Scraps of memory: Illuminating the imaginative worlds of Sutton House’s 17th-century schoolgirls

A fox, a hen, human figures – all depicted on scraps of paper so small that they can comfortably nestle in the palm of your hand, and some no bigger than your fingernail. The story of how these fragile fragments survived across the centuries, and of their rediscovery and recent identification, is so full of moments of serendipity and the right people being in precisely the right place at the perfect time that it seems unbelievable. Yet all of what follows is true – and these tiny pieces have the power to evoke a world that is almost entirely lost to us today: the imaginations of 17th-century schoolgirls. These fragile finds from Sutton House, comprising five cut-out images, two scraps