When she retired, Rosemary Griggs discovered a passion for researching 16th-century clothes. It led her to another adventure: telling the stories of history’s forgotten women
Rosemary Griggs has had two retirements, she says. Her first adventure, after retiring from the civil service at 55, was when she and husband, David, “did the sort of thing you would never advise your kids to do”: they bought a wooden house on stilts on 20 acres of rainforest in Belize (where David had worked for the Foreign Office). They also travelled extensively around Central America. But when David experienced a period of poor health, Griggs says: “That globetrotting bit of life came to an end.” Her “second retirement” has involved a very different kind of adventuring, through history, and in the guise of a Tudor noblewoman.
Back home in Devon, Griggs says, “it soon became clear that pottering in my garden and tending my allotment would not be enough for me”. When she was 63, she started volunteering at a nearby National Trust property, Compton Castle, and as part of her work there was invited to get involved with making a Tudor costume. Despite not having done any dressmaking since school, she agreed.
