19. A Year in the Life of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
Posted
24th February 2025
in 10 year Anniversary, blog, Blogs & News, Gaskell House Blogs
17-23 February 2025
Half-term turned out to be a very busy week for us on our all open days with lots of families and groups visiting, doing crafts and generally enjoying themselves. We were a little low on volunteers so staff spent a lot of the week plugging the gaps – which included working in the Tea Room, cutting out craft materials and clearing up sick (don’t ask). But we survived with many cups of tea, smiles, fabulous feedback from visitors and amazing teamwork (I really do work with the best people!).
It was a great relief to see so many people in the House after such a quiet start to the year. Added to this there was the knock-on effect of increased sales in the Tea Room and additional donations – which all have a big impact for our small museum (not least helping me to sleep better at night!).
It was shorter week for me as well so I was trying, and failing, to squash five days work into three. (I never learn). Behind the scenes I was teaching myself how to edit audio content for the Bloomberg Connect app we are working on but not really getting enough time to work on it probably but I made a start. More on this next week I hope. We also sent out a follow-up email to our Friends about the book sponsorship opportunities and secured two more sponsors – hurrah!
And as if we weren’t busy enough, on Wednesday, we welcomed our inaugural writers-in-residence to the House for the very first time! They are Lee, Princess and Georgia (photos below). I gave them a very quick tour of House and then we all had a chance to chat and discuss some pretty big themes and ideas about writing and historic houses. The ‘official’ announcement will be next week so we also met with Fido PR and took lots of photos in readiness for this.
The other big news this week was that two of our volunteers/trustees, Frank and Jane delivered an online talk for Historic Houses members about the restoration of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House and attracted an audience of 475 people! This was fantastic coverage for our little* historic house and I can’t thank them enough for doing this – even if the audience numbers where a little daunting!. Thanks also to Tolu at Historic Houses for convincing us to do this.
*In comparison to many of the other historic houses in the scheme we are very small! FYI – Members of Historic Houses get free entry to Elizabeth Gaskell’s House – see their website for how to join.
Sally Jastrzebski-Lloyd
