35. A Year in the Life of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
Posted
27th June 2025
in 10 year Anniversary, blog, Blogs & News, Gaskell House Blogs
23-27 June 2025
We are now officially less than a week from our exhibition launch at the House so there’s been lots of ends to tie-up, final proofing, sign-offs, a man with a van to book and a banner to put up (photo below).
I started the week at Manchester Central Library meeting Richard and Ben from Unity House to do some filming of the exhibition before it moves to the House next week. At the same time, Katy and Gaby were also hosting some filming at the House – for a music video!!! The Guest List (who are playing at Glastonbury this weekend) spent the day filming a music video at the House – as you can imagine we are all very intrigued about this one and can’t wait to see it. This is definitely a first for Elizabeth Gaskell’s House.
On Tuesday I managed to do a claim against our grant with the National Lottery Heritage Fund (to get a second payment) and made a good start on a Stage 2 application for funding to repair the guttering and move the stair carpet. Not going to lie, I finished Tuesday feeling quite smug with myself for ticking these two big things off my list.
For me, most of Wednesday was spent at MMU for the Gothic Crossroads conference (thank you to Dr. Emma Liggins for the invite). I got to talk to lots of delegates about Elizabeth’s gothic fiction, as well as to promote the upcoming exhibition (with the new print which also landed this week) and it was good to see a few delegates made it up to the House during their visit to Manchester. It was also really useful to catch-up with Debbie from The Portico Library and to meet colleagues from Gladstone Library, Hoghton Tower and The Whittaker Museum & Art Gallery (Visits to all of these are a must).
Back at the House we said goodbye and thank you to Coel, one of our placement students from Manchester College, we had the fire extinguishers serviced and had a show-round for a company interested in renting two of our meeting spaces.
Thursday was really busy visitors wise – hurrah! We had enough volunteers for most of the day, although I did have to jump on the front desk in the afternoon, but this did give me the chance to catch-up on some social media. Katy also did a few orders for summer stock for the shop including activity books for children and new soft-toys – coming soon!
I managed a quick catch-up with Gaby on the progress of the summer workshops and got very excited hearing about what the different writers/artists have planned and believe it or not we also discussed ‘Christmas’ and put a date in the diary to make a firm plan ahead of the summer holiday.
Friday was my fortnightly 121 with Alex, followed by a volunteer talk from Diane Duffy that I hosted on Zoom (and remembered to press record). I got an evaluation postcard designed and off to print and drafted a speech for the event next week… getting there.
I spent most of the week trying to curtail my excitement for next week…
Sally Jastrzebski-LLoyd
