Today I visited Battlesbridge with family. Those of you who don’t know Battlesbridge; it’s an antiques & craft centre housed in a variety of old buildings & courtyards. It’s a treasure trove for antiques collectors and there is a wide range of items to furnish and decorate your home and garden, clothing, toys and lots of items created by local artists and crafters such as these cute vintage items by Vintage Rose Canal Ware. I thought some of these items, such as the tea towels, would make lovely backdrops to some of my recipe posts.
There is also tons of teacups, teapots & cake stands!! I was in tea party heaven! These ones were on sale inside an old train carriage!
I thought these old bottles would look great grouped together as little vases or decorative potion bottles for a Halloween party
I was really interested in finding vintage baking related items & saw these pie tins, miniature cookie cutters and rolling pins. The glass rolling pin really caught my attention, I’ve never seen one before. It has corks in either end, so you can fill it. After much debate with why you would want to fill a rolling pin with anything, we came to the conclusion that it could be used to make pastry. It can be filled with cold water or ice to keep the dough cool and prevent it from sticking to the pin.
This is the most unusual tea set I have ever set eyes on, it looks like it should belong to Wonder Woman!
I also spotted this Alice ornament by Royal Doulton, rather pricey at £65 though!
Between looking around, we had lunch in this lovely little tea room.
They have a lovely choice of home cooked food and cakes on their menu. The tea in served in vintage china teapots and teacups.
Even the food is presented well. My Mum went for the bubble & squeak, Niece & Nephew shared pulled pork and chunky chips (the chips were amazing!) & my Sister and I both enjoyed the seafood platter which was served in these cute seashell bowls
We finished our visit with some ice cream from Rossi’s up the road.
We made it around probably only a third of all the shops plus some were only open from Wednesday to Sunday, so we’ll definitely have to return to see more. There are also a couple of pubs, The Hawk and The Barge Inn, which both look lovely. Definitely worth a visit if you fancy an interesting day out!
