FAMILIES learnt to tell their scruples from their drachms at an event in York over the weekend.
The city's Castle Museum challenged all-comers to test their knowledge of weights and measures as part of the York Family Learning Weekend with questions based on exhibits of furniture, costumes and shop goods.
Young children could also enter into the spirit of the occasion, using scales to weigh ingredients for recipes in the Farmhouse Kitchen area, coins in the bank on the museum's Victorian street or linen in the draper's on the Edwardian street.
The trail was inspired by Matthew Merrythought's Mirthful Mode of Managing Measures With a Waggish Way of Writing Weights - a book penned in 1842 for a girl called Mary by her Aunt Jane.
"It is fascinating to discover how many different measures were in everyday use in the past," said museum education officer, Marilyn Ingle. "It's so much easier using the metric system."
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