33. A Year in the Life of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
Posted
13th June 2025
in 10 year Anniversary, blog, Blogs & News, Gaskell House Blogs
9-15 June 2025
Not quite the packed week we had last week (phew!) but it started for me with a trip to Trentham Gardens in Stoke for a Group Travel Organiser event – where Anne and I got to meet lots of different coach companies and group travel organisers to introduce them to Elizabeth Gaskell’s House and to promote our private group tours. It was a very good event and I headed back up the M6 with lots of good contacts and leads for us to follow-up.
It is worth noting that we are having a very good year in terms of our private group tours – with five alone booked for May. This is an area that Ellie has been leading on and we have hosted groups of all types and sizes, from reading groups of 15 people up to U3A groups of 50. Our volunteers seem to really enjoy hosting these visits (which largely happen on the days we are closed to the public) and they are a very good source of income for us. (If you want to find out more visit our group visits page).
On Tuesday, Alex and I spent all day taking part in a ‘Dynamic Duo’ session online with the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) for Chairs and their Directors/CEOs. It was a very insightful and useful day, but we were both mentally drained by 4pm. Whilst we were doing this, Ellie and volunteers were in the House hosting a small Tuesday wedding for 15 guests which sounded lovely!
Wednesday and Thursday were slightly better (then similar weeks in May) on the visitor front – although last Sunday was the second hand book-sale and it was really busy. We had quite a few new volunteers in and we continued with their training and it was good to see lots of them working independently for the first time. Katy and I had a few meetings, cake and parcel deliveries to juggle in between chasing up why the glass bins hadn’t been emptied and sorting through second-hand book donations.
Gaby, myself and Lynda manage to go through the applications for the artists/writers call-outs for our summer holiday workshops, and worked out a plan for the next steps. We were really pleased by the response, but it did make the decision-making process harder!
On Thursday we were able to help Dr. Emma Liggins from MMU source some illustrations from Elizabeth’s short stories from our own collection, and then excitingly I got to meet and chat with my counterpart from Katherine Mansfield House & Garden in New Zealand – who was doing a tour of historic houses in the UK and Ireland. Although I had heard of Katherine Mansfield and I’m fairly sure I’ve read some of her short stories – I don’t know a lot about her life so this was a good excuse to do a deep dive, read some of her work and do a bit of research. For more information on the House www.katherinemansfield.com/
On Friday I pressed go on a few print jobs for marketing relating to the new exhibition and started sharing short films about the writers experiences across social media. I had a quick 121 with Alex about the Board meeting next week and other matters, and then panicked about our lack of volunteers on Sunday, I sent a few messages out and came up with a plan!
Sally Jastrzebski-Lloyd
