Blogs & News

blog : Miss Matty’s Favourite?

We have an eye-catching display of primroses in the fern bed at present. They seem to like it there and have been seeding themselves across the bed. I wrote about them on this blog exactly a year ago and said how encouraging it was that visitors, by making the observation "Miss Matty's favourite flower", had made the connection between the plants in the garden and Mrs Gaskell's writings. The question is, though, whether "Miss Matty's favourite flower" comes...

blog : Garden Update

The expected rain did not arrive and is was another beautiful spring day for the Elizabeth Gaskell's House gardening team yesterday. The garden is included in entry (every Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, 11am-4.30pm) and we can offer private talks and tours for groups on other days.  If you want to speak to the gardeners  then we recommend visiting on a Wednesday morning - weather permitting there should be someone around to chat. Thank you to Chris Tucker, Garden...

blog : Julia Gaskell and the Model Dress

In 1887, the Ancoats Art Museum put a model dress on display to inspire working women to wear more functional and beautiful clothing and to influence their behaviour and moral character. The Museum Committee suggested  that ‘simple dresses, very beautiful in form and colour, could easily be obtained by most working women'. They felt 'it is a great pity that the majority of English women wear dresses which have no beauty of form or colour. It is a...

blog : Did you know Julia Gaskell has links to the Manchester and Salford Women’s Trade Union Council?

The minute books of the Manchester and Salford Women’s Trade Union Council have recently been deposited at the Working Class Movement Library, one of our Hidden 8 partners. Lizzie one of our volunteers discovered a connection to Julia Gaskell, Elizabeth's daughter. "Manchester and Salford Women’s Trade Union Council was formed by a small group of philanthropists, including C. P. Scott, the editor of the Manchester Guardian and Julia Gaskell, daughter of author and social campaigner Elizabeth Gaskell. The MSWTUC then...

blog : Exploring Victoria Park

Kate Dibble, one of Manchester’s most respected tour guides, led a walk around Victoria Park yesterday for the Friends of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House. We met outside the distinctive and highly decorative terracotta fronted Victoria Baths which when they were opened in 1906 were called ‘a water palace of which every citizen of Manchester can be proud’ From the baths, our first stop was Addison Terrace and specifically the house where the artist Ford Madox Brown lived for four years...