27. A Year in the Life of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
Posted
25th April 2025
in 10 year Anniversary, blog, Blogs & News, Gaskell House Blogs
21 – 25 April 2025
I returned to work after the Easter weekend (which included a wedding on Saturday) and a week off, which from the sounds it was very busy! Katy and Ellie had held the fort admirably and even managed to get the phones fixed finally (it only took a week) and I was greeted with new displays and gorgeous new literary-themed stock in the shop.
As well as the usual post-holiday 100+ emails to deal with, this week we also welcomed two judges from Historic Houses Francis Garnham Award on Thursday to look around and to chat about our education offer – which includes both our online educational talks programme and our more traditional schools offer. We will find out the outcome in the summer! (wish us luck). On Wednesday evening our online talk was: Writing Home, which explored what house and “home” meant to Elizabeth Gaskell.
I caught up with Laura from Fido PR to talk about next steps for the writers residency and sorted out a meet-up with the writers themselves for some social media. In the midst of this the House CCTV system was serviced, which included removing a slug from one of the cameras!
We had a busy Wednesday visitors-wise and then a very quiet Thursday with virtually no visitors in the afternoon; this gave us some time to go through our collection policies in terms of which objects/items can be handled, sat on etc. – and to do some refresher training with the volunteers on collection security and protection. The past few weeks have been a cornucopia of broken chairs, audio equipment, phones, fire screen and a sewing box – plus loose screws everywhere . Thankfully we’ve been able to repair the majority, but there’s a few changes we need to make in terms of how volunteers interpret and handle objects from the collection.
On Friday morning Ellie and I escaped from the House for a few hours (to a well-known coffee shop) for her annual appraisal and general chat. The rest of the day was spent working on the digital marketing material for the Bloomberg Connects App – which features our new digital guide. (the website page is now live), finishing off the newsletters and other odd tasks for our upcoming event.
Sally Jastrzebski-Lloyd
