4. A Year in the Life of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
Posted
25th October 2024
in 10 year Anniversary, blog, Blogs & News, Gaskell House Blogs
Week 4. 21 – 27 October 2024
Getting this week’s blog written early as I’m on leave next week for my children’s half-term. Speaking of which, we’ve had a good first week of Halloween/autumn themed crafts (making owls) this week at the House with lots of families through the doors, eager crafting in the Servants’ Hall and some great dressing-up. We have also had a relatively stress-free week in terms of our volunteer numbers, leaving the staff team to get on with the less exciting but very important behind the scenes stuff.
Number one was reviewing our risk and fire assessments ahead of refresher training (and practice drills) in November. We use November as a time to do all our safety-related training with volunteers and staff, and update our paperwork. I spent time reading through and updating the paperwork before circulating to the team to check. It was a useful reminder that we need to restock the various first aid kits and I emailed Adam (one of our very helpful volunteer key holders) to see if he can help with the fire drill testing. We also have a few maintenance things to discuss including two broken chairs, some painting that needs doing and the fact that the lawn mower needs petrol. We don’t have a caretaker or paid maintenance person so these jobs fall to staff and volunteers to ‘fix’ or do. Luckily we do have some very good volunteers to help.
Slightly more interesting was receiving copies of the new Manchester Literature Map from the Manchester City of Literature team. We do often get missed off city centre maps because of our location so very pleased finally to make it on to one. Copies are available at venues across the city and of course, at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House.
I also completed some paperwork for a donation of books we have been given for our collection. These eight books meet the criteria of our collection development policy and will be added to the study once they are catalogued and labelled.
As part of our 10-year anniversary I’ve been speaking to various organisations about articles and press stories. At the start of the week I sent off an article to the Association for Independent Museums Bulletin, and then on Thursday we were delighted to welcome Tolu from Historic Houses Association for a tour of the House and a chat about a potential article in their magazine next year (fingers crossed!). He had come up from London especially and for once the Manchester weather didn’t play to stereotype and bathed us in autumn sunshine!
The big job this week was working with our Trustees to shortlist candidates for our young Trustee recruitment and to invite them for interviews in November. This wasn’t an easy task, everyone agreed the standards have been very high. This is a really existing project for us and I can’t wait to welcome the new Trustees once recruited, but I feel so sorry for all those not short-listed.
On the Tea Room and shop side; Katy has stocked a new ‘carrot cake slice’ in the Tea Room to try and this came in on Wednesday – personally I love it and hope our visitors will too. We also discussed our plans and retail stock for Christmas and the staff team got unduly excited when some of the new Christmas books arrived. The new books include a gorgeous looking book called Victorian Christmas by Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, which has quite a few references to Elizabeth Gaskell, including her not very well-known Christmas short story – Christmas Storms and Sunshine (1848). Our Christmas discussion also included the timing of the Christmas tree going up in the House and the Swinton Grove, Community Christmas Light Switch-on scheduled for 4 December – where we also offer free entry to M13 residents. Katy also ordered some new cards and decorations for the shop, which should have arrived by the time I’m back from leave.
We finished the week with a small private tour of the House by Lizzie one of our volunteers, followed by the obligatory tea and cake served by me. This tour had been booked by a visitor to celebrate her father’s 90th birthday and I can’t think of a nicer way to finish the week.
Sally Jastrzebski-Lloyd
Director
