Forage to Feast - Prehistoric Food and Ancient Cooking Day Workshop

About

What did our ancestors eat – and how did they prepare it?

Step back through millennia for a day of hands-on cooking and discovery.  This immersive workshop invites you to explore the flavours, skills and ingenuity of the people who lived along the River Ouse thousands of years ago.

Guided by expert facilitators, we'll 'travel' from the Mesolithic, 10,000 years ago, through to the Iron Age.  Along the way you'll learn how people gathered, preserved and cooked their food using the resources of the landscape – and you'll get to try it for yourself! Expect fire, smoke, grinding stones and the taste of the earth...

What you'll experience

– Reconstruct a Mesolithic hearth and roast hazelnuts just as archaeologists discovered them cooked and buried on a Scottish island site– process berries, nuts and roots, turning them into fruit leather, roasted tubers and smoked wild foods

– Experiment with seed processing, learning how small harvests were transformed into sustenance

– Step into the Iron Age to grind grain on a genuine Roman-era rotary quern and bake your own ancient bread over the fire

– Cook vegetables in a cauldron, and (for those who wish) taste animal products prepared in the prehistoric style

Your guides:

– Tristan Bareham – with over 35 years' experience experimenting with and teaching the crafts of prehistoric Sussex, Tristan brings the past vividly to life.

– Milly Hawkins – Head of Community Learning at the Railway Land Wildlife Trust, Milly has more than 15 years' experience leading practical foraging workshops rooted in ancient knowledge.

You'll also gain rare insight into unpublished wild-food research by Professor Gordon Hillman (Ray Mears' travelling companion on BBC Two's 'Wild Food'), revealing how plants shaped survival through the ages.

Why the Railway Land?

This reserve offers tantalising glimpses of a deep past. Communities that lived over 10,000 years ago used the river as a travel corridor and relied on some of the same plants that still grow on the reserve today. By cooking and tasting these foods in this landscape, you'll connect with the very rhythms that sustained life here long before Lewes took shape.

*Please note that all food materials will be sourced by course leaders from other sites, as foraging is not permitted at the Railway Land