Turning the Oakridge Museum sign to ‘closed’, Pam prepared to check the day’s takings. It wasn’t going to take her long. There had been fewer than 20 people through the door since she’d opened that morning and, aside from the modest admission charge and a couple of bookmark sales, the cash register had remained firmly shut.
It hadn’t been an altogether wasted day, though. Every one of Pam’s visitors had wanted to know more about the town’s intriguing Tudor origins, and most had smiled encouragingly during her guided tour of the museum’s 16th-century walled garden.
‘What a lovely smell of lavender and rosemary,’ one visitor said, as Pam led the way, her sensible heels clicking on the uneven cobblestones. ‘Is it true that they were originally cultivated for their healing properties?’
Channelling her inner actress, Pam enthralled the group with lively anecdotes about the Tudors’ widespread use of herbal medicine to treat everything from toothache to battle scars, and explained how many of their remedies were still in use.
Only, now, after waving goodbye
