The Armourer’s House by Rosemary Sutcliff

The Armourer's House by Rosemary Sutcliff, introduced by Lara Maiklem and illustrated by Isabel Greenberg
Photo by Ruth E. Ward

In praise of mothers, aunts, sisters, friends and all the other motherly people in our lives - wishing you the happiest of mother's days.

I wanted to share some excerpts from Rosemary Sutcliff's book The Armourer's House because it seemed to me that this wonderful children's book is made ever so much more special thanks to all the motherly figures who appear throughout the book. 

Now don't get me wrong, there are plenty of encouraging, warm, supportive and engaging men in this book too. But for the purposes of today - Mother’s Day - let's stick to the theme of mothers!

Tamsyn, our heroine, is an orphan, brought up by her grandmother - "who was the sort of person you respect enormously but do not dare to love."

She moves to London to live with her aunt and uncle and cousins. There it was Aunt Deborah who welcomed Tamsyn as if she were her own mother: she was "warm and pretty, and had honey-coloured hair, which she coiled up under a black velvet hood like the ones the queens wear on playing-cards, because most ladies wore it like that in those days. Her eyes were blue as speedwell and when they went all starry, so that she looked like someone in a stained-glass window with the sun shining through it."

Later, as the story weaves its way through Tudor London, we meet the Wise Woman in Chelsea Meadow - Mistress Tiffany Simcock -  who offers Tamsyn and her cousins a meal of "brown bread and honey-in-the-comb, a handful of strawberries, and warm white goats’ milk." I remember reading this as a child so vividly I could almost imagine sitting around the table with these children, devouring bread and honey…

The endpaper design for The Armourer’s House

Illustrated by Isabel Greenberg

And we catch a glimpse of Queen Anne Boleyn too. Rosemary Sutcliff makes sure to portray her with sensitivity, drawing attention to her motherly qualities instead of passing the traditional historical judgement we are used to : "... her laughter was quite different - warm and gentle and sweet, so that Tamsyn thought what a lovely Mammy she must be for the little year-old Princess Elizabeth to have."

Almost at the very end of the book, we have the pleasure of meeting Mistress Bourdekin, whose welcoming presence at the Master Shipwright’s house in Deptford, transforms Tamsyn's cold journey across icy London into a warm family embrace: "Mistress Bourdekin, who had been standing in her lighted doorway, kilted up her skirts and came darting out again to whisper to Tamsyn, ‘Come and see me again one day, sweetheart’."

This book was a favourite of mine as a child, and I have returned to it time and time again, as an adult and as a mother too. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have over the years. Happy mother's day one and all!