked to the hall. In the past the Twelfth Day cakes were magnificent affairs and were the equivalent of today’s Christmas lights, with people gathering to admire them in shop windows.”
