Gaskell House Blogs

40. A Year in the Life of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House

28 July – 1 August 2025

A three-day week for me this week as I’m on leave on Friday and then back on 11 August – so this is a rather truncated post.

This week we had a wedding viewing, the Christmas card landed with much aplomb and we had a visit from museum colleagues at Chatsworth. It was also fantastically busy with lots of visitors (and enough volunteers) so there was a lovely bustling atmosphere. There were some great pieces of art created in the Servants’ Hall by some of our younger visitors, games played out on the lawn and a great number of crumpets toasted and eaten!

Amidst all this action Gaby was out posting the last of the flyers to local residents promoting our family workshops (which start on 6 August) and two of our volunteers sorted 100+ second-hand books to go to the local food bank (thank you Mike & Liz). And we finished the week with a large group tour on Friday.

I managed finally to get the summer gutter clear booked in for 4 August (we don’t want a leak like we had in July 2023!) but I’m still not having much luck sorting out our lift contract – either my emails are being ignored or our account manager is having a very long summer holiday!

Sally Jastrzebski-Lloyd

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Plans are like a card-house-if one gives way, all the others come rattling about your head

Elizabeth Gaskell, 1864