41. A Year in the Life of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
Posted
17th August 2025
in 10 year Anniversary, blog, Blogs & News, Gaskell House Blogs
11-17 August 2025
Mid-way through the summer holidays, another heatwave (29 degrees in Manchester on Wednesday!) and it has been a busy week for us.
After the usual post-holiday catch-up for me it was back to scoping out grants, upping the Facebook promotion for the family workshops and finishing off my July reports. Behind the scenes Katy was working on improving SEO for our online shop items (trying to get ahead for Christmas!), Gaby was working on some new drop-in events for the autumn and Ellie was pulling together the results from the Friends annual survey – amongst the usual day-to-day stuff.
Our Wednesday & Thursday workshops for families were run by writer/artist Stevie Ronnie this week. He got children to bind a book and then fill it with pictures and stories as they explored the House. It was lovely to see lots of children (and grown-ups) really getting stuck in, painting beautiful watercolours and getting creative with their book binding (example below). And don’t just take my word for it – we had some great feedback from kids as you’ll see on the photo below. We were pretty steady with families on both days which was a relief and had just about enough volunteers, although staff still needed to cover a few shifts in the Tea Room and Front Desk.
We were however short again on Sunday morning as nearly all our regulars were away, but managed to rally the troops in-time and get just enough cover, with me filling the odd gap.
We are officially now recruiting a trustee with fundraising experience for our Board so Jane B (Trustee & volunteer) and I shared the advert on various platforms and websites.
We also had a very positive showround for a new tenant to take on one of our meeting rooms in the Coachhouse – fingers crossed this goes ahead, but it will mean that we need to clear the room in the next month (queue a plan and emails asking for help).
And then it was Friday and there was set-up by Gaby and Ellie for a wedding on Saturday, whilst I worked at home catching up on the to-do list and working on grant applications.
Sally Jastrzebski-Lloyd
