This lovely folk object is kept in St. Fagan's National History Museum near Cardiff. It is a replica made in Pembrokeshire in 1869 as a copy of another house made 60 years before by the same maker. The original was made for the Twelfth Night celebrations of the area. The box would contain the body of a dead wren and would be carried aloft by four men pretending to groan under its weight. It was part of a ritual involving rhyming at village doors to try to gain entry and refreshment.
I have been fascinated by this object for a long time, and made my own little homage to it recently.
Kathryn Campbell Dodd - Wren House 2009
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