After finding peace at a Christmas decorations workshop, I’ll never underestimate the power of crafting again

Crafting is underrated, says Jenny Eclair. But it’s no surprise women were trained at Bletchley – after all, if you can decipher a fair isle knitting pattern, cracking a Nazi code must have been a walk in the park

Many people undertook crafting to cope with the stress of the pandemic (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A year ago, my friend Judith and I were guests at Denman College, the HQ of the Women’s Institute in Oxfordshire. Thanks to our middle-aged female-friendly podcast Older and Wider (men most welcome), we’d been invited on a freebie three-day residential Christmas decoration beading course. In hindsight, I don’t think I have ever been happier.  

Denman College is a large grade II-listed Georgian house surrounded by a small campus of modern residential blocks providing 1980s-style accommodation to its mostly “ladies of a certain age” guests. The individual bedroom suites offered a single bed, poor wifi signal and no telly. My heart initially sank – what the hell was I doing there? Yet within 24 hours, I could happily have stayed for a fortnight – who needs a telly when you have beading, stained-glass-making and fancy chocolate workshops on offer?

Twelve months on, Denman, which had been struggling financially for some years, has come to the end of the road. Inevitably due to the coronavirus, a huge variety of courses moved online earlier this year and presumably this is where they will stay.