Join the history class

In a year filled with Jubilee celebrations, why not find out how families lived under the first Queen Elizabeth more than four centuries ago? Our historic family homes, many of them from the 14th and 15th centuries, are an important part of our national heritage and a great day out, but now some of the families who care for them are turning them into educational resources, too.

Re-enactments of historical events and demonstrations of past crafts and customs can bring history alive as perhaps no book can. Now English Heritage and the Historic Houses Association (HHA) have got together to make the most of this living history: they are applying for lottery money to help more historic houseowners set up educational facilities.

But some houseowners are already well ahead of them. Two Tudor manors are proving that history can also be great fun.

Kentwell Hall, Suffolk-Essex borders

At Kentwell, a moated house built between 1500 and 1540 and set in 30 acres of idyllic gardens and farmland, you can see most aspects of traditional Tudor country life. The manor was recently the backdrop for scenes in Channel 4's Tower of London series. In the moat house, one of the period's rare surviving service buildings (constructed separately from the main house in case of fire), domestic crafts are on view, from brewing to butter-making, while the grounds feature everything from an alchemist's hut - science and spells - to a blacksmith's forge, fired with the aid of huge manually operated bellows.

Annually (this year until 14 July) Tudor life is recreated especially for school parties. If youngsters want to know how to shoot a longbow, how heavy chain-mail is or how to make Elizabethan potions, this is their chance.

The schoolchildren wear Tudor costumes and all the Kentwell staff speak Tudor English. "Most of us find that if we put on a Tudor costume it comes easily," says Kentwell's owner, Patrick Phillips.

There are two shorter recreations this August and September and the house and gardens are also regularly open throughout the summer. Other attractions include a traditional herb garden with more than 200 culinary and medicinal herbs, and a reconstructed Tudor farm, stocked with rare breeds from Tamworth pigs to Suffolk Punch horses and farmed by traditional methods. "Farming's dead in this country," believes Phillips. "It's going to be people like us who will keep the old ways going for people to see." Phillips himself is a lawyer, who bought Kentwell in 1971 when it had been written off by the Historic Buildings Council (the forerunner of English Heritage). "All the surveys came back saying don't touch it," remembers his wife, Judith, "but that was part of the attraction." The couple, who have four children between 23 and 16, have devoted themselves to saving the house: turningit into living history is a way to make the project pay. Judith, a teacher, failed the Tudors and Stuarts at O-level. "But, coming here, I found history was about how people lived in houses and what sort of people lived here, and I became far more interested," she declares.

For details of recreations and opening hours, call 01787 310207.

Ingatestone Hall, Essex

Ingatestone Hall is a true family house. Built around 1540 for Sir William Petre, secretary of state to four Tudor monarchs, it's been in the Petre family ever since. And for 12 days each summer, since the current Lord Petre inherited it in 1989, it's been the setting for a historical re-enactment for schools.

The story follows a day in Sir William's life in 1566 and, as well as showing parties of up to 90 children what it was like to live in the house, as anything from a ward to a minstrel or a cook, features a spy and a female prisoner under house arrest. The whole Petre household is involved. The family has a theatrical tradition - Lord Petre, who plays Sir William, and met his wife, Marcia, while they were both actors, used to run Hampstead Theatre Club.

The re-enactment is now masterminded by the couple's eldest son Dominic, supervising the proceedings as Master at Arms, while two of their other children, Mark and Clare, also play parts. And there's a new generation to inherit the theatrical mantle: Dominic and his wife, Marisa, have two children, Alice, two, and William, six months. The story may be educational - according to Lord Petre, "It's based on actual events, virtually all the characters we have in the household are real people" - but the approach is light-hearted.

Children are asked to come in Tudor costume, but, says Dominic: "We're not very strict. We have everything from a school in full regalia to others where they just tuck their trousers into their socks."