MUNCASTER CASTLE Lily Tidman, St Hilda’s College, BA History & Politics, Second Year Undergraduate, A mixture of remote and in-person internship Work Projects I was working with one other intern - Alex Beeton, a first-year DPhil student - researching two glass objects held by the castle: the Luck and "Fake" Luck of Muncaster. Our main goal was to determine their provenance and the credibility of legends surrounding them, using historical research to reveal the credence which should be given to an associated family tradition telling of a visit by Henry VI during the Wars of the Roses. Our main achievement was the production of a 100-page academic report on the two Lucks, their context and their history. We made use of a variety of sources to produce this report, from our own interviews with experts in various fields to documents held by the castle and secondary literature available online; we then produced a smaller document recommending various commercialisation strategies based on our findings, for use by the castle in future. The castle team were all incredibly supportive, especially given the unusual circumstances under which we were completing this project. Peter Frost-Pennington, our main point of contact, was very flexible with regards to the outcome of the project given the closure of archives and libraries, and went out of his way to put us in contact with relevant academics and local people. Alex and I were empowered to choose the format the presentation of our findings would take and encouraged to exercise our curiosity and creativity during both the research process and whilst making recommendations for a visitor experience based on this research, all the while able to contact Peter with any issues or questions that we had and being made to feel at home amongst the castle staff. Daily Life This internship was conducted partly remotely and partly on-site at Muncaster - with social distancing measures in place. The majority of the internship involved working from home pursuing various avenues of research, from conducting Teams interviews with academics in various specialisms to perusing the journal of a local history society.
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