I have a long-held interest in herbs, essential oils and their healing properties and have used them to make soaps and bath products. I also help to tend the herb garden at Norton Priory and regularly use and dry the herbs collected there for my art practice and in my home kitchen.

My original inspiration was the poem Hortulus, My Little Garden, by Walafrid Strabo a 9th Century Benedictine monk. A quote from this poem "A quiet life has many rewards' is engraved on a large stone next to the herb garden at Norton Priory.
On discovering a reference to an alewife in the Priory's records I researched about alewives/brewsters and how their role changed and their business was taken away from them by law due to it becoming a profitable trade and so deemed to be fit only for men to pursue.
After looking at medieval herbals - books that are illustrated and describe the healing properties of herbs and plants. And being inspired by characters in the novel The Familiars by Stacey Halls, I researched how wise women and female herbalists came to be viewed and accused as witches due to the religious Reformation from Catholicism to Protestantism. Many of the healing practices included spiritual healing as well, with the use of prayers, incantations and traditional folklore practices or rituals.
Through my study of creative archives and the artists
who have created critical fabulations, such as Cheryl Dunye, Zoe Leonard and Walid Raad, I was inspired to create an imaginary archive that gives voice to women who were largely absent from archives of that time.