FAIRFAX House will be hoping to banish your lockdown blues next month ... with a little help from the Georgians.

The Castlegate museum will reopen on May 17 with a new exhibition based on the theme of 'reunion'. "We thought 'what are people going to want to do when they get out of lockdown?'" said curator Dr Sarah Burnage. The answers were ... travel, dance, get all dressed up for a party - and maybe even do a bit of flirting.

The interactive '‘Reunited: Lifting Lockdown with the Georgians’ exhibition aims to take you into the world of the 1700s - and find out just how the Georgians did all those things.

They were certainly dab hands when it came to chat-up lines. Fairfax House has put a few together for you to try.

How about this one: "I have a long time been broiling on the flames of ardent affection towards your dear self."

Or: "Sweet lady, your virtues have so strongly taken up my thoughts, that therein they increase and multiply in abundant felicity". Perhaps not.

In one of the bedrooms, Sarah and her staff have reunited Sir William Hardies and his wife, Dame Frances - or at least their portraits, which have been separated for 40 years.

You'll be able to learn about the 'peculiar rituals of the Georgian marriage bed' (only men, not women, were supposed to enjoy what went on there) and find out about Georgian travel habits - which were remarkably similar to our own, says Sarah. They would visit Florence, for example - only to hanker after English food...

There will be Georgian fashion to inspire those who have spent lockdown slobbing around in trackie bottoms. And in the saloon, staff have laid out the steps for a Georgian minuet, so you'll be able to have a go at Jane Austen-style dancing.

'Reunited: Lifting Lockdown with the Georgians' opens on May 17, Covid restrictions permitting. Tickets £7.50 from fairfax-house.arttickets.org.uk.