a well-appointed sitting room with a harmonium, Victorian chaise-longue and a collection of period china, and a kitchen with an authentic cast-iron range. Upstairs there can be found two bedrooms, a children’s room, and a master bedroom which also contains a cot. The bedrooms do not have wardrobes, but, as houses of the period would, instead contain chests to store clothing. Outside there is a wash-house containing a copper for washing clothes, along with a washing dolly and mangle. Behind the house lies the garden. It is planted with vegetables of authentic period varieties, and is also home to animals which would traditionally have been kept by the Foresters. These include chickens to provide eggs, and Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs which were kept for their meat, and grazed under the trees on fallen apples. They were also released into the Forest to feed on acorns during the late summer, a right dating from medieval times known as pannage. Two ferrets are also kept in the garden; these traditionally were used (and still are) by Foresters to catch rabbits for the table. Charcoal burners’ camp Also on the site is the charcoal burners’ camp, sited in a forest clearing with a stone-and-turf-built hut constructed as they have been for centuries. Whole families would have camped in the Forest for months at a time during the summer in order to provide the constant supervision necessary to keep several burns maintained at one time. The Heritage Centre maintains the tradition by conducting twice-yearly charcoal burns. These are built in the traditional turf and earth method, whereby the wood is stacked tightly together in a dome, then covered in turf and earth to starve the fire of oxygen, ensuring that the wood dries out at a high temperature, but not burned. The charcoal produced would in the past have been used to achieve the high temperatures necessary to smelt the iron ore mined in the Forest. Nowadays, however, it is sold mainly for barbecues. Freemine entrance The five densely wooded acres of the Heritage Centre also feature Harvey’s Folly, a replica of a freemine entrance built for the centre by retired freeminer Dave Harvey. The right to mine for coal is believed to have been first granted by Edward II, to any man born within the Forest of Dean’s traditional boundaries, (known as the Hundred of St Briavels) and who has worked underground for